Excesses of Georges Bataille: Deep Time and the Privileged Instant with Stuart Kendall

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AHRC courses: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses Attend DURATIONS Festival 2026 with Acid Horizon: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/events/durations-festival-2026 Can wasting better solve the biggest planetary challenges? In his keynote lecture from the two-day event The Excesses of Georges Bataille at Penn State University, Stuart Kendall traces Bataille’s lifelong obsession with time, expenditure, and what he calls “the privileged instant.” The lecture moves from Bataille’s early psychoanalytic writings, through his encounter with the work of Søren Kierkegaard in wartime France, to his late meditations on sustainability and the fate of humanity and all species. Amid his extensive investigations, Bataille reads Nietzsche against Hegel, affirming what the former calls “the ignorance of the future” and transforming that affirmation into the anguished cry that emerges from the abyss of non-knowledge. This lecture was part of a two-day series of discussions at Penn State featuring other members of the Acid Horizon Research Commons and the broader community of supporters and independent scholars. Support the show AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commo