Negative Ecstasies discusses the contribution and significance of the work of Georges Bataille to the contemporary study of religion and theology, collecting essays that examine specific case studies and make connections to other significant scholars in the field.

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Sacred with a Vengeance Jeremy Biles and Kent L. Brintnall Movements of Luxurious Exuberance: Georges Bataille and Fat Politics Lynne Gerber Sovereignty and Cruelty: Self-Affirmation, Self-Dissolution, and the Bataillean Subject Stephen S. Bush Erotic Ruination: Embracing the "savage spirituality" of Barebacking Kent L. Brintnall Desire, Blood and Power: Georges Bataille and the Study of Hindu Tantra in Northeast India Hugh B. Urban The Religion of Football: Sacrifice, Festival and Sovereignty at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa David Chidester Violent Silence: Noise and Bataille's "Method of Meditation" Paul Hegarty Georges Bataille and the Religion of Capitalism Jean-Joseph Goux Sacrifice as Ethics: The Strange Religiosity of Neoliberalism Shannon Winnubst Bataille's Contestation of Interpretive Anthropology and the Sociology of Religion Alphonso Lingis The Traumatic Secret: Bataille and the Comparative Erotics of Mystical Literature Jeffrey J. Kripal Foucault's Sacred Sociology Mark D. Jordan Bataille and Kristeva on Religion Zeynep Direk Bataille, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Death of God Allan Stoekl Does the Acephale Dream of Headless Sheep? Jeremy Biles Afterword Amy Hollywood Notes Works Cited List of Contributors Index

This collection makes a significant and timely contribution to the still emergent scholarship on Georges Bataille. The authors have not given in to the temptation to tame the texts, but neither is this an uncritical celebration; rather, the consistently thoughtful essays take up Bataille’s work seriously and carefully in a range of new approaches and ideas.---—Karmen MacKendrick, Le Moyne College