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André Masson's cover for the first issue of *Acéphale*. (1936).

Acéphale is the name of a public review created by Georges Bataille (which numbered five issues, from 1936 to 1939) and a secret society formed by Bataille and others who had sworn to keep silent. Its name is derived from the Greek ἀκέφαλος (akephalos, literally "headless").^[1]

Acéphale, the review

Dated 24 June 1936, the first issue was only eight pages. The cover was illustrated by André Masson with a drawing openly inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing of Vitruvian Man, who embodies classical reason. Masson's figure, however, is headless, his groin covered by a skull, and holds in his right hand a burning heart, while in his left he wields a dagger. Under the title Acéphale are printed the words Religion. Sociologie. Philosophie followed on the next line by the expression the sacred conjuration (la conjuration sacrée).

The first article, signed by Bataille, is titled "The Sacred Conjuration" and claims that "Secretly or not... it is necessary to become different or else cease to be."^[2] Further on, Bataille wrote: "Human life is exasperated by having served as the head and reason of the universe. Insofar as it becomes this head and this reason, insofar as it becomes necessary to the universe, it accepts serfdom."^[3]

The second issue of the review begins with a large article titled "Nietzsche and Fascists", in which Bataille violently attacks Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche's sister, who had married the notorious antisemite Bernhard Förster — the wedding had led to a final rupture between Nietzsche and his sister.^[4] Bataille thereby called Elisabeth Elisabeth Judas-Förster, recalling Nietzsche's declaration: "To never frequent anyone who is involved in this bare-faced fraud concerning races."

The same issue contains an unedited text of Nietzsche on Heraclitus from Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen (Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks), as well as an article from Jean Wahl titled "Nietzsche and the Death of God," which is a commentary on a text from Karl Jaspers on Nietzsche.

The other issues also centered on Nietzsche. The last one, prepared but ultimately not published, was titled "Nietzsche's madness" (La folie de Nietzsche). These references to Nietzsche were directed against the philosopher's appropriation by Nazism - despite Nietzsche's opposition against anti-semitism - as one of its seminal thinkers, leading to Nietzsche's unpopularity at the time in France.

Apart from Bataille, who signed most of the texts, Roger Caillois (issue 3 and 4), Pierre Klossowski (issue 1, 2, 3 and 4), André Masson, Jules Monnerot (issue 3 and 4), Jean Rollin^[5] and Jean Wahl (in the second issue) also participated in the review.

The secret society

Because of its very nature, it is difficult to describe the society's acts. Bataille referred several times to Marcel Mauss who had studied secret societies in Africa, describing them as a "total social phenomenon". On this model, he organized several nocturnal meetings in the woods, near an oak which had been struck by lightning. Members of the Acéphale society were required to adopt several rituals, such as refusing to shake hands with antisemites and celebrating the decapitation of Louis XVI, an event which prefigured the "chiefless crowd" targeted by "acéphalité". Members of the society were also invited to meditation, on texts of Nietzsche, Freud, Sade and Mauss read during the assemblies. To psychologically prepare for the violence and losses that active duty in the French Resistance to Vichy—Nazi occupation of France would bring, members discussed carrying out a human sacrifice, but this may never have been carried out.^[6]

The Encyclopaedia Da Costa

Acephale also published Encyclopaedia Da Costa (Da Costa Encyclopédique), meant to coincide with the 1947 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris, but due to printing delays, the Encyclopedia was not distributed until months after the exhibition ended. Modelled after the format of a conventional encyclopedia, it lambasted social and individual conventions with an unprecedented fervor, as well as putting forth more obscure ideas.

Perhaps its most insolent entry was the "License to Live", a faux governmental form requesting vital statistics from the bearer in order to enforce its legal fiat; the penalty for failing to keep the document "in order" was death. The license was likely an invention of Marcel Duchamp, typographer for the Encyclopaedia Da Costa, and was a gesture that had no obvious relationship to the art object as it is commonly known. A precursor to "License to Live" appears in an earlier note in Duchamp's Green Box, published in 1934 but written 20 years earlier, where he imagines a society in which people must pay for the air they breathe.

By the end of the century the encyclopedia fell into obscurity, partly because those who created it actively discouraged interested parties from procuring copies.

Notes

^ The Sacred Conspiracy The Internal Papers of the Secret Society of Acéphale and Lectures to the College of Sociology
^ « Il est temps d'abandonner le monde des civilisés et sa lumière. Il est trop tard pour tenir à être raisonnable et instruit — ce qui a mené à une vie sans attrait. Secrètement ou non, il est nécessaire de devenir tout autres ou de cesser d'être. » (in French)
^ « La vie humaine est excédée de servir de tête et de raison à l'univers. Dans la mesure où elle devient cette tête et cette raison, dans la mesure où elle devient nécessaire à l'univers, elle accepte un servage. » (in French)
^ See e.g. Nietzsche, "Nice, end of December 1887: Draft of letter to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche" Archived July 15, 2011, at the Wayback Machine:"In the meantime I've seen proof, black on white, that Herr Dr. Förster has not yet severed his connection with the anti-Semitic movement. [...] Since then I've had difficulty coming up with any of the tenderness and protectiveness I've so long felt toward you. The separation between us is thereby decided in really the most absurd way. Have you grasped nothing of the reason why I am in the world? [...] Now it has gone so far that I have to defend myself hand and foot against people who confuse me with these anti-Semitic canaille; after my own sister, my former sister, and after Widemann more recently have given the impetus to this most dire of all confusions. After I read the name Zarathustra in the anti-Semitic Correspondence my forbearance came to an end. I am now in a position of emergency defense against your spouse's Party. These accursed anti-Semite deformities shall not sully my ideal!!"
^ Not to be confused with the filmmaker of the same name, who was born in 1938.
^ Bataille, Georges (1985). "Introduction". In Stoekl, Allan (ed.). Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939. University of Minnesota Press. pp. xx–xxi. ISBN 978-0-8166-1283-3.

Bibliography

Texts from Georges Bataille

L'apprenti Sorcier : Ce que j'ai à dire, éd. de la Différence, Paris, 1937
Acéphale, réédition des numéros publiés et du numéro final non publié, éd. Jean-Michel Place, Paris, 1995
L'Apprenti Sorcier (textes, lettres et documents (1932–1939) rassemblés, présentés et annotés par Marina Galletti), Éditions de la Différence, Paris, 1999
The Sacred Conspiracy (The Internal Papers of the Secret Society of Acéphale and Lectures to the College of Sociology, edited by Marina Galletti and Alastair Brotchie), Atlas Press, London, 25 January 2018

Other references

Maurice Blanchot, La communauté inavouable, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris,
Marcel Mauss, Manuel d'ethnographie, Petite bibliothèque Payot, Paris, 1967
Michel Surya, Georges Bataille, la mort à l'œuvre, Gallimard, Paris, 1992
L'unebévue, n° 16 : Les communautés électives, EPEL, 2000
Stephan Moebius, Die Zauberlehrlinge. Soziologiegeschichte des Collège de Sociologie, Konstanz 2006.