Die Parodie des Mythos bei Bataille auf der Grundlage von Nietzsches Metaphorik

Abstract Bataille’s Parody of the Myth Based on Nietzsche’s Metaphorics. This study examines the significance of the statement: “The absence of myth is also a myth,” formulated by Georges Bataille for the 1947 Surrealist exhibition, “A New Myth,” in light of the metaphorical language of Nietzsche. At the center of the analysis is the thesis that in the postwar period Bataille moves away from the politically revolutionary strategy of re-mythologization which marked his work and biography throughout the 1930s and develops an aesthetically paradoxical position in which myth no longer functions as an affirmative collective narrative, but rather as a reflective figure within an enlightened and self-consciously fictional discourse. Based on a detailed analysis of The Sleepwalker’s Song from Thus Spoke Zarathustra as well as selected fragments from Nietzsche’s unpublished writings, the article shows how Bataille adopts Nietzsche’s metaphorical logic of paradox, the concept of “truthful appearance,” and the play with the absence to articulate an aesthetical critique of mythical ideology in modernity. In doing so, the text outlines a genealogy of an aesthetic theory of nihilism, in which myth and parody stand in a productive tension.