Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2022
Abstract
The chapter focuses on negative autopoiesis as a common component of Hegel's French reception. Using examples from philosophical but also fictional works by André Breton, Jean-Paul Sartre and Georges Bataille, it shows the extent to which French Surrealists, Existentialists and Postmodernists used selected elements of Hegel's philosophy to develop their own negative autopoiesis.
The French century of Hegel turns out to be a century which went very far in the affirmation of the human freedom: against the System, against nature, against the given, against the very limits of the body. For Breton, Sartre and Bataille, negativity equals freedom and that is why they fought for it with so much enthusiasm.