French Studies, Vol. LIX, No.

3, 338 350
doi:10.1093/fs/kni213

FROM THE SACRED CONSPIRACY

TO THE UNAVOWABLE COMMUNITY:
BATAILLE, BLANCHOT AND LAURES LE SACRE
MILO SWEEDLER
Abstract

On 7 November 1938, Colette Peignot (known to posterity as Laure, a

name to which I will return) died in the apartment she shared with
Georges Bataille in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the western suburbs of
Paris. In the months following her death from tuberculosis, at the age
of thirty-ve Bataille published a selection of her writings under the
title Le Sacre. 1 The publication of this book violated the wishes of the
Peignot family, who had the legal rights to the papers in question, and
the particularities of Batailles edition may reect this circumstance.
Without any indication from the publishing house (Deux Artisans,
1
Credit for the publication of Laures Le Sacre is generally given to both Bataille and Michel Leiris. The
two men probably did cooperate on the volume, but, it would appear, not in equal measure. Bataille
assumed full responsibility not only for the editorial choices, but also for the notes to Le Sacre. (Cf.
Louis Yvert, Bibliographie des ecrits de Michel Leiris: 1924 a` 1995 (Paris, Jean-Michel Place, 1996), p. 83)
In his Preface to the Ecrits de Laure, Jerome Peignot states that the title of Le Sacre is Batailles as well
(p. 38). The selection of texts, the title, the notes: these are all, it would appear, Batailles.

# The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for French
Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

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This article analyses the importance of the writings of Laure (pseudonym of

Colette Peignot) for Georges Batailles communitarian projects of the late
1930s and early 1940s and for Maurice Blanchots interpretation of these
projects. Through readings of theoretical essays by Bataille, his annotated
edition of Laures Le Sacre (published illegally in 1939, only months after the
authors death, and distributed clandestinely to a restricted group of readers),
and Blanchots La Communaute inavouable, I argue that Laures book functions
as the literary analogue to two avant-garde communities in which Laure and
Bataille were involved Acephale and the College of Sociology and that
this same book is at the heart of the unavowable community theorized by
Blanchot.
Batailles justication for publishing Laures writings echoes the very terms
he uses to describe his group projects of the late 1930s: community, communication, the sacred, sacrice. I argue that, in publishing and distributing her
book, Bataille effectively sancties Laure, turning her into a martyr for the
community. However, in contrast to Acephale and the College of Sociology,
the community founded over Laures dead body was a virtual community:
one based on the members solitary experiences of reading. Laure becomes
the gurehead of an unavowable community, as Blanchots locution would
have it.

BATAILLE, BLANCHOT, AND LAURE

339

2
Similar restrictions affected the 1943 edition of Laures Histoire dune petite lle, of which only
thirty-three copies were printed. In contrast to Le Sacre, which is essentially Batailles edition, the
evidence suggests that the editorial work for the Histoire was done primarily by Leiris.
3
Ecrits de Laure, ed. by Jerome Peignot et al. (Paris, Pauvert, 1979), p. 137. All subsequent citations of
this text will be incorporated into the text under the abbreviation E.
4
It is Jean-Pierre Faye, one of the editors of the Ecrits de Laure, who, drawing on the authority of both
Laures original editor and the author herself, made these statements so famous in his battle to help bring
legal editions of Laures writings into print in the 1970s.

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apparently), the run was limited to 200 numbered copies, personally given
by the editor to a select group of readers, whose names are inscribed in the
respective copies.2 But there may be other, more theoretically based reasons
for restricting this community of readers. Laures writings are dechirants
(heartrending, harrowing, agonizing, wounding, lacerating), as Bataille
afrms in his concluding note to Le Sacre. They risk performing on the
reader the violence that they describe. Is this not precisely the sort of experience that Bataille strove to create in his communitarian projects projects
for communities that were restricted, by decision, to the small group of
adepts capable of experiencing such violence? In this article, I shall rst
examine the extent to which Le Sacre functions, according to Batailles
own theory of communication, as the literary analogue to the activities of
two such communities Acephale, the secret society that met in the
forest of Saint-Nom-la-Brete`che to resuscitate the sacred in a profane
world, and the Colle`ge de Sociologie, the brotherhood that convened in
the backroom of a bookstore in the Latin Quarter in order to engage in
the enterprise they called sacred sociology. I shall then consider the role
that the same text plays, according to Maurice Blanchot, in the unavowable
community formed in the wake of the death of Laure, whose members met
only in their solitary experiences of reading.
Let us begin with an oft-cited sentence from Batailles concluding note to
his edition of Le Sacre: Avant de mourir, [Laure] a marque formellement
son desir que son temoignage ne reste pas incommunique, afrmant quil
ne faut pas sisoler, rien nayant de sens que ce qui existe pour dautres
etres.3 A no less frequently cited statement by Laure in a letter to Michel
Leiris would seem to corroborate this testimony: Je pense aussi que ce
qui est ecrit doit etre communique.4 As she writes a few lines later, in explanation of this statement, il sagissait bien de manuscrit! (E, p. 266).
Batailles justication seems to be clear: since Laure formally indicated
her desire to communicate her testimony, his publication of her work
would be an act of loyalty. He would effectively be fullling the authors
wishes by bringing her writings into print.
The context of the sentence just cited from Batailles concluding note to
Le Sacre greatly complicates this justication. The afrmation that before
dying Laure formally indicated her wish that her testimony should not
remain uncommunicated is preceded by a long citation from Jeronimo

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MILO SWEEDLER

Une preoccupation du meme ordre a` laquelle se liait visiblement son angoisse a souvent
ete exprimee par Laure, parlant en general. Avant de mourir, elle a marque formellement son
desir que son temoignage ne reste pas incommunique, afrmant quil ne faut pas sisoler,
rien nayant de sens que ce qui existe pour dautres etres. Mais la mise`re inherente a` tout
ce qui est litterature lui faisait horreur: car elle avait le plus grand souci qui puisse se
concevoir de ne pas livrer ce qui lui apparaissait dechirant a` ceux qui ne peuvent pas etre
dechires. (E, p. 137)

The nal clause of the rst sentence here, which species that Laure spoke
in general (read: not in relation to her own work) of her scepticism at the
idea of publishing sacred texts, could be interpreted as a justication for
publishing of Le Sacre. According to this interpretation, the second
sentence would clarify the point: Laure spoke in general of the necessity of
keeping profound and sacred things hidden, but she formally indicated
that her own testimony be communicated. But this argument, which would
imply that Laures text should not be included in the canon of texts
described by Gracian (that the text Le Sacre is, in effect, not a sacred
text), goes against the grain of the note as a whole. This note presents at
best a back-and-forth movement in which the author argues rst against,
then for, and nally against the idea of publishing Laures work. The
statement that Laure formally indicated her wish that her testimony
should not remain uncommunicated is both preceded and followed by
what amounts to an argument against the publication of her text. Rather, it
should be communicated. What is the relation between publication and
communication? The lack of any conjunction (such as but or however)
between the rst and second sentences could suggest that Bataille
perceives a continuity between Laures preoccupation with not publishing
sacred texts and her wish that her own text should not not be communicated.
In other words, the second sentence can be read as either a qualication or
an exemplication of the rst. In either case, an opposition is set up between
communication and publication.
5
Cf., for example, Batailles long note to the title of Le Sacre, which opens with the words La representation du sacre dans ce texte temoigne dune experience vecue (E, p. 87).

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Gracians Opuscules, in which that author argues against the publication of

sacred texts. Bataille more or less explicitly insists in his notes that Le
Sacre is one such text.5 The editor virtually argues, in a note to his own
publication of a sacred text, against the publication of sacred texts.
Moreover, the passage just following the citation of Opuscules imputes this
argument to Laure. It is worth quoting the nal paragraph of the concluding note to Le Sacre in its entirety in order to glean the complexity of
Batailles position. Immediately following the citation of Opuscules, which
ends with the words Jai des sympathies pour la re`gle pythagoricienne
qui ordonnait de cacher les choses profondes et sacrees, Bataille states:

BATAILLE, BLANCHOT, AND LAURE

341

6
7

Rencontre Georges Bataille (Paris, Jean-Michel Place, 1987), p. 82.

Cf. Laure, Une Rupture, ed. by Jerome Peignot and Anne Roche (Paris, Cendres, 1999), pp. 171 75.

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Communication is a highly charged term in Batailles lexicon, to which I

will return. For the moment, I will content myself with pointing out a fairly
mundane use of the word communication in modern French. This word
retains a meaning that is rare in modern usage of its English cognate:
that of the transmission of material objects (such as books) from one
person to another. Understood in this sense, the distinction between communication and publication could be construed in terms of the means by
which Laures writings are disseminated. Bataille does not render these
writings public; he communicates them to a select group of readers. It is
to this community of readers that the note cited above is addressed. The
concluding note to Le Sacre reads, in sum, like a justication for the text
published in 1939: the one limited to 200 numbered, inscribed copies distributed personally by the editor to a restricted community of readers. It
does not present an argument in favour of commercial publication for
popular consumption. Perhaps the word publication (from publicare, to
make public) in the context of Le Sacre is a misnomer: private publication
is something of an oxymoron.
The nal sentence of the note to Le Sacre would seem to provide, then, an
explanation to the restricted community of readers of the book for the
necessity of restricting this community. As if to justify the limited edition
of Le Sacre and the secrecy in which it is to circulate, Bataille concludes
his nal note to the book with the afrmation that Laure avait le plus
grand souci qui puisse se concevoir de ne pas livrer ce qui lui apparaissait
dechirant a` ceux qui ne peuvent pas etre dechires. One is reminded here
of a remark that Bataille made to Pierre Prevost, recounted by the latter,
upon giving him a copy of Le Sacre: Bataille me demanda de ne jamais
men defaire ni le preter sans lui en avoir parle auparavant.6 Whether or
not Batailles concern here is that the book might fall into the hands of
those who opposed the publication of the work (in particular, Charles
Peignot, Laures brother, with whom Bataille was engaged in an acrimonious correspondence during the months preceding the publication of Le
Sacre ) is open to speculation.7 His request to Prevost can be interpreted
as a fear of being discovered by the legal owners of the manuscript, with
the ensuing legal battle and potential conscation of the book that that
discovery could entail. In the concluding note to the text, however, his
concerns are presented in terms of loyalty: to allow the book to fall into
the hands of those who are incapable of reading it would be a betrayal of
the author. To the extent that this theoretical justication overrides
Batailles practical, legal concerns, the book that he brings into print
conforms to Gracians argument that sacred texts should be restricted to

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MILO SWEEDLER

La Quinzaine Litteraire (16 30 Sept. 1971), 10 11.

Laure, The Collected Writings, trans. by Jeanine Herman (San Francisco, City Lights, 1995), p. 94.
The term dechirement will form the crux of Batailles later polemic with Koje`ve in Hegel, la mort
et le sacrice. Whereas Koje` ve privileges the master slave dialectic in his interpretation of the Phenomenology, Bataille places absolute Zerrissenheit at the centre of his own reading of Hegel: Lesprit nobtient sa
verite quen se trouvant soi-meme dans le dechirement absolu [absolute Zerrissenheit ], Bataille afrms,
making the Hegelian formulation his own (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, La Phenomenologie de
lesprit, vol. i, trans. by Jean Hyppolite (Paris, Aubier, 1939), p. 29. Cited in Bataille, uvres comple`tes,
ed. by Denis Hollier, Thadee Klossowski and Francis Marmande, 12 vols (Paris, Gallimard, 1970 88),
xii, 335). In a sentence that crystallizes the difference between Koje`ves and Batailles versions of
Hegel, Bataille notes, with remarkable economy and precision, en effet, un tel dechirement saccorde
mal avec le desir detre reconnu (OC, xii, 339). All subsequent references to Batailles uvres comple`tes
will be incorporated into the body of my text under the abbreviation OC, followed by the volume
and page numbers.
9

10

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the community of readers capable of understanding them: in this case, those

capable of being dechires.
Maurice Nadeau aptly entitled his review of the rst edition of the Ecrits
de Laure Des mots qui brulent.8 Bearing in mind the closing words of
Batailles nal note to Le Sacre, one might be tempted to slightly alter the
formula: for the editor, it is a question of mots qui dechirent. The word
dechires, translated by Jeanine Herman as moved, means literally ripped
apart or torn in pieces.9 The word is not to be taken lightly. Prompted
at least in part by the absolute Zerrissenheit in which Geist nds itself
when confronting death (in Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, which Bataille
had been studying for years from 1933 to 1939 with Alexandre
Koje`ve), the term would hyperbolically imply that Laures text risks
exposing the reader to an experience of the order of death itself.10
Dechirement and the related terms dechirer and dechirure occur with great
frequency in Batailles writings from the period. I cite, for example (from
a page of Le Colle`ge de Sociologie on which the word appears, in one
form or another, no less than nine times), an elaboration of what Bataille
calls the direction double of the movements of the esh: en passer par
la chair, en passer par ce point ou` se dechire en elle lunite de la
personne, est necessaire si lon veut en se perdant se retrouver dans
lunite de lamour (OC, ii, 369). We recognize here Batailles famous
theory of communication, in which the communicants tear themselves
apart in order to create a new being different from either of them. Such a
movement happens through the esh: communication, as Bataille elaborates the term here, is carnal. More precisely, it happens through what he
calls dechirures: sex organs. The point ou` se dechire en [la chair] lunite de
la personne referred to in the above citation is the point on a persons
body that fuses with anothers, which Bataille calls throughout this essay
dechirure. It is through a fault, tear, rip or wound in a person that
one communicates with another. Lovers communicate through their
wounds. Deux etres communiquent entre eux dans la premie`re phase,
Bataille says, par leurs dechirures cachees (OC, ii, 369). Without this

BATAILLE, BLANCHOT, AND LAURE

343

11
12

Poetique des groupes litteraires: avant-gardes 1920 1970 (Paris, PUF, 1997), p. 109.
La Prise de la Concorde, suivi de Les dimanches de la vie (Paris, Gallimard, 1993), p. 124.

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weak spot on a person, which Bataille locates here between a persons legs,
he/she would be a self-enclosed monad. Human beings, according to
Bataille, whether male or female, are not-wholes (to borrow the term that
Lacan uses to describe one half of the human race).
Bataille generalizes his conception of communication into a universal law
a few paragraphs later in the essay: Je propose dadmettre comme une loi
que les etres humains ne sont jamais unis entre eux que par des dechirures
ou des blessures (OC, ii, 370). Vincent Kaufmann notes an equivocation
central to Batailles thinking on communication at the heart of this
universal law: Reste alors a` savoir si les humains tiennent a` etre unis ou
a` se dechirer. Lafrmation de Bataille, deliberement ambigue, fait
miroiter une perverse inversion de la n et des moyens: la communaute
passant par la dechirure, cest aussi la communaute au service de la
dechirure.11 This equivocation to which correspond the two
movements of the esh alluded to above, one toward fusion, the other
toward dechirement would suggest, in the case of the communication
of Laures texte dechirant to those who can be dechires, that Bataille may be
as interested in tearing apart the community as he is in bringing it together.
It is not a question here of choosing between the two processes. The
equivocation between the constitution and the destitution of community
is central to Batailles understanding of communication. It is dechirure
itself that brings the community together, and, conversely and correlatively,
as we will see, it is unity that tears it apart. Fusion and dechirement are not
opposed tendencies in Batailles thinking. They are, on the contrary, the
twin forces of communication itself.
The equivocation that Bataille introduces between communication and
the resulting constitution or destitution of the collective nds a corollary on
the individual level: Il est difcile de savoir [. . .] jusqua` quel point letre
cherche la vie et la puissance, jusqua` quel point il est porte a` se dechirer,
a` se perdre, en meme temps a` dechirer, a` perdre autrui (OC, ii, 369). Let
us note here that communication cuts both ways: the communicant both
se dechire and dechire autrui. In the case of eroticism, this movement would
tear apart each of the two lovers; in the case of the literary work, it
would tear apart both the reader and the writer. It is Denis Hollier who
articulates the relation between these two types of communication: Il faut
[. . .] comprendre la litterature elle-meme, la pratique de lecriture et de la
lecture amorcee par Bataille, comme pratique erotique: il ny a plus de`s lors
une litterature erotique; erotisme et litterature sont indissociables, rigoureusement coextensifs.12 Or, as Bataille famously puts it in the Avant-Propos
to La Litterature et le mal, La litterature est communication: an afrmation

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MILO SWEEDLER

13

Laure: la sainte de labme (Paris, Flammarion, 1997), pp. 325, 322.

Georges Bataille, LApprenti Sorcier: textes, lettres et documents (1932 1939), ed. and introd. by Marina
Galletti (Paris, La Difference, 1999), p. 343, n. 7.
14

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which would presuppose, as a condition for the possibility of literature, that

both the reader and the writer have dechirures and, as such, can be dechires
(OC, ix, 171). The communication in which the writer engages can take
place only if the wound that he or she exposes nds a corresponding
opening on the part of the reader.
In the case of Le Sacre, the two communicants would be, in the rst place,
the author, Laure who, Bataille says in his introductory note to Le Sacre,
se dechirait aux ronces dont elle sentourait jusqua` netre quune plaie
(E, p. 130) and the reader, Bataille, who states in an autobiographical
note written in the third person, Une mort la dechire en 1938 (OC, vii,
462). In the second place, Bataille, communitarian that he is, wishes to
share the experience by communicating these ecrits dechirants to those
who can be dechires.
Two names for this community come to mind: Acephale, the secret
society organized by Bataille that met in the late 1930s beneath a thunderstruck oak tree to perform who-knows-what sacred rites, and the Colle`ge
de Sociologie, the group that fut, according to Bataille, en quelque
sorte lactivite exterieure de cette societe secre`te (OC, vii, 461). Laures
role in each of these communities was, evidence would suggest, at once
marginal and central. In critical writings on the subject of Laures
relation to Acephale, the womans marginal-central position takes truly
paradoxical forms. Elisabeth Barille, for example, who writes, in
reference to this secret society, that Laure is selon toute vraisemblance sa
co-fondatrice, also writes, in reference to the same group, Tout a
dabord commence sans elle: the biographer effectively attributes to
Laure the position of co-founder of a society founded without her.13
Marina Galletti, for her part, who argues in her Introduction to
LApprenti Sorcier that Laure forms a lien souterrain linking the Cercle
Communiste Democratique the dissident communist group that rst
brought Laure and Bataille together, in 1934 to Acephale, also
remarks, in a footnote appearing some 300 pages later in her book, that
three members of the secret society testify that she was present at none of
the groups meetings.14 The existence of a set of instructions, in Batailles
hand, to an Acephale meeting in the forest of Saint-Nom-la-Brete`che, as
well as a sketch by Andre Masson of the Acephale gure, both of which
were found among her papers after her death, conrm that Laure had
some role in the secret society, but the precise nature of this role remains,
like so much related to Acephale (and so much related to Laure), restricted
to rumour and speculation. Her place in this collective remains despite

BATAILLE, BLANCHOT, AND LAURE

345

15

Michel Leiris (Paris, Fayard, 1997), p. 386.

Rire pour rire et dol pour mensonge in Bataille-Leiris: lintenable assentiment du monde, ed. by Francis
Marmande (n.p., Belin, 1999), p. 67.
16

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and in part because of the many statements on the subject among the
best-guarded secrets of the secret society.
Although Laure never made a presentation at the Colle`ge de Sociologie,
it is hard to imagine that she was not present at the groups bi-weekly
meetings, and a set of notes written in direct response to Leiriss only presentation to the Colle`ge attests to her presence at least at one (E, p. 85 89).
Aliette Armel reports that Jean Jamin and Denis Hollier, perhaps the two
best-informed scholars on Leiris, think that Leiriss friendship with Laure
played an important role in his decision to join his co-founders, Bataille
and Roger Caillois, in their enterprise to found a college of sacred
sociology.15 Laures presence at the meetings of the Colle`ge may have
been discreet, but her role behind the scene may well have been less so.
By way of conclusion to a discussion of what he perceives to be Leiriss
and Batailles shared love for the recently deceased Laure, Christophe
Bident cannily remarks: une autre agonie a dechire les deux amis:
Bataille, dans un rare sentiment daccablement et dabandon, se trouve
seul a` enterrer le Colle`ge de Sociologie, ou` Laure les avait rassembles.16
The rhetorical economy of Bidents remark, which states the temporal
proximity of the death of Laure (7 November 1938) and the death of the
Colle`ge de Sociologie (4 July 1939), imputes a parallel structure to the
two events. Let us explore this hypothetical parallel structure.
It is in the Colle`ge de Sociologies funeral sermon, as it were (the 4 July
1939 text of Le Colle`ge de Sociologie), that Bataille rst elaborates his
notion of communication. This text is, as its title suggests, self-referential:
it constitutes a description of the community of brothers to the community
of brothers. In order to describe the nature of the bond that ties together
and tears apart the members of the sacred community, Bataille has
recourse to the image of lovers who se dechirent (in both the reexive and
reciprocal senses of the verb). As is clear from letters Laure wrote to
Bataille, the two lovers were involved in a communication of their own.
Whether or not Laures relationship with Bataille contributed to her
physical destruction is open to speculation. Her letters do offer evidence
that it contributed to her emotional disintegration (E, p. 237 63). This disintegration is apparent from her earliest letters to him, in 1934, but it
becomes increasingly obvious in her last letters. These nal letters bear
witness to the extent to which Laure was dechiree as a result of her relationship with Bataille. Her destitution is particularly poignant in her inability to
overcome her consuming jealousy of Batailles erotic relationships with
other women, which, apparently, he never ceased pursuing. All of this is

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MILO SWEEDLER

allegorized in Batailles nal address to the Colle`ge de Sociologie. I cite, for

example, from the closing paragraphs of this address:
Au-dela` de letre commun [que les amants] rencontrent dans leur etreinte, ils recherchent un
aneantissement sans mesure dans une depense violente ou` la possession dun nouvel objet,
dune nouvelle femme ou dun nouvel homme nest quun pretexte a` une depense plus
aneantissante encore. De la meme facon des hommes plus religieux que les autres cessent
davoir un souci etroit de la communaute pour laquelle sont faits les sacrices. Ils ne
vivent plus pour la communaute, ils ne vivent plus que pour le sacrice. (OC, ii, 372)

17
18

Les Cahiers de Chronos, ed. by Jean-Clarence Lambert (Paris, La Difference, 1991), p. 136.
Cf. Odile Felgine, Roger Caillois (n.p., Stock, 1994), p. 140.

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These lines read like a theoretical justication for Batailles erotic relationship with Laure and for similar relationships in which he was involved
during his relationship with her. They also read like a theoretical justication for the dechirement of the Colle`ge de Sociologie. For the true shaman
(which, Caillois remarks in an interview several decades after the demise
of the Colle`ge, Bataille sought to embody),17 the sacred community
(which was, in an initial stage, an end in itself) becomes a means to the
end of communication. Whereas, in the beginning, one gets off in order
to form a community, in a later stage, Bataille suggests, one forms a
community in order to get off. Bataille sacrices community be this
the community of brothers (the Colle`ge de Sociologie) or the community
after which that community is modelled (lovers) to communication.
While Bataille was explaining his theory of communication to his colleagues at the Colle`ge de Sociologie, he was enacting it with a group of
adepts in the woods. In contrast to the Colle`ge, it appears that Acephale
wanted to put its theory into practice. Very little is known about this
groups activities, its members having taken a vow of silence on the
subject. The pages of the journal Acephale may offer insight into the
societys interests and concerns, but their endeavours as a society remain,
in keeping with one of the groups fundamental rules, secret. Perhaps the
most scandalous and, for that reason, the most famous rumour of
Acephales activities is its project to perform a human sacrice. Two
names of possible sacricial victims are mentioned in this regard: Bataille
and Laure. Unable to nd a willing executioner (Caillois was apparently
nominated for the position but wanted to have nothing to do with his colleagues madness), the project was apparently dropped.18 Whether or not
this rumour has any foundation in fact, it does in fantasy. One thinks of
Batailles and Laures shared fascination for a photograph of a man being
hacked apart alive, referred to as the cent morceaux. If Bataille, in contemplating this image, identies alternately (or simultaneously) with the
torturer and the victim, Laure, for her part, is quite clear on which side
of the torture she places herself: that of the dismembered, not the

BATAILLE, BLANCHOT, AND LAURE

347

19

19
Batailles ongoing fascination with this image is evident in many of his writings. As far as Laures
response to this photograph is concerned, see the entry dated 22 January 1938 in Leiriss Journal:
C[olette] me parle des supplicie s chinois qui ont ete courageux et dont les gens mangent le foie pour
se donner du courage; cest un destin quelle envie (Paris, Gallimard, 1992, p. 320).
20
Georges Bataille: la mort a` luvre (Paris, Gallimard, 1992), p. 310.
21
La Communaute inavouable (Paris, Minuit, 1983), p. 35. Subsequent references to this text appear under
the abbreviation CI.

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dismemberer. Whether or not Laures gift of herself en cent morceaux

would have constituted a sociogonic event on the order of sacrice, the
gift that she makes, thanks to Bataille, en 200 morceaux, may well have.
The purpose of ritual sacrice is both to make an offering to the gods and
of particular importance to Bataille and company to cement the bond
among the members of the community who partake in the ritual. Or, rather,
its primary purpose is to create such a community: to bring together isolated
individuals in a shared experience that exceeds their individual spheres of
being. As Michel Surya unequivocally states, in the context of an analysis
of the relation between the death of Colette Peignot (whom I so name
here in order to distinguish her from the author who came to life in
1939) and Acephales obsession with sacrice, cette mort ne lia
personne.20 Indeed, the demise of both Acephale and the Colle`ge
followed closely on the heels of the death of Colette Peignot. The woman
and the two groups met their fates at roughly the same time. However, if
from the remains of Colette Peignot Laure arises, likewise, from the ashes
of Acephale and the Colle`ge de Sociologie another community arises. I
am not thinking here of the short-lived Colle`ge Socratique, which from
late 1941 to early 1943 gathered a group of friends (most notably, Bataille
and Blanchot) in discussion (especially, in the early days, in discussion of
Batailles LExperience interieure ): this group ne pouvait quechouer,
according to Blanchot; it netait projete que comme le dernier soubresaut
dune tentative communitaire, incapable de se realiser.21 I am thinking,
rather, of another sort of community: not one that gathers in forests
(Acephale), in the backrooms of a bookstore (the Colle`ge de Sociologie)
or in the apartments of friends (the Colle`ge Socratique), but one unied
in dispersion one whose isolated members are brought together in
their individual experiences of reading. I am thinking of the community
that Blanchot calls unavowable: un petit nombre damis, chacun singulier,
et sans rapport oblige des uns avec les autres, la composent en secret par la
lecture silencieuse (CI, 39). In tandem with the communication diurne
that takes place during the discussion of such texts as LExperience interieure,
exists the communication nocturne, as Blanchot calls it (celle qui ne savoue
pas), that takes place between the reader and the writer of such texts as
Batailles Madame Edwarda and his Le Petit (CI, 39); between the reader
and the writer of Madame Edwarda and Le Petit, Blanchot writes but

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MILO SWEEDLER

also, he notes a few sentences later, between the reader and the writer of
Le Sacre.
Blanchot afrms, in keeping with the sense of respect and the discretion
that characterizes much of his work especially his work on Bataille
that no commentary is adequate to the communication in which this
group of isolated readers engages:

This community is, as Blanchots term would have it, unavowable. At best,
he proposes, a password accompanies it. True to his sense of discretion,
Blanchot does not share the password with his own reader. Might this
password be none other than Laure?
First of all, let us remember, in this context, that, during the time of
which Blanchot writes (the early 1940s: just after the clandestine publication
of Le Sacre ), the real name of the author called Laure had to be kept secret
for legal reasons. The name of Laure would function, under these circumstances, as a shibboleth of sorts a password for a restricted community
of writers, artists, and intellectuals, many of whom received a copy of
the text in question. Secondly, let us note a potential proximity between
the unavowable Laure and Blanchots own description, cited above, of the
unavowable community. All would depend here on how one understood
the grapheme in question: as the nom feminin that designates a community
or the one that names a woman. Laure in French, like Laura in
English, slips between a proper noun and a common noun. The Petit
Robert dictionary denes laure (from the Greek laura ) as a Monaste`re
orthodoxe; the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary denes laura (also
derived from the Greek laura ) as an aggregation of cells, tenanted by
recluse monks under a superior, in Egypt and elsewhere. In Egypt and
elsewhere: there exist today in France, Philippe Bonnes informs me, at
least three lauras, in Montmorin, in Parisot and near Perthus.22 These
three monasteries, each of which gathers together a group of hermits
who live dispersed in huts around a central chapel, are, as Bonnes
points out, not so much communities, in the standard sense of the word, as
paradoxical gatherings of solitary individuals. Nothing would be further
removed from the group projects of Acephale and the Colle`ge de Sociologie
than such a gathering of solitary individuals. Nothing would be closer to it
than the unavowable community that, Blanchot suggests, was formed
22

Personal interview.

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Rien a` dire qui fut a` sa mesure. Pas de commentaire qui put laccompagner: tout au plus un
mot de passe (comme du reste les pages de Laure sur le Sacre publiees et transmises
clandestinement) qui, communiquees [sic ] a` chacun comme sil avait ete seul, ne
reconstitue pas la conjuration sacree qui avait ete revee jadis, mais, sans rompre
lisolement, lapprofondit en une solitude vecue en commun. (CI, 39)

BATAILLE, BLANCHOT, AND LAURE

349

23
24

The Unavowable Community (Barrytown, Station Hill, 1988), pp. 20 21.

Le corps glorieux de Laure, Change, 12 (n.d.), 201 7.

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among the readers of Le Sacre in the years following the death of Colette
Peignot.
Granted, Blanchot does not appear to give precedence to Laures text. On
the contrary, Madame Edwarda and Le Petit are his primary examples, and Le
Sacre is included as an afterthought, in parentheses and qualied by a
somewhat belittling comme du reste. The impossible syntax of
Blanchots sentence, however, would attribute to Laures text an importance that, lexically and semantically, it does not have: un mot de passe
(comme du reste les pages de Laure sur le Sacre publiees et transmises clandestinement) qui, communiquees [sic ] a` chacun comme sil avait ete seul, ne
reconstitue pas la conjuration sacree [. . .], mais [. . .] lapprofondit.
Semantically, the word communiquees refers to the mot de passe; syntactically, it can only refer to les pages de Laure. There is no other possible
feminine plural antecedent. Read according to the semantics of the
sentence, it is the password that deepens the sacred conjuration;
according to the syntax, it is the pages by Laure. Pierre Joris, translator
of Blanchots book, opts for the semantic reading (which, it must be
admitted, is much easier to reproduce in English), but the reader of the
original French text is left to wonder whether it makes more sense for a
password or a book to be communique to a group of readers.23 Both would
be plausible. It is as though, through the impossible conjunction of his
semantics and his syntax, Blanchot gave out the password despite himself.
Whether or not Blanchot intends to attribute the importance to Laures
text that his syntax would suggest, Le Sacre does contribute, he clearly
afrms, to the constitution of a community whose members are bonded
in separation by their shared, isolated experiences of reading. The book
by Laure lends itself to the foundation of a virtual laure. If, in an actual
laura such as the ones that exist in Montmorin, in Parisot, and near
Perthus the solitary monks are united in their Lord (HOM . Laure, the
Petit Robert species), here, in the virtual one described by Blanchot, they
would be united in separation around a text by Laure. In both laures, the
dispersed members gather in shared isolation around a /lor/. Like a group
of monks living in solitude but unied in God, the hypothetical laura
formed among the community of readers of Le Sacre would be unied in
Laures glorious body: the one resurrected, as Mitsou Ronats apt
phrase would have it, in language. 24
Colette Peignot is not reborn. Laure (the author) comes to life after
Colette Peignot (the woman) has died. The former lives at the expense of
the latter, and it is the editor, in his role as editor, who presides over the
death of one and the birth of the other. Bataille is, in this context, the

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MILO SWEEDLER

WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY, WATERLOO, CANADA

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midwife of Laure to the extent that he is the murderer of Colette Peignot.

He commits, on an editorial level, what the writings describe on a textual
level: sacrice. Chauffeur Allez nimporte ou`: a` la fournaise, a` la
voirie, au bordel, a` labattoir. Il faut que je sois brulee ecartelee couverte
dordures et que je sente tous les foutres, que je te repugne bien et
puis apre`s mendormir sur ton epaule (E, p. 256). The
writer asks to be taken to the slaughterhouse; her editor takes her there.
Bataille becomes, in a sense, at the moment Le Sacre comes to print under
the name of Laure, her sacricer. One might recall in a similar vein the
fragment in which Laure inventa detre battue, rouee de coups, detre
blessee, detre victime, detre bafouee, honnie, meprisee et puis de
nouveau adoree et sanctiee (E, p. 161). Laure asks to be beaten and humiliated, then sanctied. Perhaps Bataille carries out her wishes. Perhaps he
sancties her.
Laure remains among the most provocative and elusive gures of the
twentieth-century French avant-garde. Her premature death put an end to
a writing career that might or might not have otherwise been prolic,
might or might not have been brilliant. What we retain of her contribution
to cultural history is largely via her role in Batailles communitarian
projects, where she functions as a martyr to the community. The
religious connotations are hard to overlook. In contrast to most religious
communities, however (including such communities as Acephale and the
Colle`ge de Sociologie), the one formed over Laures dead body is a
virtual community: one founded on the members solitary experiences of
reading. Laure becomes the gurehead of an unavowable community, as
Blanchots locution would have it. In clandestinely distributing Le Sacre
to a restricted group of readers, Bataille transforms Colette Peignot into a
cult gure of the avant-garde and, in this gesture, reincarnates a sacred
community whose members are bonded in dechirement.