[Air-L] Patrick ffrench: 'Informe / Information: The Noise of Georges Bataille' | Aesthetics of Noise

[Daniel Nemenyi]

Dear all,

Please join the upcoming Aesthetics of Noise online seminar hosted by the College International de Philosophie, Paris and King’s College London: Department of Digital Humanities, Department of French and the Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts.

** Patrick ffrench: 'Informe / Information: The Noise of Georges Bataille' (Respondent: Giovanni Menegalle) **

** Thursday 26 Nov 2020, 17:00 GMT **

# Registration

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/aesthetics-of-noise-patrick-ffrench-tickets-125721874511

# Abstract

Georges Bataille’s notion of the informe, usually translated as ‘formlessness’, proposes a principle of absolute improbability which radically ungrounds and destabilises normative conceptions of development and evolution, particularly as concerns the form of the human body. In his brief entry under the title ‘informe’ in the ‘Critical Dictionary’ of the heterodox periodical Documents, Bataille writes that ‘for academics to be happy, the universe has to take shape’ and that ‘all of philosophy has no other purpose; it is a matter of giving a frock-coat to what is, a mathematical frock-coat’. If one might conceive of the post-war elaboration of ‘information theory’, and its pervasive influence on French structuralism, as just such a frock-coat, then Bataille’s hypothesis that ‘the universe is only formless and resembles nothing’ appears as a performative noise, which nevertheless generates its own aesthetics.

# Background Reading

- Georges Bataille’s ‘definition’ of informe.
  https://aphelis.net/georges-bataille-linforme-formless-1929/
- Roland Barthes, ‘Les Sorties du texte’ in Le Bruissement de la langue: Essais critiques 4 (Paris: Seuil, 1984) / ‘The Outcomes of the Text’ in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (Berkely and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989)
- Patrick ffrench, ‘Documents in the 1970s: Bataille, Barthes and “Le gros orteil”‘, in Papers or Surrealism 7 (2007)
  https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/projects/the-ahrb-centre-for-studies-of-surrealism-and-its-legacies-project(9182d222-4cfe-489b-a944-4998933b322c).html/

# Biogs

Patrick ffrench is Professor of French and Vice Dean (Research) at King’s College.

Giovanni Menegalle is British Academy Research Fellow, King’s College London.

# About Aesthetics of Noise

A collaboration of the College International de Philosophie, Paris and King’s College London: Department of Digital Humanities, Department of French and the Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts. Organisers: Cécile Malaspina, directeur de programme, Collège International de College International de Philosophie, Paris; Mark Coté, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, Director MA Big Data, Culture and Society; Patrick ffrench, Professor of French and Vice Dean (Research) at King's College; Sacha Golob, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Director of the Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts.

# Further information

Contact cecile.malaspina at kcl.ac.uk
https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/ddh/events/aesthetics-of-noise/