Bataille, Lascaux and the Artistic Degradation of the Neolithic

Abstract

This writing aims to provide clarity and forcefulness to the enigmatic sayings of Georges Bataille about the paleolithic art of Lascaux that he develops in his book Lascaux or the birth of art (2011). It is not so easy to assimilate Bataille's assessments about Lascaux, since he calls this prehistoric creation a “miraculous” and exceptional fact that enables a determining “truth” about the human condition. Leaving aside the idea that Bataille maintains metaphysical speculations without much epistemic rigor and supporting the thesis that by carefully reading this author's sayings a solid, coherent and rational idea about his thinking regarding art can be reconstructed, I maintain the following hypothesis: In Lascaux an intimate and inseparable link between the artistic and history is crystallized, since what is at stake there is actually the explicit display of a conception that challenges traditional historiography. This disruptive character of art makes Bataille deposit there a type of singular knowledge that is incomprehensible from the propositional, positive or cumulative logic that developed from the Neolithic revolution. For this task, I will take into account the views on history held by authors such as Georges Didi-Huberman (2006), Walter Benjamin (2008) y Michel De Certeau (2007), who from their critical position on historiographic knowledge contribute to clarifying Bataille's enigmatic position with respect to the subject.