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The Gift of the Open Hand: Le Corbusier Reading Georges Bataille's "La Part Maudite"Author(s): Nadir LahijiSource: Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 50, No. 1 (Sep., 1996), pp. 50-67Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools ofArchitecture, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1425288Accessed: 04/05/2010 01:00

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The Gift of the Open Hand:Le CorbusierReadingGeorgesBataille'sLa PartMaudite

NADIRLAHIJI,Georgia Institute of Technology

GeorgesBataille1897-1962)wasa contemporaryf LeCorbusier1887-1965)andone of the most mportanthinkers f thetwentiethentury.HegaveLe Corbusier copyof his mostcelebratedbook,LaPartMauditeTheaccursed hare)and nscribedt witha warmdedication.At he timehe re-ceived hisgift,Le Corbusier as about o embark n theplanningfChandigarhnIndia.Onhisway o India,Le Corbusieread he book;heread tautobiographically,he samewayhe hadreadhiscopyof Homer'sThe liad nd Friedrich ietzsche'sThusSpakeZarathustra.e Corbusier'sreading f LaPartMaudites a significantvent n his late intellectualife.Thisessay reflectsonthe nature f Le Corbusier'seading. t races the cir-cumstances f thefriendshipetween hesetwoverydifferenthinkers ndspeculateson theoriginof theiraffinities nd he confluence f the ideasthatbroughthem ogether. argue hat henotions f thegiftandpotlatchin LaPartMaudite,oming o BatailleromMarcelMauss, re at theoriginof the ideaof the OpenHand n India.

SOMETIMEBETWEEN 949 AND 1953, GEORGESBATAILLEGAVELECorbusiera copy of his most celebratedbook, La PartMaudite, essaid'economiegeneral, la consumation(The AccursedShare).'The titlepage bears this inscription in Bataille's hand: "'a Monsieur LeCorbusier, n timoignaged'admirationet de sympathie." "To Mr. LeCorbusier, a token of my admiration and sympathy.")2On the lastpage of this copy, Le Corbusier wrote "19 Nov. 1953," which indi-cates the date he finished readingthe book. Le Corbusiermarked thetext, underlined passages, and wrote commentaries on its twoflyleaves. In spring 1988, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Parisexhibited Le Corbusier's copy of La Part Maudite for the first time.To my knowledge, Le Corbusier never read Marcel Mauss' monu-mental work, The Gift,3but here is a gift he received from GeorgesBataille,who at the instigation of Alfred Metraux became acquaintedwith the theory of potlatch outlined by Mauss in Essai sur le don,forme archaique de l'dchange,which Mauss published in 1925.4Bataille'sargument in La PartMaudite owes a debt to Mauss's work.Le Corbusier was fascinated by the chapter "Ledon de rivalite(le "potlatch )"(The gift of rivalry:"Potlatch")in La Part Maudite,where Bataille discussed the idea of the gift. In his overview ofBataille's text, written on the flyleaf, Le Corbusier made these re-marks about the section "Theorie du potlatch'. l'acquisition du'rang"' Theory of "potlatch":The acquisition of rank), with refer-ence to page 92 of his copy of La Part Maudite:

Les 5 volumes [des] oeuvres complktes [de] Corbu offrent,proposent et imposent par adhesion enthousiaste les iddes[de] Corbu. D'un c6td Corbu est assume par les salauds, de

l'autre il est roi. La pratique disint&ress'e de la peinture estun inlassable sacrifice, un don du temps, de patience,d'amour, sans aucune contrepartie d'argent (sauf lesmodernes marchands). C'est semera tout vent pour inconnus.Un jour avant ou apres la mort, on nous dira merci. C'esttrop tard pour tant de traversesv&cues.Mais qu'importe; cequi importeest la clef du bonheur.5 [Brackets indicate addi-tions to the handwritten text for clarity.-Ed.]

Phillip Duboy cites this passage in his article for Le Corbusier,UneEncylopedie.Duboy writes that Le Corbusier penned this commen-taryon a flight to the new capital of Punjab, Chandigarh.6He sug-gests that "thisbrief reflection"by Le Corbusier is the source for theOpen Hand at Chandigarh. Duboy suggests that these remarkssig-nify the definition of Le Corbusier as a modern hero, the true sub-ject of modernity that owes its definition to Walter Benjamin. Onthe basis of Le Corbusier's reading of Bataille, Duboy suggests thatone might be tempted to define the modern heroes with whatJacques Lacan would characterize as "qu'illustrent des exploitsdirisoires dans une situation d'dgarement" "which illustrates thelaughable achievements in a state of bewilderment").7 Whateverdefinition of the modern hero we might employ, we would do wellto remember what Walter Benjamin, in his monumental Passagen-werk,wrote about the essence of modernity: "To embrace Bretonand Le Corbusier-that would be to draw the spirit of contempo-

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2. Thehalf itlepageof LeCorbusier'sopyof GeorgeBataille's aPartMauditeearingGeorgeBataille'snscriptionf dedication.Courtesy f FoundationeCorbusier,aris.JournalofArchitectural ducation, p. 50-67? 1996ACSA,Inc.

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raryFrance like a bow which strikes with knowledge to the heart ofthe present."8 If we replace Breton with the dissident surrealistGeorges Bataille,we have the dialectical opposites of modernity: themodernity of discipline versus the modernity of desire.9In his mo-dernity of discipline, Le Corbusier made the sun and the body standon their vertical axes, whereas Georges Bataille, the philosopher oftransgression, spent his life subverting this vertical axis, collapsingit into horizontality. Yet, why should Bataille, in an act of verbalpotlatch and expenditure of words, give a gift "d'admirationet desympathie" o Le Corbusier?To which Le Corbusier does Batailleissue this gift: the architect, the painter, the planner, the fellow trav-eler, or the political comrade?I shall come back to this later in thisessay. Let me state here that an unbridgeable abyss would seem toseparate Le Corbusier and Georges Bataille; they are two differentthinkers. Yet I suggest that we should take "Bataille with LeCorbusier" as twentieth-century contemporaries, in the sense thatJacques Lacan takes "Kant with Sade."10Bataille reservedenough admiration for Le Corbusier to givehim a copy of his La PartMauditeas a gift. Le Corbusierwas the firstarchitectto readGeorges Bataille's most importantwork. In fact, LeCorbusier was one of the veryfew intellectuals who read Bataille's LaPartMauditein its firstprinting, which sold only fifty copies and didnot find a wider audience at the time of its publication." In this re-spect, one might admit Le Corbusierinto the circle of Bataille'sasso-ciates: Michel Leiris, Andre Masson, Antoine Artaud, MauriceBlanchot, and JacquesLacan,to name only a few. One can speculatethat in his readingof Bataille's La PartMaudite, Le Corbusier founda confirmation of his reading of Friedrich Nietzsche's ThusSpakeZarathustra ome fifty yearsearlier:He perceivedhimself in strife asa tragichero, whose life was spent as a sacrificial"gift"to humanity.If comparedwith his readingof Nietzsche, Le Corbusier'sreadingofBataillewhen he was in his earlysixties may seem to be an incidentalevent in his later life and works; perhaps one can call this readingposthumous. However, following Duboy, I want to argue that thesources behind the idea of the Open Hand might be found in LeCorbusier'sreadingof Bataille.Moreover, a readingof Bataille's deaof depense ("expenditure")might shed furtherlight on our interpre-tation of Le Corbusier's later work. I suggest that La Part Mauditestrongly influenced Le Corbusier's Plan of Chandigarh.Particularly,I arguethat besides the Nietzschean connection in the main ouverte,which has aptly been brought up by Manfredo Tafuri, one shouldthink of the Open Hand in the light of Bataille'snotion of sacrifice.12Le Corbusier'sreading of Georges Bataille'swork was an "autobio-graphical"one, not unlike his readingof a new translationof Homer'sThe Iliad some yearslater,which he attempted to illustrate.13

IHow did Bataille know Le Corbusier? Where did his "sympathyand admiration" for Le Corbusier lie?Why did Le Corbusier takean interest in ideas exercisedby Bataille in La Part Maudite?Untilmore archival documents surface, any definitive answer to thesequestions must be postponed. Nevertheless, we can speculate on aconvergence of ideas that brought these two thinkers together in thecomplex yearsof the thirties in France.'4Part of the answer must besought in the similarities between Le Corbusier'sand Bataille'spoli-tics during the thirties.'5One could presume that Bataille came toknow Le Corbusier through the magazine L'EspritNouveau, andlater through the journal Minotaure,which was founded in 1933 byGeorges Bataille and Andre Masson, dissident surrealistswho gath-ered together other artists who became disillusioned with AndreBreton. Le Corbusier contributed the article "Louis Soutter,L'inconnue de la soixantaine" to Minotaure 9 in 1936.

Bataille's inscription in Le Corbusier's copy of La PartMaudite bears no date, so it is difficult to determine exactly whenBataille gave his book to Le Corbusier, but we can speculate withsome certainty that Le Corbusier dealt with the book around andduring the time that he began to get involved in the Chandigarhproject in India. Albert Mayer and Matthew Nowicki had alreadyestablished a master plan and sketches of the Capitol area ofChandigarh around 1950. In late 1950, Le Corbusier took over thejob after the sudden death of Nowicki while flying over Egypt. LeCorbusier flew to India in February 1951.16 According to Duboy,Le Corbusier wrote his overview of Bataille's work on this flight.In the thirties, Le Corbusier was preoccupied with the idea ofplanisme, which explains his interest in the section "The MarshallPlan" in the last part of La Part Maudite.17AsAllan Stoekl informsus, Bataille'splaniste tendency come to the surface after the war inLa Part Maudite.'8At the beginning of the fifties, Le Corbusier re-alized in the Chandigarh plan the ideas of planning that he had putforward in the thirties, but clearly the conception of planning inChandigarh is radicallydifferent from that of planning in the thir-ties. To demonstrate this, we might turn to two chapters in the firstvolume of La Part Maudite. "The Gift of Rivalry: 'Potlatch"' and"The Marshall Plan."

Le Corbusier paid special attention to these chapters,heavilymarking paragraphs and making commentaries.19 Bataille'sthoughts on potlatch and the Marshall Plan enabled Le Corbusierto see his role in the Chandigarh plan. The nature of this plan wasdifferent from that of Ville Radieuse n its fundamental philosophi-cal premises and in its architectural concept. Le Corbusier's read-

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ing of the idea of potlatch in La Part Maudite reinforced his philo-sophical conviction about his gigantic, humanistic mission in theChandigarh project: a plan for the newly born nation of India inneed of its own singular transition to a modern state.20 Let us notforget that Le Corbusier conceived of the plan for Chandigarh inthe aftermath of his frustratedattempts at urban planning for themajor cities in the West, which forever remained unrealized.In the thirties, Le Corbusier was intensely, aggressively,andinternationally involved in putting forward his urbanistic ideas. Inthe center of all of these projects was a fundamental ideology ofcentral economic planning with authoritarian political control. Inaddition to his ongoing design and projects, his major activitiesduring this period included publishing Pricision sur un Atatprdsentde l'architectureet de l'urbanisme n 1930; launching a number ofstudies of town planning for cities, including Algiers (Plan Obus,A, B, C, D, E), Paris, Barcelona, and Stockholm; proposing theVille Radieuse n 1933; becoming an active member of the Interna-tional Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM); paying his lastvisit to the Soviet Union in 1930; publishing his Quand lescathddralesdtaientblanches n 1937; and organizing his exhibitionsin the United States and Europe.2'The term planisme, or "technocratism," refers to the mainline of debate in France during the thirties. The figures debatingthis notion contributed to the review Plans, a short-lived journalfounded by Philip Lamour in 1931 to which two contemporariesof Bataille, Robert Aron and Arnold Dandieu, contributed. Theywere connected to the OrdreNouveau, and their political positionshad much in common with what Batailleexpounded in his brilliantand influential 1933 essay, "The Notion of Expenditure."22Bataillewrote this essay for the journal La Critique Sociale at the age ofthirty-five. He was fifty-two when he published La Part Maudite,which he described in the preface as the fruit of eighteen years ofwork. Both texts proceed from his discovery of Marcel Mauss' TheGift around the end of the twenties.23Le Corbusier was on the editorial board of Plansin 1931 and1932. He regularly participated and actively contributed to thisjournal.24 He wrote and published eighteen articles on urbanismbetween January 1931 and July 1932, many of which he later col-lected and reprinted in section 4 of La Ville Radieuse.25The ideasexpounded by Arnaud Dandieu, the leader of Ordre Nouveau anda librarian,like Bataille at the Biblioteque National in Paris, influ-enced Bataille.26 Dandieu published La RdvolutionNicessaire n col-laboration with Robert Aron in late 1933, the same year thatBataille published "The Psychological Structure of Fascism" in LaCritiqueSociale.Dandieu was also a contributor to Bataille'sreview

Documents.27During 1933, Bataille had episodic relationswithOrdreNouveau.He anonymously ollaboratedwith Dandieu andAron on the chapter"Echangeset Credits" of their RevolutionNicessaire.28he thirties n Francewere times of complexpoliticalmovementsand debateson syndicalism, ommunism,American-ism, and fascism. The Ordre Nouveau movement, headed byDandieu, oinedwith theparticipantsf Plans n fall1931to estab-lisha"genuineEuropeanederation."t ispossible hatthrough hiscollaboration,LeCorbusierand Dandieu came to know of eachother's deas;and that throughDandieu and Plans,Bataillecouldhavecometo know LeCorbusier.n anycase,we can conclude hatBataille's dmiration orLeCorbusiern 1949 is rooted n thispe-riod,when Le Corbusier'sdeas on urbanism ndplanningmighthave found a sympathetic ar in Bataille.Bataille'splanismeaterbearssimilarities to Le Corbusier's.This helps explain why LeCorbusierook a special nterest n LaPartMaudite'sastchapteron the MarshallPlan. The argument dvancedby Batailleand thequestionhe confrontedwereof the same natureas the ones thatDandieu and Arondealtwith between1931 and 1933.29In La PartMaudite,Batailleattempts o subvert he existingpoliticaleconomy,which wasgrounded n rationality nd utility,andreplacetwitha "generalconomy.'"30nthisgeneral conomy,unproductive xpenditure-sacrifice,luxury,war,games,monu-ments-determines social ife. As onecommentator otes,this no-tion of generaleconomy"isnot the store and the workshop, hebankand thefactory,whichhold thekeyfromwhichtheprinciplesof the economycanbededuced.In the blood thatspurts rom theopenchest of victimssacrificedo the sun in anAztecritual, n thesumptuousand ruinous eastsoffered o the courtiersof Versaillesby the monarch of divine right, in all these mad dissipations sfound a secret that our restricted conomics has coveredup andcaused o be forgotten."" n the thesisof thegeneral conomy,so-cialwealth s notautilitarianision,theparsimonious iewpointofan asceticbourgeoisie,whichspends onlywhen it expectsreturn.Rather, ocietyitself is formed n "the modeof expendituref theexcess, heconsumptionof the superfluous,his accursedhare ..The dominantprosaicvisionmaybeonlya recently ormedpreju-dicecontemporaneous ith thereignof thebourgeoisie, sherednbytheReformation, ndunable o account or therealandineluc-tablemovementof wealth n asociety,a movement hatsovereigntyengageshumanbeings: heirrelationshipo the sacredthroughre-ligion,mysticism,art,eroticism.'"32omeof the themes n LaPartMauditehadalreadybeenanticipatedn "TheNotion of Expendi-ture": Humanactivitys notentirely educible o processes f pro-ductionandconservation, ndconsumptionmustbe divided nto

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3. Le Corbusierhotomontagef theOpenHandn heFosse'sde laConsiddration.eCorbusier,Oeuvreomplite,1957-65 (Zurich:ditions 'Architecture,965)SPADEM.

two distinct parts."The first part, Bataille writes, is represented bythe minimum productive activity necessary for the conservation oflife in a given society; the second part is represented by "so-calledunproductive expenditure: luxury, mourning, war, cults, the con-struction of sumptuary monuments, games, spectacles, arts, per-verse sexual activity (i.e., deflected from genital finality)-all theserepresentactivities which, at least in primitive circumstances, haveno end beyond themselves.""33In part 2 of La Part Maudite, in the chapter "Sacrifice orConsumption," Le Corbusier marked and underlined the followingpassage:

Cette consumation inutile est ce qui m'agree,aussit6t levd lesouci du lendemain. Et si je consume ainsi sans mesure, jerevele a mes semblable ce que je suis intimement: laconsumation est la voie par oi communiquent des etress~'pares.Tout transparait, tout est ouvert et tout est infini,entre ceux qui consument intensement. Mais rien ne comptedes lors, la violence se libere et elle se dichaine sans limites,dans la mesure oihla chaleur s'accroit.34In the left margin of this passage, Le Corbusier wrote theword fusion, which I take to be a reference to the section "Fusion"in "The Poem of the Right Angle." In "The MarshallPlan,"Bataillereturns to an affirmation of certain planisme that during the thir-ties had certain associations with forms of authoritarianism,

protofascism, and Marxism.35Planisme was the very essence of acentrally organized society with a political leader. During theAciphale period in the thirties, Bataille was critical of planisme. As

Stoekl observes, Aciphale, a 1936 drawing by Andre Masson, "is afigure that bears death, but at the same time 'he' is a perfectly co-herent and traditional 'sacredfigure' around which a society, albeitone of conspirators,can be established. ... While the head is clearlymissing, the stars (nipples), bowels and death's head (genital) onlygo to create another face, another 'figure humaine.' Further, thedeath's head itself has a miniature face. ... The 'acephale,' in otherwords, has lost a head, a principle of organization and order, onlyto mutate and develop another, more hypnotic, doubled and dou-bling (replicating) face."36 n Le Corbusier's idea of VilleRadieuse,there was no "acephalic head" as (dis)organizing principle, butrather it was the very "head" at the top of a hierarchy that was theorganizing principle. This plan was compatible with Dandieu andAron's authoritarianism and the imperative of a center.In the chapter "Soviet Industrialization,"in La Part Maudite,Bataille wrote, "Rien n'est ferme . qui

reconnait simplement lesconditions matirielles de la pensee. Et c'est de toutes parts et detoutes fagons que le monde invite l'homme a e changer. Sans doutel'homme de ce cbte-ci n'est pas necessairment appelk a suivre lesvoies imperieuses de I'URSS. Dans la plus grande mesure il se con-sume aujourd'hui dans la stdrilit"d'un anticommunisme effray6.Mais s'il a ses problkmes propres . resoudre, il a mieux" faire qu'Imaudire aveuglkment, qu'. crier une detresse que commandent sescontradictions multiplides. Qu'il s'efforce de comprende ou mieux

qu'il admire la cruelle energie de ceux qui d6foncerent le sol russe,il seraplus proche des taches qui l'attendent. Car c'estde toutespartset de toutesfafons qu 'un monde en mouvement veut htrechangd.'"37Le Corbusier circled this paragraph and wrote below it,"Depuis 35 anneesjefais des Plans ... car c'est a pricisiment, monr6leet mon devoir"("For 35 years I have designed ... because thisis precisely my role and my duty"). Later, I will come back to thesignificance of this remark.Bataillebegins "TheMarshallPlan"by saying, "Outside of theSoviet world, there is nothing that has the value of an ascendantmovement, nothing advances with any vigor. There persistsa pow-erless dissonance of moans, of things alreadyheard, of bold testi-mony to resolute incomprehension. This disorder is more favorableno doubt to the birth of an authentic self-conciousnesshan is its op-posite, and one might even saythat without this powerlessness-andwithout the tension that is maintained by communism's aggressive-ness-consciousness would not be free,would not be alert."38Thispassage was also underlined by Le Corbusier.) The Marshall Planresponded to the threat of Soviet hegemony in an impoverishedEu-rope. It was a plan by which the United States could peacefullyen-ter into competition with the Soviets. After all, "aplan must be

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evolved through which a military confrontation is avoided."39TheMarshallPlan, accordingto Bataille,"is the solution to the problem.It is the only way to transferto Europe the products without whichthe world's fever would rise."40This passagewas also underlined byLe Corbusier.)The MarshallPlan was different from the planismeofDandieu and Aron and from the VilleRadieuse.The end of this planis a potlatch, a "spending without return"alreadyput forward byBataille in "The Notion of Expenditure." As opposed to socialiststate planning, controlled by an authoritarian"head,"the MarshallPlan was "headless" planning. Truman, after Roosevelt, was the"acephalichead." Stoekl points out that this is "'planningwithout ahead' in another sense as well: the 'end' of planning is planlessness.... Just as the most elaborately conceived planning is inseparablefrom potlatch, so too the most integrated, nonindividuated con-sciousness (the consciousness that arises at the end of history,through an impossible 'awareness' of the [non] 'objective' of theMarshall Plan) is indissociable from the nothingness it 'knows.' Atthis point one can see how Bataille'seconomic projectfolds back intothe secularmystical experience of the Sommeatheologique.'"4'Le Corbusier's careful reading of this chapter in marking ev-ery page clearly indicates his affirmation of Bataille's thesis, but itis more than an affirmation. I would arguethat Le Corbusier foundhis "headless"Truman in the "acephalichead" of Nehru.At Chandigarh, Le Corbusier transcends the planisme of thethirties and the authoritarianismof VilleRadieuse.The Chandigarhplan is clearly a plan without a head and free of a hierarchical dis-tribution. It is a potlatch of an "excessive"expenditure of space; itsstructureis a disarticulatedand disjunctive (de)composition. In thisplan, Le Corbusier frees himself from the anthropomorphic bodyof Ville Radieuse and authoritarian control and achieves a body(dis)organizationakin to Andre Masson'sAcephale.In regardingtheChandigarh plan, it would be instructive to read Bataille's article"Architecture,"published in Documents n 1929. This was the firstarticle that Bataille published in Documents'dictionary, which wasdevoted to architecture.The first paragraphstates:

Architecture is the expression of the true nature of societies,as physiognomy is the expression of the nature of individu-als. However, this comparison is applicable, above all, to thephysiognomy of officials (prelates, magistrates, admirals). Infact, only society's ideal nature-that of authoritative com-mand and prohibition-expresses itself in actual architecturalconstructions. Thus the great monuments rise up like dams,opposing a logic of majesty and authority to all unquiet ele-ments; it is in the form of cathedralsand palaces that church

and state speak to and impose silence upon the crowds. In-deed, monuments obviously inspire good social behavior andoften even genuine fear.The fall of the Bastille is symbolic ofthis state of things. This mass movement is difficult to explainotherwise than by popular hostility towards monumentswhich are their veritable masters.42According to Bataille, architecturestarts as the soul of the so-

ciety, a neutral image that laterwill intervene in the very social or-der that it symbolizes. In this reversal, to follow Hollier'scomments, the relationship between architecture and the societythat it expresses is analogically similar to the relationship betweenInca civilization and its imperialisticsystem of state control, also thepre-Colombian Mexicans, or Aztecs, and their sacrificesatop pyra-mids, which Bataille discussed in "Sacrificesand Wars of the Az-tecs,4" in La Part Maudite. Bataille wrote that all importantundertakings of the Aztecs were useless: "Their science of architec-ture enabled them to construct pyramids on top of which they im-molated human beings.""44e continues, "The priests killed theirvictims on top of the pyramids. They would stretch them over astone altar and strikethem in the chest with an obsidian knife. Theywould tear out the still-beating heart and raise it thus to the sun.Most of the victims were prisoners of war, which justified the ideaof warsas necessaryto the life of the sun: Wars meant consumption,not conquest, and the Mexicans thought that if they ceased the sunwould cease to give life.""'Le Corbusier'sChandigarh plan projects an image of expen-diture and distribution of wealth and space for a new India by pre-cisely suspending and disrupting the physiognomy of a hierarchicalbody, which is based not on consumption, but ratheron utility andproduction, such as Le Corbusiersymbolized in Ville Radieuse.Theexpenditureof space in Chandigarhknows no boundry; it is a sacri-ficial giving of space, returningto the sun its gift of accursedenergy.Manfredo Tafuri, the only historian who has drawn onBataille's writing to interpret Le Corbusier's late work, aptly cap-tured the spirit of the Chandigarh plan. He wrote, "Nothing in factjoins together the gigantic volume of the Secretariat, he Parliament,and the High Court of Justice:nothing-neither roads,perspectivalallusions, nor formal triangulations-helps the eye to situate itselfwith respect to these three 'characters,'which weave among them-selves a discussion from which the human ear is able to gather onlyweak and distorted echoes. Indeed, the modeling of the terrain,thedislocation of level, the mirrorsof water, especially the Pool of Re-flection, are all there to accentuate discontinuities and ruptures."46Tafuri also points out, "Interruptions, slippings, and distortions

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indeed pervade the language of the later Le Corbusier: atChandigarh hey areessential o the dramatization f the forms.The threegreat desiring bjects' eek to shatter heirownsolitude:the Secretariatthrough ts inclinedrampand the brokenmeshesofits facadegradations;he Parliamentthrough he distortionof thegeometricsolids that dominateit like hermetictotems;the highCourt ofJustice hrough he bendingof the brise-soleil ndthegi-antentrancestairway.Buttheinterchangeakesplaceonlyata dis-tance: ensioninforms hisdialogueamongsymbols hat have ostthe codesthatoncegavethemthe valueof names.""47The economy of this plan is analogous to the "solareconomy" n squanderingts energy or totaldipense. n thisplan,the cultureof Schure's"greatnitiates" omesto meet the secularmysticismof Bataille'sSommeathdologique.hisvisionof potlatchculminatesn the mainouverte. hiswill leadus to thesignificanceof the ideaof the gift.With the ideaof the gift let us return o thenotion of an "autobiographicaleading" f Bataille'sbook by LeCorbusier hatI suggestedat the beginningof thisessay.

IIIn La PartMaudite,Bataillediscussedhe ideaof thegiftin achap-tertitled "TheGiftof Rivalry:Potlatch."' e Corbusiermadesomecommentaries ndremarks n thischapter. mentionedearlierLeCorbusier'soverview of Bataille's ext written on the flyleaf,towhich I want to return here. Le Corbusierwrote, "Lapratiquedisintiressdeelapeinture stun inlassablesacrifice, ndondutempsdepatience,d'amour,ansaucunecontrepartie'argent.""Theun-selfishpracticeof painting s anunflagging acrifice, giftof time,patience,andlove,expectingno material eward.")n thisremark,LeCorbusierdrawsa parallelbetweenBataille'snotion of dipenseand the identityof his own work.ThroughBataille'swriting,hesees the truth n hispaintingsasa token of thesacrifice f himself.He appropriates ataille'sargumentas his own and sees himself nits mirror.WhenLe Corbusierwrites"agiftof timeandpatience.. with no material eward," time" nd"patience" qual he"gift"itself.Before reflect urther,et us seehowthe ideaof thegiften-teredBataille'sthinking.In "TheNotion of Expenditure," ataillequotedMarcelMauss:"Theideal would be to giveapotlatchandnot have it returned."48 is readingof Mauss' TheGiftenabledBataille o formulatehis notion of the generaleconomy,as he ad-mits in TheAccursedhare. n TheGift,Mausswrote,"Ifone givesthingsand returns hem, it is becauseone is givingand returningrespect'-we stillsay'courtesies.'Yet, it is alsoby givingthatone

is giving oneself and if one gives oneself it is because one 'owes' one-self-one's person and one's goods-to others.""9This remarkwould have appealed to Le Corbusier had he read it.Mauss explored the institution of potlatch in the PacificNorthwest in his elaboration of the theory of gift in archaicsociet-ies. He wrote, "Theobligation togive is the essenceofthe potlatch."50The word potlatchcomes from Nootka Indian potatshor patlatsh asa noun and a verb meaning "gift"and "giving."Among some NorthAmerican Indians of the Pacific Coast, the word means "a gift, apresent"and "a tribal feast at which presentsaregiven and received,given by an aspirant to chiefship." It also means "an extravagantgiving away or throwing away of possessions to enhance one's pres-tige or establish one's position."51 We have to go to Mauss for thesociological and ethnographical signification of the idea ofpotlatch.In the introduction to The Gift, he writes:

Within these two tribes of the American Northwest andthroughout this region there appearswhat is certainly a typeof these "total services,"rare but highly developed. We pro-pose to call this form the "potlatch,"as moreover, do Ameri-can authors using the Chinook term, which become part ofthe everyday anguageof Whites and Indians from Vancouverto Alaska. The word potlatch essentially means "to feed," to"consume." ... Yet what is noteworthy about these tribes isthe principle of rivalryand hostility that prevails in all thesepractices. They go as faras to fight and kill chiefs and nobles.Moreover, they even go as far as the purely sumptuary de-struction of wealth that has been accumulated in order tooutdo the rival chief as well as his associates (normally agrandfather, father-in-law, or son-in-law). There is total ser-vice in the sense that it is indeed the whole clan that contractson behalf of all, for all that it possessesand for all that it does,through the person of its chief. But this act of "service"on thepart of the chief takes on an extremelymarkedagonistic char-acter. It is essentiallyusurious and sumptuary. It is a strugglebetween nobles to establish a hierarchyamongst themselvesfrom which their clan will benefit at a later date. We proposeto reserve the term potlatch for this kind of institution that,with less riskand more accuracy,but also at a greaterlength,we might call: total serviceofan agonistictype.52Further, Mauss gives an exact definition for potlatch: "The

obligation to give is the essenceof thepotlatch.""5 he etymologicalroot for the word gift is more complex. Mauss, in a footnote, goesinto the meanings of that word in detail. The word gift, he says "is

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the translation of the Latin dosis,itself a transcription of the Greek'dose, dose of poison."'54He goes on, "This etymology presumesthat High and Low German dialectics would have preserved alearned name for a thing in common use .... One would need toexplain the choice of the word gift for this translation, as well as theconverse linguistic taboo that has hung over the meaning of gift forthis word in certain Germanic languages. Finally, the Latin, andabove all the Greek use of the word dosis,with the meaning of poi-son, proves that, with the Ancients, too, there was an association ofideas and moral rulesof the kind that we aredescribing.""Further-more, Mauss says, "We have compared the uncertain meaning ofgiflwith that of the Latin word venenum. .. To this must be addedthe comparison . . . of venia, venenum, from vanati (Sanskrit, 'togive pleasure'), and gewinnuen, 'to win."'56Remarkably, this de-scription of the uncertain meaning of the word gift bringsit into theassociation with another equally ambiguous Greek word,pharmakon.57This ambiguity in the meaning of gift is the subjectof Jacques Derrida's remarkableessays in Given Time: 1. Counter-feit Money.58 n this work, Derrida has taken up the question of theeconomic reasoning in the idea of gift, or present, and its relation-ship to the philosophical category of time in Marcel Mauss' TheGift. In his analysis, Derrida remarks on the "madness"of the giv-ing without restitution in the face of which the economic reason-ing of the gift falters. The passagein support of Derrida's reflectionon the "madness"of gift in Mauss reads as follow:

No less important in the transactionof the Indians is the roleplayed by honor. Nowhere is the individual prestigeof a chiefand that of his clan so closely linked to what is spent and tothe meticulous repaymentwith interestof gifts that have beenaccepted, so as to transform those who have obligated youinto the obligated ones. Consumption and destruction arehere really without limits. In certain kinds of potlatch, onemust expend all that one has, keeping nothing back. It is acompetition to see who is the richest and also the most madlyextravagant. Everything is based upon the principle of an-tagonism and of rivalry.The political status of individuals inthe brotherhoods and clans, and ranks of all kinds aregainedin a "warof property,"just as they are in realwar, or throughchance, inheritance, alliance, and marriage.Yet everything isconceived of as if it were a "struggleof wealth." Marriagesforone's children and places in the brotherhoods are only wonduring the potlatch where exchange and reciprocity rule.They are lost in the potlatch as they are lost in war, by gam-bling or in running and wrestling. In a certain number of

cases, it is not even a question of giving and returning, but ofdestroying, so as not to want even to appear to desire repay-ment. Whole boxes of olachen (candlefish)oil or whale oil areburnt, as are houses and thousands of blankets. The mostvaluable copper objects are broken and thrown into the wa-ter, in order to crush and to "flatten" one's rival. . ... In thisway one not only promotes oneself, but also one's family, upthe social scale. It is therefore a system of law and economicsin which considerable wealth is constantly being expendedand transformed. One may, if one so desires, call these trans-fer acts by the name of exchange or even trade and sale; butsuch trade is noble, replete with etiquette and generosity. Atleast, when it is carried on in another spirit, with a view toimmediate gain, it is the object of very marked scorn.59The economic reasoning in the notion of the gift lies in itsvicious circularity.Derridawrites, "Forthere to be agift, there mustbe no reciprocity,return,exchange, countergift, or debt. If the other

givesme backor owes me or has to give me back what I give him orher, there will not have been a gift, whether this restitution is im-mediate or whether it is programmed by a complex calculation of along-term deferralor difference."60 Further Derrida continues:

If the gift is annulled in the economic odyssey of the circle assoon it appears as gift or as soon as it signifies itself as gift,there is no longer any "logic of the gift," and one may safelysay that a consistent discourseon the gift becomes impossible:It misses its object and always speaks, finally, of somethingelse. One can go so far as to say that a work as monumentalas Marcel Mauss's The Gift speaks of everything but the gift:It deals with economy, exchange, contract (do ut des), itspeaks of raising the stakes, sacrifice, gift and countergift-in short, everything that in the thing itself impels the gift andthe annulment of the gift. All the gift supplements (potlatch,transgressionand excess, surplus values, the necessity to giveor give back more, returns with interest-in short, the wholesacrificialbidding war) are destined to bring about once againthe circle in which they are annulled.61Derrida then concludes, "The gift is not a gift, the gift only

gives to the extent it gives time. The difference between a gift andevery other operation of pure and simple exchange is that the giftgives time. There where there is gift, there is time. What it gives, thegift is time, but this gift of time is also a demand of time. The thingmust not be restituted immediatelyand right away. There must be

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time, it must last, there must be waiting-without forgetting."'62The gift of time, and the patience in or of time, is what LeCorbusier claims that he has given in his paintings. This given timeis the gift, precisely because it cannot be restituted immediately,even though Le Corbusier waited for its restitution.In the section "The Theory of Potlatch," Bataille inscribes theidea of the gift in the context of general economy. "We need to giveaway, or lose or destroy," he says. "But the gift would be senseless(and so we would never decide to give) if it did not take on themeaning of an acquisition. Hence giving must become acquiringapower. Gift-giving has the virtue of a surpassingof the subject whogives, but in exchange for the object given, the subject appropriatesthe surpassing. He regardshis virtue, that which he had the capac-ity for, as an asset, as apowerthat he now possesses."63Le Corbusierpaid special attention to the section "The Acquisition of Rank,"which starts with this passage:"Doubtlesspotlatch is not reducibletothe desire to lose, but what it bringsto thegiver is not the inevitableincreaseof returngifts; it is the rank which it conferson the one whohas the last word" [Bataille's italics].64 Le Corbusier marked thewords rank and inevitablein this passageand marked the rest of thesection with numerous underlinings. Bataille in this section definespower as distinct from prestigeand gloryand says, "It must be said,further, that the identity of the power and the ability to lose isfun-damental [Le Corbusier's emphasis]."''65Bataille continues, "As thesurviving practicesmake clear, rankvariesdecisively according o anindividual'scapacityor giving [Le Corbusier'semphasis].'"66owardthe end of the section, Bataille wrote, "Combat is glorious in thatit is always beyond calculation at some moment. But the meaningof warfare and glory is poorly grasped if it is not related in part tothe acquisition ofrank througha recklessexpenditureof vital resources,ofwhichpotlach is the mostlegible orm [Le Corbusier'semphasis]."-67Thus, potlatch is a struggle for pure prestige, which is achievedthrough the generation of what Bataille calls the "propriWe'positivede perte" ("positive property of loss") through which, as SuzanneGuerlac informs us, nonutilitarian values such as honor, rank, orglory are acquired.68In this regard, the anguish and suffering of Le Corbusier,portrayed in his self-image, lies in the fact that his act of giving hasnot been restituted, or so he believes. Thus, he acquires rank andpure prestige by the act of potlatch. It is in this belief that he couldremark, "C'est semer "aout vent pour inconnus. Un jour avant ouapres la mort, on nous dira merci." ("This sowing to the wind is forunknown people. One day, before or after my death, they will saythank you.") Perhaps it is in this context that one should judge allthe episodes of postwar writings by Le Corbusier, in which we find

statements of self-deprecation, self-portrayalas a tragic hero, whichoftentimes verges on the border of the quixotic comic and risible,autobiographical identification with tragic heroes, self-delusion,and repeated referencesto himself as a figure unappreciated by thepublic, none of which have been missed by his critics. To this rep-ertoire one should add this lamenting statement: "Unjour avant ouapres a mort, on nous dira merci."In the light of this reading, all of the elements in LeCorbusier'sflyleafcommentary, cited at the beginning of this article,come together. Thus we begin to understand the meaning and char-acter of his autobiographicalreading. Le Corbusier saw in his ownhumanity, art, and mission nothing short of self-sacrifice-that is, hesaw his life aspotlatch and as a gift to humanity with no returnwhat-soever. When Le Corbusier later reflected on Homer's The Iliadthrough his twenty-four drawings, in preciselythe same fashion heidentified himself with the heroes Hector and Paris, combative fig-ures who suffered the violence of life in the face of its abject injus-tice. He saw in them his own image. However, this is not yetsufficient to advance the claim that Le Corbusier'sultimate self-sac-rifice culminated in his idea of la main ouverte,or "Open Hand."

IIIBataille's"Rotten Sun," published in Documents3 in 1933, was partof an "Hommage 'i Picasso." In the same year in Documents8, hepublished "Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincentvan Gogh."69He devoted another short essayto van Gogh in 1937called "van Gogh as Prometheus."70 n 1931, he wrote "The SolarAnus." In 1928, he wrote his famous TheStory ofthe Eye,which hepublished under the pseudonym Lord Auch; "The Pineal Eye,"posthumously published, was probably written in 1928 or 1931.The common theme of these writings is Bataille'sconception of thesun, which he later discussed in La Part Maudite in relation to Az-tec sacrifices: "The sun himself was in their eyes the expression ofsacrifice."71For Bataille, "the truth of the sun," Nick Land tells us,lies "at the peak of its prodigal glory, . . . the necessity f uselesswaste,where the celestial and the base conspire in the eclipse of rationalmoderation.'"72Land comments on Bataille's "blind sun or blind-ing sun, it matters little,"by saying that "anIcariancollapse into thesun ... consummates apprehension only by translating it into theregister of the intolerable. In the copulation with the sun-whichis no more a gratification than a representation-subject and objectfuse at the level of their profound consistency, exhibiting in blind-ness that they were never what they were."73

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In the essay "Rotten Sun," Bataille wrote, "One might addthat the sun has also been mythologically expressedby a man slash-ing his own throat, as well as by an anthropomorphic being deprivedof a head.... The myth of Icarus is particularlyexpressivefrom thispoint of view: it clearlysplits the sun in two-the one that was shin-ing at the moment ofIcarus's elevation, and the one that melted thewax, causingfailureand a screamingfall when Icarusgot too close.""4Picasso, for Bataille, was that contemporaryartistwho, through de-composition of forms in his painting, achieved the rupturein blind-ing brilliancethat was associatedwith two conceptions of the sun. Inthe essayon the self-mutilation of van Gogh, Bataillebrings

the ideaof sacrificeto an analysisof self-mutilation. As we have alreadyob-served, belonging to the notion of sacrifice in Bataille's work is theword depense. "expenditure")."This word operates in a network ofthought that he describes as generalor solar economy: the econom-ics of excess,"Nick Land says."5This is based on Bataille: "The ra-diation of the sun is distinguished by its unilateralcharacter: t losesitselfwithout reckoning,withoutcounterpart.Solareconomy sfoundeduponthisprinciple."76he sun squanders tselfon us without a returnbecause "we are ultimately nothing but the effect of the sun." In"The Notion of Expenditure,"Bataille took up the notion of sacri-fice. In the section entitled "The Principleof Loss,"he wrote, "Fromthe point of view of expenditure,artisticproductionsmust be dividedinto two main categories, the first constituted by architecturalcon-struction, music, and dance. This category is comprised of real ex-penditures.Nevertheless,sculptureand painting, not to mention theuse of sites for ceremonies and spectacles,introduceseven into archi-tecture the principle of the second category, that of symbolic xpen-diture. For their part, music and dance can easily be charged withexternal signification . . . the term poetry, applied to the least de-gradedand least intellectualizedforms of expressionof a state of loss,can be considered synonymous with expenditure;it in fact signifies,in the most precise way, creation by means of loss. Its meaning isthereforeclose to that of sacrifice."'7

Returning to the theme of sacrifice in the essayon van Gogh,Bataille reminds the readerof Areteus, who wrote of sick people inancient times who tore off their own limbs to pay homage to godswho demanded such a sacrifice.He goes on to say, "Thereis, in fact,no reason to separate van Gogh's ear or Gaston F.'s finger fromPrometheus's famous liver . .. then the tearing out of the liver pre-sents a theme in conformity with the various legends of the 'sacri-fice of the god' ... the eagle-god who is confused with the sun bythe ancients, the eagle who alone among all beings can contemplatewhile staring at 'the sun in all its glory,' the Icarianbeing who goesto seek the fire of the heaven is, however, nothing other than

automutilator, a Vincent van Gogh, a Gaston F.""78For Bataille,automutilation is the elementary fact of the "alteration"of the per-son. As Rosalind Krauss reminds us, the sun god in the "RottenSun" and the Van Gogh essays embodies waste and destruction;Bataille invented terms like informe,ac~phale,basses, utomutilation,and blindnessto shake the certainty of paradigms and release theeffect of the things unassimilable by us.79 In "van Gogh asPrometheus," Bataille wrote, "For it was no mere bloody ear thatvan Gogh detached from his own head bearingit off to that 'House'(the troubling, crude, and childish image of the world we representto others). Van Gogh, who decided by 1882 that it was better to bePrometheus than Jupiter, tore from within himself rather than anear, nothing less than a SUN." Bataille continues, "Vincent vanGogh belongs not to art history, but to the bloody myth of our ex-istence as humans. He is of that rarecompany who, in a word spell-bound by stability, by sleep, suddenly reached the terrible 'boilingpoint' without which all that claims to endure becomes insipid, in-tolerable, declines. For this 'boiling point' has meaning not only forhim who attains it, but for all, even though all may notyet perceivethat which binds man's savage destiny to radiance,to explosion, oflame, and only thereby to power."80 Eric Michaud comments onthis passage, "Bataillegrasped the painter's double bond-or per-haps we should say double bind-to radiance and withering, butperhaps he absorbed it too quickly in the sacrificial figure ofPrometheus."81

It is not possible to determine whether Le Corbusier was fa-miliar with the essays Bataille wrote during the thirties, but judg-ing from his underlining of the chapter "Sacrificeand Wars of theAztec" in La Part Maudite, particularly the section "Sacrifice orConsumption," it is certain that Le Corbusier understood the ele-ments of Bataille's argument on sacrifice. My concern here is therelevance of this understanding for the interpretation of the OpenHand, especiallyin the light of what Bataillesaid about sacrifice andits relationship to the work of art. Through the literature on theOpen Hand, we arealreadyfamiliarwith the Ruskinian image dis-cussed by Mary PatriciaMay Sekler,no less the politics of the OpenHand that Stanislaus von Moos takes up. However, we shouldsingle out in the complex history of this image the powerful inter-pretation of the Open Hand in relation to Heideggerian thinkingon technology by Manfredo Tafuri.82To this we might append areading of this image in relation to the notion of sacrifice. In somerespects, Le Corbusier's commentary about the spending of his lifein the giving of his works and art to humanity, receiving nothing,resembleswhat van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo about the am-bivalence of his self-sacrifice:"Iwanted only to give, but not to re-

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4. LeCorbusier, hakra amProject.Willy oesiger, d. Le Corbusier's astWorks,NewYork:Praeger,1990, SPADEM.41

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Worksand Sketchbooksrecord the early and later versions of theOpen Hand; the posthumously constructed "final"design is basedon images in the Last Works.87 e Corbusier wrote about the imageof the Open Hand and its unrealized dream shortly before hisdeath: "This open hand, a sign of peace and reconciliation, mustrise at Chandigarh. This sign which preoccupies me for a numberof years in my subconscious should exist to bear witness to har-mony, . . . God and the devil-the forces present. The devil is inthe way: the world of 1965 is able to put itself at peace. There is stilltime to chose, let's equip rather than arm. This sign of the openhand to receive the created riches, to distribute [them] to thepeoples of the world, should be the sign of our epoch. Before find-ing myself one day (later on) in the celestial zones among the starsof the 'Bon Dieu' I would be happy to see at Chandigarh, beforethe Himalayawhich risesup straighton the horizon, this open handwhich marks for 'le pare Corbu' a deed, a course traversed."88

Notwithstanding the architect's own explanation, aBataillean reading of the Open Hand should conceive of this signas an alteration, analogous with the automutilation of the body ofvan Gogh. Should we conceive of the Open Hand as Le Corbusier'sown severedhand, sacrificedto humanity in an act of potlatch with-out a return?The Open Hand is an unreturnable gift given by LeCorbusier to people in "misery"who cannot have it, as van Gogh'sear was an unreturnable gift of himself not to be received by any-one, only his painting. As Le Corbusier explained it, the OpenHand is a sign "to receive the created riches, to distribute them tothe peoples of the world." Thus, Le Corbusier identifies himselfwith the Open Hand and, analogously, with the sun. His real giftand self-sacrificewas, as he claimed, his paintings, for which he re-ceived nothing in return. The Open Hand is not really an openhand, and it is not just a hand; it is an enigmatic hybrid. It is also abird-a raven or "Corbu," an autobiographical reference to LeCorbusier himself. The hand is holding "Corbu"while transmut-ing it and preventing it from its attempting an Icarian flight.This sign, containing the allegory of modernity, parallelsWalter Benjamin's Angelus Novus, which was a depiction

ofBenjamin's self.89The Paul Klee drawing that Benjamin owned anddearly revered depicts the feebled flight of an angel, with openwings, obstructed by the rubble heaped in front of it. This autobio-graphical image of the new angel in Benjamin's "Thesis on the Phi-losophy of History" turns into the angel of history. The utopianflight to the future is halted by incessantly looking into the past. Inthe same manner, Le Corbusier's bird moves from its personal his-tory to a statement about modernity: The bird is held captive by thehalting hand. To echo Tafuri's insight in '"Machine et memoire,'"'

the Chandigarh Open Hand, "a new search for space of the utter-able,"shatters here the impractical utopia of the Ville Radieuse.BothBenjamin's AngelusNovus and Le Corbusier's Open Hand are theemblems of modern tragedy.9"In this context, perhaps we nowunderstand better Phillip Duboy's equation of Le Corbusier andWalter Benjamin as heroic figures in modernity.The heterogeneous body of the hand transmuted into thebird is a pharmakon." It is the signifier or the signature of LeCorbusier himself-one may say that it is an "acephalicbody." Inthis sense, it is wrong to call the Open Hand a monument in thetraditional sense. Rather, it might be conceived as sacrificial bodyin its "vertiginous fall from the vertical axis of the monument intothe horizontal axis of the base.""92his is how Bataille understoodthe term monument.It is, moreover, an autobiographical narrationof the life of Le Corbusier. In his mature ife, Le Corbusier came torealizewhat The Limits of Growth, in the Bataillean sense, meant:"But the terrestrialsphere (to be exact, the biosphere),which corre-sponds to the space available to life, is the only limit .... It is thesize of the terrestrialspace that limits overall growth.""93he OpenHand is the manifesto of this limitation. It has been pointed outthat Le Corbusier, in rereading Thus Spake Zarathustra in 1961,added the notation "la main ouverte"next to the passage"asa Christlike figure, descending to the level of humanity and voluntarilychoosing to sacrifice himself in order to bring men the Truth.""9The Open Hand, on the one hand, is the sign of the culminationof the "excessivewaste," an expenditure and potlatch of Corbu; onthe other, it is the "negative"sign of the impossibility of "architec-ture"in total dipense n the Chandigarh plan, at the same time thatit is an indictment of Ville Radieusein its limited circulation andutilitarianeconomy. The bird in the Open Hand knows that it can-not fly high. Once again, the bird's inability to fly must be under-stood in Bataille's dual conception of the sun in relation to the mythof Icarus. The raven ("Corbu" or Le Corbusier) is being held inplace and motionless by another Le Corbusier,his severedhand, thesacrificial gift to humanity. Le Corbusier insistently makes us be-lieve that the story of his life is the story of his self-sacrifice for the"sakeof humanity." However, there might be a fundamental differ-ence between Le Corbusier's gift of the Open Hand and that ofVincent van Gogh's gift of his mutilated body, symbolized by thesun in his painting, as interpreted by Bataille. This differenceshould be sought in the different conception of the sun. Let therebe no mistake: An abyss separates Bataille and Le Corbusier, andthat is the difference in their conception of the sun. For LeCorbusier, the sun is one pole of the cosmological union of oppo-sites in the duality between masculine and feminine, of which the

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moon constitutes he otherpole;it is only a "real"ntity.It is realin the sensethat it is the real sourceof life, energy,and light;itsemissionof brightnesswasexpressed artly n the notion of white-wash,or Ripolin.This sun, assuch, is a positiveelementof life af-firmation;t canplayno role n thenotion of deathanddenegation.Such a concept of death would be utterly inconceivable for LeCorbusierand, for that matter,for an architect.The sun for LeCorbusierwas alsoa signof the Enlightenment,he signof clarityand clearvision, not a sign of waste and darkness.LeCorbusier'sverticalconception sexpressedn theabsolute thicaldimensionofuprightness nd the uprightpostureof thehumanbodyand in thenotion of the right angle, according o whicharchitecture ecamepossible.If LeCorbusieralksabout the horizontalaxisor horizonin the rightangle,it is always o subordinatet to the verticalaxis.LeCorbusier's mbivalence ndhostilityagainst urrealistsmight iepreciselyn thisobsessionwiththe vertical xis.Incontrast,Bataillewrites"inorder o putout thelightof the sun.""Bataillespeaksofthe verticalandthehorizontalas the "twoaxesof terrestrial"ifeinhis essay"The PinealEye."''96ccording o JohnLecht,"verticalitycanrefer o the axisof transcendence, here ranscendenceefers oobjectification,conceptualization,representation,distanciation,homogeneity,knowledge,history(aswrittenor as narrative) nd,moregenerally, o the domainof theory,especiallyn the sense oftheoria:o see. Horizontality,on the otherhand,refers o imma-nence, and thus, secondarily,o ritual,difference,horror,silence,heterogeneity, bjection in Kisteva'sense)and,moregenerally,othe domain of nondiscursive, or practice.'97 Thus in Bataille,horizontality hallenges he verticality ndthreatens t. The verti-cal alwayscontains the void of the horizontal. n thisvalorizationof horizontalityn Bataille, he sun becomes"a seriesof transposi-tions: from egg to eye to testicle. The streamsof light becomestreamsof liquid: urine, tears,sperm,sweat."'"98oland Bartheselaborateshischainof metonymy n his interpretationf Bataille'sHistoirede l'oeil.99

IVFurtherexploration f the notion ofhorizontalityakesusdeep ntoBataille's euvre,which is outsidethe limit of this essay.However,Iwant to state hatif the notion of the sun in Bataille s locked ntothe logicof ddpense,n contrast, hesun in LeCorbusier'sthinkingis locked into the logic of restrictedeconomy. Nevertheless,weshouldconsider he lateworkof Le Corbusier,speciallyheChapelat Ronchampand his laterpaintings,as symptoms n which one

mighttracesome influenceof the void of the horizontalityn theconstitutionof thevertical xis.Le Corbusier eadLa PartMauditeduring the conception of the Chapel of Ronchamp. It is atRonchampthat Erosjoins Logosin Le Corbusier'swork and thetheme of sexuality urfacesn hisarchitecture.In the secondparagraphf "Architecture"n thecriticaldic-tionaryn Documents,ataillewrote,"For hatmatter,wheneverwefind architecturalconstruction lsewhere than in monuments,whetherit be in physiognomy,dress, music,or painting,we caninfera prevailing astefor human or divineauthority.The large-scalecompositionsof certainpainters xpress he will to constrainthe spiritwithin an officialideal. The disappearancef academicpictorialcomposition,on the otherhand, opens the path to theexpression andthereby he exaltation)of psychologicalprocessedistinctlyat odds with socialstability.This, in largepart, explainsthe strongreaction licited,for overhalfacentury,by the progressive transformation f painting,hithertocharacterizedby a sort ofconcealedarchitecturalkeleton."'00As Denis Hollierpointsout, thisarticledoes not concern t-self witharchitecture,utratherwith itsexpansion.'0' ataillewrotea book on Manet nwhich hediscussedOlympia, aintedbyManetin 1863. He argued hatManetdestroyedacademicpaintingandthat it iswith him thatmodernity ame nto being.Bythedestruc-tion of academicpainting,Bataillemeant the destructionof the"architecture"f the painting,whichhithertowasunderthe con-trol of architecture-or,as Holliersays,academicpaintingwas im-ited to maskinga skeleton.'02Hollierwrites,"Inmany primitivesocietiesthe skeleton marks he moment of the seconddeath-adeaththat is completed, lean,andproperlymmutable:hat whichsurvivesputrefaction nddecomposition.Theskeleton,asarchitec-tural, s theperfect xampleof anarticulatedwhole.Modernpaint-ing rediscoversdeath in its first guise of the human figure'sdecomposition,an incompletedeath,a mortalwound to form,arottingcorpserather han a skeleton.Rottenpainting."'03Here we should rememberBataille'sessayon van Gogh,which connectedhis paintingwith the sun and the mutilationofthe bodyas a sacrificialgift.As Holliersays,everysacrifice s moreor less"transposed"utomutilation: Moreover, aintingnot onlycomesinto being througha refusal o representhe humanbody,not onlydeforms he bodyin the imagesprovidedof it, butpaint-ing,evenat itsorigin,wasinthemostmechanical enseof thewordthe reproduction of mutilations actually practiced upon thebody."'04This shows that, as Rosalind Krausswrites, "TheMinotaur,not Narcissus,presidesover the birthof an art n whichrepresentationepresents lteration."'05

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Throughouthis life, Le Corbusier nsisted that we shouldunderstand is architecturen the lightof hispaintings.Respond-ingto hiscall,wecouldsaythatpainting"contaminated"isarchi-tecture. Beyond the period of planisme,it was Le Corbusier aspainterwhom Bataille could have admired. The essaysthat LeCorbusierput together n the 1929 book TheDecorative rtof To-daywere thebeginningof an unconsciousattempt o "weaken"hearchitecture f the "skeleton." n this book, Le Corbusier haresWalterBenjamin'sritiqueof nineteenth-centuryrchitecture.'o6twasonlylater, n theChapelof Ronchamp, hat the destruction fthe skeleton indsits manifestation.The chapel s the culminationofwhat,afterBataille ndHolier,Iwouldcall "rotten rchitecture,"analogous o "rottenpainting."This needs to be explained.Bythe timethe construction f theChapelof Ronchamp e-gan n September 953,Le Corbusier adnearlyinishedreadingLaPart Maudite.Le Corbusier'sirstsketchesof the site andhis firstvisitto thesiteof Ronchampwere n MayandJune1950.The "de-ferred ction" f Le Corbusier tRonchamp as troubledhis critics.Theyhaveoftenfallen nto the sameconfusionasthereporterromthe ChicagoTribunewho, on thesiteof Ronchampn 1955, asked,"Mr.LeCorbusier,n the name of themanager f the ChicagoTri-bune, nswer hisquestion:Was t necessaryo beaCatholic o buildthischapel?" eCorbusier, ngeredby thisquestion,arrogantlye-plied, "Foutez-moie camp!"'07amesStirling,more"sophisticated"thanthe ChicagoTribuneeporter,n 1956-a yearafter he inau-guration of the building-wrote a piece that characterizedRonchampas "the crisisof rationalism,"'0"elievingthat thereisnothing n thisbuilding o satisfy ntellect.Sincethen,criticshaveindulgednevery onceivabletructural ndsymbolic nalysis f thisbuilding;t has beencomparedwithalmosteverything.'09Recently,as insightfula criticas RobinEvans, n an attemptto bringout the themeof sexualityor the first ime in thecriticismof Ronchamp, dmits hatoutmodeddualisticermsno longerplayarole n contemporaryhought.Nevertheless,e resists hisgenreofcontemporary criticism and constructs an argument aboutRonchampbasedon the same dualitybetween male and femaleforms hatwe know n LeCorbusier'swriting.Evanswrites,"Whilethesearchaic ualisms layno directpart n contemporaryhought,theydo dramatize tendency hatstillprevailsn humanaffairs ndis madealmost nescapablehroughour useof language:he oppo-siteof aman s a woman.Languagenablesustodeny hisbut makesaffirmationasier."He continues,"Justook attheway nwhichourunderstandingf LeCorbusier'sareers facilitated ypittingoppo-sitesagainst ne another: unctionalismersus ymbolism,he inter-national versus regional, the autocratversus the populist, the

technocrat ersus he poet, rationality ersus rrationality,rogressversusorigin, cienceversusmyth,the machine ersus hehand,cal-culationversusntuition, urface ersusmass, hestraightine versusthe curved,geometricversus ree form. It is a useful ist, the moreeasilyappliedbecausemost of thesedistinctions an be foundin LeCorbusier'swritings. ... Manyjudiciouscommentatorspoint outthat this pictureof the two Corbusiers s oversimplified, ut eventhosewho reject t as a general xplanation f hiswork often resortto it in explanation f Ronchamp,which is rightlyregarded s anextreme ase.""0'hemost absurd xtreme, erhaps,s the commen-taryof Jean Labatut,a Princetonprofessor,who in 1955 said,"Ronchamp xpresses liberation f CorbusierromCorbusier.""True,Le Corbusier orcesandimposeson the critichis own termsof dualityin the explanationof his paintingand work,but oneshouldnot submitto it in thepractice f criticism, specially iventhecontemporaryetting orthoughts.One still mustgo to Bataille'steaching,whichwoulddefy anyeasyclassification,cknowledgingthathe is to a largeextentbehindourcontemporaryhinking.Afterall, it is not insignificanthat MichelFoucault,who editedthe firstvolumeof Bataille'sOeuvrescomplktes,alledhim one of the mostimportantwriters f the twentiethcentury."13Afterhiscommentary,Evans urther laborateshe theme ofsexualityn thebuilding.On the one hand,he writes,"It's ike thebody of a woman;StephenGardiner,for examplereckonsthatthat's heonlywayto understandhisbuilding. .. The bodyof thebuilding s womanly,accordingo the criticalunderstanding." nthe otherhand,"There s a sense n which the actualact of construc-tion isverymale.Afterall, this is hardly urprising;here s exactlywhatyouwouldexpect.""'3vans ontinues,"Whataboutasynthe-sis?Corbusierwasalwaysmaking hings nto oppositions,present-ingthem ascompleteoppositions, o thatsomething ouldhappen.That is the wholelogicof thisenterprise. heworld s divided,andwhen the sunrises, hestarsgo out. Butwe'renot talkingabout hatnow. We'rejust talkingaboutgood and bad architecture.Goodarchitectures male;bad is female,dangerous, oo subjective. t isin thecloudyskiesof thenorth hatfemalearchitectureelongs,notin the clearskies of the south,with its rationality f precision.""'Furtherhe writes,"Adangerousarchitecture eemsto be turningthe fullyfemaleprovince nto a malepreserve."15All of thesecommentaries rehelpful,but theyarelodged nthe framework nd habit of the metaphysical hinkingof duality.One crucialquestionshould be asked,whichhasremainedunan-swered:Whydoes the themeof sexualityurfacen areligious uild-ing in Le Corbusier's euvre?Why does it emerge n the "maturework,"what we call late Corbu? want to suggestthat it is only

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through the psychoanalyticalnotion of the deferred action ornachtriaglichkiet,hatthe actionof Le Corbusier tRonchamp anbeexplained.SigmundFreuddiscussed hisnotionin "From he His-tory of an Infantile Neurosis," the famous Wolf Man casehistory."'6JacquesLacan first drew attention to this importantnotion inFreud."'7n TheLanguagefPsychoanalysis,. Laplanche ndJ.-B.Pontalisdefinedeferredctionas"A ermfrequentlyusedby Freudin connectionwith his view of psychicalemporality ndcausality:experiences, mpressionsand memory-tracesmaybe revisedat alaterdate to fit in with freshexperiences rwith the attainmentofa new stageof development.They mayin that event be endowednot only with a new meaningbut also with psychicaleffective-ness."""At its most elementaryevel, Ned Lukacherwrites,"de-ferredaction is a mode of temporalspacingthroughwhich therandomness f a latereventtriggershememoryof an earlier ventor image,whichmightneverhave come to consciousnesshad thelaterevent neveroccurred.""'Deferredactionundermineshe no-tion of linearcausalityn one temporaldirection.Latereventsbe-come thecauseof earlier ventsand earlier vents,become heeffectof laterevents.We becomewhatweareonlyin deferred ction; hepsychical emporality ndcausality, xperiencesndmemory races,arerevisedat a laterdate to fit in with the attainmentof a newde-velopment.Subjectivity everrests; t is neverset onceand forall.Le Corbusierat Ronchampreconstructsand anticipatesatraumatic vent: His body is more thana modularsystem.Excessin thebody s morethan thebody tself.It is here hat LeCorbusierrediscovers is ownsexedbody.He challenged nybody o find themodularsystem n Ronchamp,whichwassupposedlyts male ele-ment,as RobinEvansdeclares. omeresearchersndcommentatorshavetriedto "defeat" eCorbusier n undertakinghechallenge ofind the hidden modular n the body of the building.They havelaboredhard and triumphantly, ound some hereand there,butperhaps heyfell into the trapsetup by the old magician.Perhapsin this searcha point was missed.It is herespecifically,and onlyhere, that one should seek the relationshipbetween the sexualityand the religious cstasyastwo interdependentategories f trans-gression.One shouldnot look for the maleelement(the rationalmodular)n theotherwiseemalebodyof thebuilding.Rather, neshould seek to locate the transgressive otlatchof violentpleasurein the sacredecstasyof the building-Le Corbusier's wn experi-ence of "eroticsovereignty."'20On Bataille'snotion of eroticism,MicheleH. Richmanwrites,"Eroticisms theultimated'pense,hesacrifice f selfin themostcompletegestureof communication."''In the act of thesacrifice f rationalitythehiddenmodular), herelooms a largeracrifice.LeCorbusier s sacrificing ismale dentity

and, in a self-indulgent ct, recognizes nd experiences imself ntheecstasyand ouissancef hissovereignd'pense.The "danger"nRonchamp s not only that the "dangerous"emininecharactersthreateninghe "malearchitecture." ather,dangerresides n the"surplusnjoyment"'122esultingromthe renunciation f theprin-cipleof reasonandthe law of utility n eroticecstasy,n thesacredexperience.This is not only beyondthe realityprinciple,but alsooverandbeyond hepleasure rinciple f "male rchitecture."ara-doxically,Le Corbusier ouldonlyattain he summitof thisecstasyin a religiousbuilding.This iswhyLeCorbusierreplied mpolitelyto the ChicagoTribunereporter,whosequestionsuggested he de-nialof hisenjoymentof thisdeeplysacredexperience n the dayofthe inauguration f Ronchamp,much lesshis eroticecstasy.I suggest hat t is thejouissancef transgression'23here rans-lated as"religiouscstasy"),oupledwith "heterology"here rans-lated as the "science f the sacred"n Bataille), hatbrings orwardthe elementsof Bataille n Le Corbusier nd makes hemcontem-porarywith each other. The storyof "LeCorbusierwith Bataille,"I suggest, s the site of Ronchamp.At Ronchamp,LeCorbusier'slaw of the l'angle roit the"law"n theLacanianense)becomes herightof apassageojouissance. eCorbusier'searly eading f ErnstRenan's ViedeJusesurnsto meet his eroticside.Paradoxically, eCorbusier ould eroticize hechapelonlythroughreligious cstasy.In this"dangerous"uilding,LeCorbusier ies of the "littledeath"in laughter.The deathof theskeleton n thestructure f thebuild-ing as the "seconddeath"s, in fact,the disavowalby LeCorbusierof the uprightbody. The Chapelof Ronchamp s LeCorbusier'slaughtern the experience f sovereignty ndtransgression.t is atRonchampthat the repressed oid of horizontalityand basenessappearso threaten he verticalaxis.

VForGeorgeBataille nd LeCorbusier,rtbegins n thesacred.Theyboth agreed hat the verticalaxissymbolizes umanity's retensiontowardspiritualitynd theethical.Whereas orBataille hematrix fthe sacred s in the violence and the horizontality f basses,or LeCorbusier he matrixof thescared esidesn moraluprightnessndverticality,n therightangle.This is thepointthatseparatesnd con-nects hese wocontemporaries:n theonesidestandsLeCorbusierwho is forarchitecture,ndon theothersidestandsBataille,who is"againstrchitecture."owever,hesceneof thisoppositions notassimpleas t sounds;his scene sstainedbymany nterveningcreens.Afterall,Bataillewas anadmirer f LeCorbusier.

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We might conclude that Bataille's admiration for LeCorbusiers returned o him byLeCorbusier'sascinationwith LaPartMaudite.LeCorbusier,a thinker,dazzledby the sun, wouldaffirmwhatGeorgesBataillesaid,"I will speak brieflyaboutthemostgeneral onditionof life,dwellingon onecruciallymportantfact:Solarenergys the sourceof life'sexuberant evelopment.Theoriginand essenceof our wealth aregivenin the radiationof thesun, which dispensesenergy-wealth-without any return.Thesun giveswithout everreceiving.Men were consciousof this longbeforeastrophysicsmeasuredhe ceaselessprodigality;heysawitripenthe harvests ndtheyassociatedts splendorwith the act ofsomeonewho giveswithoutreceiving."'24Bataillegavea gift to LeCorbusier;Le Corbusiernevergaveanythingback.Instead,n thisgift,he foundhimself n theorbitofsolarenergywith Bataille.

NotesThe research or this essaywas completed at FondationLe Corbusier nParis n the summerof 1991. I thankMmeEvelynTrehin,directorof the founda-tion, who facilitatedmy research y makingthe documentsavailable o me. I alsothank Daniel Friedman orhis intellectual upport hroughout hewritingof this

essayand for thepainful askof reading arlydraftswith aneditor'seye. I dedicatethisessay o thememoryof ManfredoTafuri,whosereadingof Le Corbusier'sifeand work influencedt.1.GeorgesBataille,La PartMaudite, ssaid'economieeneral,a consumation(Paris:LesEditionMinuit, 1949). Thisvolume,which s on "Consumption,"s thefirstof a three-volumeworkon the generaleconomythathas been translatednto

EnglishbyRobertHurleyas TheAccursed hare(NewYork:ZoneBooks,1991).Inthe 1976French ditionof the firstvolume,Bataille's ssay,"Lanotiondedepense,"hasbeen included.The English ranslation f thisessay,"The Notion of Expendi-ture,"appearsn AllanStoekl,ed., Georges ataille,Visions fExcess, electedWrit-ings,1927-1939 (Minneapolis:University f MinnesotaPress,1985), pp. 116-29.2.Thededicationbearsno dateandthereforemakes t difficult o determinethe exact datewhen Batailleofferedhis book to Le Corbusier.The only referencethatI have come acrossregardinghe offeringof the book to Le Corbusier s theshortcommentarybyPhillipDuboyin LeCorbusier, neEncylopedieParis:Cen-tre GeorgesPompidou,1987), p. 67. Le Corbusier's opy of the book is kept inFondationLeCorbusiern Paris.

3. MarcelMauss,TheGift:TheForm ndReasonfor Exchangen Archaic oci-eties,rans.W.D. Halls, orward y MaryDouglas NewYork:W.W.Norton,1990).4. SeeJeanPiel, "Bataille nd the World:From 'The Notion of Expendi-ture'to TheAccursed hare,"n LeslieAnne Boldt-Irons, d., On Bataille:CriticalEssaysAlbany:StateUniversityof New YorkPress,1995), pp. 95-106.5. [Thefollowing s thetranslation f LeCorbusier's andwritten emarks.The passages ellipticalandself-referential t best,andis open to further nterpre-tations.Inaddition,because f the natureof handwrittenpassages, arient eadingsarepossible.Forexample,assume ouldeasilybe readas assom,etc.-Ed.]

The 5 volumesof CompleteWorks f Corbuhaveputforward, roposed,andassertedLeCorbusier'sdeaswith an enthusiaticfollowing.From one camp,Corbuhasbeenacceptedby assholes,andfrom the other,he is king.The unselfishpracticeof painting s an unflagging acrifice,a gift of time, patience,andlove, expectingnomaterialreward(exceptfor modernmerchants).This sowingto the wind is for un-known people.One day, beforeor aftermy death, theywill saythankyou. It is toolate forso manysetbacks n life. No matter;what matterss the keyto happiness.This commentary ppears n thesecondflyleafof hiscopyandis preceded

by the mark"P92," whichis the reference o page92, Les EditionMinuit, 1949.PhillipDuboycites thepassage y suggestinghatLeCorbusierwrotethiscommen-tarywhile he wasreadinghebookon theflightto Punjab,Chandigarh.eeDuboy,Le Corbusier.

6. Ibid.,p. 67.7. Duboywrites,"Cette'petitereflection'de L.C.Devient alorsune sourceevidentde laMain OuvertedeChandigarh,n memetempsqu'ellee ddfinit ommehero moderne. 'Le vrai sujet de la modernite. Cela signifie que pour vivre lamodernite, l fautune naturehdroique':oilaune bonnedefinitiondeLeCourbusierquel'on doit "WalterBenjamin ntre esdeuxguerres.Maisa a lecturede Batailleet auxreflectionsqu'entireLeCourbusier n seraitplut6ttentede le ddfinir,avecJacquesLacan, ommeun deces herosmodernes,qu'illustrentesexploitsddrisoiredan une situationd'dgarement."'"This small reflection'by Le Corbusiers thusclearly sourceof the OpenHandin Chandigarh,t thesame ime that t defineshimas a modernhero. The veritableubjectof modernity.Whichmeans, n order o livein modernity, one must have a heroic nature':This is an apt definition of LeCorbusier,which we owe to WalterBenjaminbetween the Wars.But, in readingBatailleandin the reflectiondrawnby LeCorbusier, ne would rather endto de-finehim, afterJacquesLacan,asone of these modernheroes: which llustrateshelaughable chievementsn a stateof bewilderment."')bid.8. Citedin AnthonyVidler, TheArchitectural ncanny: ssaysn theMod-ern UnhomelyCambridge,MA: MIT Press,1992), p. 151.9. I owe this categorization f modernity o Hal Foster n his CompulsivBeauty Cambridge,MA:MIT Press,1993). Seechap.6.10. SeeJacquesLacan,"Kant vecSade,"n Ecrits Paris:Editionsdu Seuil,1966), vol. 2, pp. 119-50. The English ranslation,Ecrits:A Selection,rans.AlanSheridan NewYork:W.W. Norton, 1977), did not includethisessay.For an En-glishtranslation f this essay,see"Kantwith Sade," rans.JamesB. Swenson,Jr.,with extensiveannotations, n October 1 (Winter1989): 119-48.11. SeeAllanStoekl,ed., "OnBataille," pecial ssueof YaleFrench tudies78(1990): 2.12. SeeManfredoTafuri,"'Machine t memoire': he City in theWork ofLe Corbusier,"n H. Allen Brooks,ed., Le CorbusierPrinceton,NJ: PrincetonUniversityPress,1987), pp. 203-18.13. The readingof The liadpreoccupiedLe Corbusieruntilhis death. Hehadplanned o reillustrateisnewly ranslatedopy,which contained hedrawingsof John Flaxman, he eighteenth-century raftsman,but time did not allowhim,and he completedno more than twenty-fourdrawings.For the analysisof thesedrawings,see Mogens Krustrup,Le Corbusier,L'lliade Dessins (Copenhague:Borgen,1986). Also,NadirLahijiandDavidLeatherbarrow, e Corbusier's raw-ingsof theIliad,forthcoming.14. For Bataille's relation to the thirties, see Jean-Michel Besnier, "GeorgesBataille in the 1930s: A Politics of the Impossible," French Yale Studies 78 (1990):169-80. Also see Michel Surya, GeorgesBataille, la mort l'oeuvre (Paris: LibrairieSiguier, 1987).

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15. See Francis Marmande, GeorgesBataillepolitique (Lyon: PressesUniversitaires e Lyon,1985).16. For more details of Le Corbusier's nvolvement in Chandigarh,seeStanislaus on Moos, "ThePoliticsof theOpen Hand: Notes on Le Corbusier ndNehru at Chandigarh," n RussellWalden, ed., The OpenHand: Essayson LeCorbusierCambridge,MA: MIT Press,1977), pp. 412-57.17. Formy reflectionon planismeand the MarshallPlan,I have benefitedfrom the illuminatingarticle by Allan Stoekl, "Truman'sApotheosis:Bataille,'Planisme,' nd Headlessness,"n YaleFrenchStudies 8 (1990): 181-205. In dis-cussingplanisme,Stoeklmakesreferenceso Le Corbusiern twopassages n whichI havebasedmy conjecture n tracing he originof Bataille'sacquaintancewith LeCorbusier's ctivities n the thirties.

18. Ibid.19.In the handwritten ommentaries n the flyleafof LeCorbusier'scopyof the book, there are references o the chapteron potlatch.In the chapteron theMarshallPlan,Le Corbusiermarkedandunderlinednumerouspassages.20. Seevon Moos, "ThePoliticsof the Open Hand.21. For a summaryof Le Corbusier'surbanplanning,see Tim Benton,"Urbanism,"n LeCorbusier:rchitectof Century,xhibitioncatalog London:ArtCouncilof GreatBritain,1987).22. Stoekl, "Truman'sApotheosis,182. For an extendeddiscussionon theOrdreNouveau,seeJean-LouisLoubetdelBayle,LesNon-ConformistesesAnnies30 (Paris:Seuil, 1969).23. SeePiel, "Bataille ndthe World."24. SeeMaryMcLeod,"Bibliography: lans,1-13 (1931-1932); Plans bi-

monthly), 1-8 (1932); Bulletindesgroupes lans,1-4 (1930)," Oppositions9/20(Winter/Spring 980):185-206. AsMcLeod nformsus, Le Corbusier lsopartici-patedin anothersyndicalist ournal,Prdlude1933-1935). Both of thesejournalssignificantlycontributed o the propagation f the ideas on urbanism hat wereacontinuationof the earlierL'Esprit ouveau."LeCorbusierhimself was anxious opursue he urbanstudiesthat he hadcommenced n L'Esprit ouveau. n fact,heproposed hat Plansassume heremaining inancialholdingsof the earlierjournal"(p. 186).25. Ibid.,p. 185.26. Stoekl, "Truman'spotheosis," . 183.27. Ibid.28. See Surya, GeorgesBataille, p. 486. Suryafurther informs us that"Bataillene fit cependantpas partid' OrdreNouveau.Laseule collaborationquiaitdtdvoqu&eparPierrePrevost.Entretiens) st anonyme:Batailleaurait ourni esdl'ments d'dlaborationdu chapitre "Echangeset Credits" du ivre manifested'Arnaud Dandieu et Robert Aron, La Revolutionnicessaire.Ce qui, a ire cechapitre,paraiten effet evident: a plupartdes themesd'analysede "Lanotion dedepense"s'y retrouvent. Il ne semble cependant pas que Bataille ait redige cechapitre.De memequ'ilne semblepas,poursingulierequesoitcette collaborationanonymeet totalementdesintdressee,u'elleait eu de suite. Bataillene fit en toutcasjamaismention de tout cela"(p. 183). ("Bataille oweverdid not takepartinOrdreNouveau.The only collaborationwhich has been recalled in conversationwith PierrePrevost) s anonymous:Bataillewould haveprovidedelementsof someelaborations n the chapter"Exchanges nd Credits" n the book La RevolutionndcessaireyArnaudDandieuandRobertAron. Inreading hischapter, t becomesevidentthata numberof themes in the analysisof "TheNotion of Expenditure"are found there.It howeverdoes not seem that Bataillewrotethis chapter.")

29. Ibid., p. 198.30. See Jean-Joseph Goux, "General Economics and Postmodern Capital-

ism," YaleFrenchStudies78 (1990): 206-24. For my summaryof TheAccursedShare, have followed Goux'sessay.For a philosophicaldiscussionof the idea ofgeneraleconomy in Bataille,see JacquesDerrida, "From Restricted o GeneralEconomy:A HegelianismwithoutReserve,"n Writing ndDifference,rans.andwith an introductionbyAlanBass(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress,1978),pp. 251-77.31. Goux, "GeneralEconomiesandPostmodernCapitalism," . 207.32. Ibid.

33. Bataille,"The Notion of Expenditure,". 118.34. "Thisuselessconsumptionis what suitsme,once my concern for themorrow s removed.And if I thus consumeimmoderately, reveal o my fellowbeings that which I am intimately:Consumption s the wayin whichseparate e-ings communicate.Everything howsthrough,everything s open and infinite be-tween thosewho consume ntensely.Butnothingcountsthen;violence is releasedandit breaks orthwithoutlimits,as the heat increases." ataille,La PartMaudite,pp. 75-76; TheAccursed hare,pp. 58-59. LeCorbusiermarked he footnote re-lated to the passageafter the wordsipards,which reads:"J'insisteur une donniefondamentale:aseparation esetresest limiteehl'ordre eel.C'estseulement i j'enrestea 'ordredes chosesquelaseparation strdele. lle esteneffet rdelle,maiscequiest reel est extirieur. Tous les hommes, ntimement,n'en sont qu'un."' "Iwishtoemphasize basic act:Theseparationf beings s limited o the realorder. t is onlyif I remainattachedo the orderof thingshat theseparations real. t is infact real,but what is real s external.'Intimately,allmen areone."')35. SeeStoekl, "Truman'sApotheosis."36. Ibid.,p. 198.Also for theAciphale figure n Bataille, ee AllanStoekl's"The Death ofAciphaleand the Will to Change:Nietzsche n the Text of Bataille,"Glyph, (1979):43-67.37. "Nothing s closed to anyonewho simplyrecognizes he material on-ditionsof thought.On allsides andin everyway,the world nvitesmanto changeit. Doubtlessman on thisside is notnecessarilyoundto follow theimperiouswaysof the USSR. Forthe mostpart,he is exhaustinghimself n thesterilityof a fearfulanti-communism.But if he has his own problems o solve,he has moreimportantthingsto do thanblindlyanathematize,hanto complainof adistress ausedby hismanifold contradictions.Let him tryto understand, r betteryet, let him admirethe cruelenergyof those who broke the Russianground;he will be closer to thetasks that awaithim. For, on all sidesand in everyway,a world n motionwants obechanged." ataille,La PartMaudite, p. 222; TheAccursed hare,p. 168.38. Stoekl,"Truman'sApotheosis,"p. 169.39. Ibid.,p. 201.40. Bataille,TheAccursed hare,p. 175.41. Stoekl,"Truman'sApotheosis,"p. 203.42. See the English ranslationby Dominic Faccini n October 0 (Spring1992):25-26.

43. I havefollowed Hollier'sinterpretation f this passage n his AgainstArchitecture(Cambridge,MA: MIT Press,1989), pp. 47-58.44. Bataille, TheAccursed hare,p. 46.45. Ibid., p. 49.46. Tafuri,"Machine tMdmoire,"'"p.13.47. Ibid.,pp. 213-14.48. Bataille,"The Notion of Expenditure,". 122.49. Mauss,TheGift, p. 46.50. Ibid.,p. 39.51. All etymologies are from the Oxford English Dictionary unless otherwiseindicated.

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52. Mauss,TheGift,pp. 6-753. Ibid.,p. 39.54. Ibid.,p. 152.55. Ibid.,pp. 151-52.56. Ibid.,p. 152.57. SeeJacquesDerrida,Dissemination(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress,1981). In thechapter"Plato'sPharmacy," errida eads n Oeuvresf MarcelMauss,published n 1969, the entry"Gift-gift" nd quotes,"Moreover, ll theseideasaredouble-faced. n otherIndo-Europeananguages,t is the notionof poi-son which is not certain.Klugeand the etymologistsarerightin comparing hepotio, "Poison,"series with gift, gift ["gift,"which means"present"n English,means"poison" r "married" n other Germanlanguages.--Trans.].One canalsoreadwith interest he livelydiscussionbyAulus-Gellius 12) on the ambiguityofthe Greekpharmakon nd the Latin venenum"(p. 133). Derrida elates he mean-ing of pharmakonpoison and remedy)to scapegoatand sacrifice,which comesclose to Bataille'sinterpretation f gift related o his notion of sacrifice.58. SeeJacquesDerrida, Given Time:I CounterfeitMoney, rans.PeggyKamuf(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress,1992).59. Mauss, TheGift,p. 37.60. Derrida,GivenTime,p. 12.61. Ibid.,p. 24.62. Ibid.,p. 41.63. Bataille,TheAccursed hare,p. 69.64. Ibid.,p. 71.65. Ibid.

66. Ibid.67. Ibid.68. See Suzanne Guerlac, "'Recognition by a Woman!: A Reading of

Bataille'sL'Eroticisme"YaleFrenchStudies 8 (1990):90-105.69. The Englishtranslation f these articles s included n Stoekl,ed., Vi-sionsofExcess, p. 57-58, 61-72.70. Forthe English ranslation f thisessay,see October6 (1986):58-60.71. Bataille,TheAccursed hare,p. 46.72. See Nick Land, TheThirstforAnnihilation:Georges atailleand Viru-lent Nihilism(AnEssaynAestheticReligion),London:Routledge,1992),p. 30.73. Ibid.,p. 31.74. GeorgesBataille,"RottenSun," n Stoekl,ed., VisionsofExcess,p. 57-58.75. Land,ThirstforAnnihilation,p. 33.76. Cited in Land, ThirstforAnnihilation,p. 33.77. Ibid.,p. 120.78. GeorgesBataille,"SacrificialMutilationand theSeveredEarof VincentvanGogh," n Stoekl,ed.,VisionsofExcess, . 70.79. SeeRosalindKrauss,"Antivision,"October 6 (1986):42-86; see also"No MorePlay" n TheOriginality ftheAvant-Garde nd OtherModernistMyths(Cambridge,MA:MIT Press,1985), pp. 147-54.80. Bataille,"VanGogh as Prometheus,"October, 6 (1986), pp. 58-59.81. SeeEricMichaud,"VanGogh,or theInsufficiency f Sacrifice,"Octo-ber,49 (Summer1989): 25-39.82. For a comprehensive interpretation of the Open Hand, see MaryPatriciaMaySekler,"LeCorbusier,Ruskin,the Tree, and the Open Hand,"inWalden,ed.,TheOpenHand,pp.42-95; andvonMooss,"ThePoliticsof theOpen

Hand." My analysis of the Open Hand is indebted to Tafuri's interpretation: seeTafuri, "Machine et mimoire."

83. Quoted in Michaud,"VanGogh,"p. 31.84. See U.E. Chowdhury,"The Bhakra-Damn the HimalayaMountainof India," n Willy Boesiger,ed., Le Corbusier ast WorksNew York:Praeger1979), pp. 158-59.85. See LeCorbusier,LArtdicoratifd'aujourd'huiParis:EditionsVincentFreal,1959). The imageof the Open Hand appearsn the prefaceof thisedition,whichregrettablywas omitted from MIT Press'sEnglishedition of the book: TheDecoratifArt f TodayCambridge,MA: MIT Press,1987).For more nformationon this,see Hdl~neLipstadtand HarveyMendelsohn,"Philosophy,History,andAutobiography:ManfredoTafuriand 'UnsurpassedLesson'of LeCorbusier," s-semblage 2 (1994): 58-103.86. Lipstadt ndMendelsohn,"Philosophy,History,andAutobiographyp. 92.

87. SeeBoesiger,ed., Le Corbusier astWorks; nd LeCorbusier,Sketchbooks, vols. (Cambridge,MA, andNew York:MIT Pressand ArchitectureHis-toryFoundation,1981), vol. 3 (1954-57) andvol. 4 (1957-64).88. Walden,TheOpenHand,p. 83.89. See GershomScholem, "WalterBenjamin and his Angel,"in GarySmith, ed., On WalterBenjamin:CriticalEssaysndRecollection(Cambridge,MA:MIT Press,1988), pp. 121-45.90. SeeTafuri, n "lMachinet Mtmoire.91. Seenote 57 above for the meaningof pharmakon.92. SeeKrauss,"Antivision."93. Bataille,TheAccursed hare,p. 29.94. Sekler,"LeCorbusier,Ruskin, heTree,andtheOpenHand,"n. 86, p.92.95. SeeJohn Lecht,"Surrealism nd the Projectof Writing,or the 'Caseof Bataille," n Carolyn BaileyGill, ed., Bataille: Writing he Sacred London:

Routledge,1995), p. 124.96. GeorgesBataille,"ThePinealEye," n Stoekl,ed., VisionsofExcess, p.79-90. Also seeLecht,"Surrealism nd the