#SQUADGOALS (49)
By:
December 6, 2017
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars during 2017, on the subject of our favorite squads.
Acéphale, the journal, was a project begun by Georges Bataille, one that grew out of his earlier collaboration with André Breton, Contre-Attaque. While not as explicitly anti-fascist as Contre-Attaque, Acéphale was hardly apolitical. Celebrating Dionysus, rescuing Nietzsche from the fascists, Acéphale responded to the growing wave of fascism with a sort of politics of the ecstatic, a further evolution of Bataille’s philosophy of sacred expenditure and the sovereignty of useless waste.
Of Acéphale the secret society, very few details are known. All members refused to shake hands with anti-Semites, they commemorated the decapitation of Louis XVI at the Place de la Concorde, and there was at least one midnight sojourn to the forest near Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche. “About twenty of us took the train to Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche,” Pierre Klossowski later recalled. “We were told, ‘Meditate, but secretly. Never speak a word of what you felt or thought!’ Bataille never told us anything more. He never explained what this kind of ceremony represented. I can tell you that it was very beautiful…. I only remember that particular evening as pouring with rain. There was a Greek fire at the foot of a tree struck by lightning. A whole stage set…. It was very beautiful.”
Beyond that, members were sworn to a secrecy that all more or less maintained. Of the more outlandish rumors surrounding the society — rumors involving ritualized orgies, and the sacrifice of animals and an aborted human sacrifice — nothing is known beyond conjecture.
What fascinates me is not any of the particulars of Acéphale (though none of us, of course, has any business associating with anti-Semites), but a secrecy so perfect that any supposed aspects of the society that are leaked to the public seem so monstrous and bizarre that they are utterly implausible: the more outlandish they are, the more they both seem to be true (or else why would they be so widely circulated?), and also call the entire truth of the society into question (since how could such an organization exist?) — a confusion that does nothing but reflect back explicitly on to the black edifice of that secrecy.
#SQUADGOALS: Annie Nocenti on THE WILD BUNCH | Alice Boone on PRETTY LITTLE LIARS | Gordon Dahlquist on BOWIE’S BAND | Rob Wringham on THE HOME GUARD | Jennifer Krasinski on WATERSHIP DOWN RABBITS | Annalee Newitz on ROBIN HOOD’S MERRY PALS | Adrienne Crew on THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP | Mark Kingwell on THE HONG KONG CAVALIERS | Adam McGovern on KAMANDI’S FAMILY | John Overholt on THE CLUB | Greg Rowland on THE VULTURE SQUADRON | Sara Ryan on BETSY, TACY & TIB | Chelsey Johnson on VI ÄR BÄST! | Brian Berger on THE JOHN FORD STOCK COMPANY | Sherri Wasserman on THE WARRIORS | Jessamyn West on FAREYNIKTE PARTIZANER ORGANIZATSYE | Josh Glenn on DADA | Matthew De Abaitua on THE TIME | Mandy Keifetz on THE FOUNDING FATHERS | William Nericcio on ZOOT SUIT PACHUCOS | Deb Chachra on FIREFLY CREW | Matthew Battles on THE ANIMAL FAMILY | Ingrid Schorr on THE HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS | Joe Alterio on THE USUAL GANG OF IDIOTS | Dan Reines on THE BREAKFAST CLUB | Rob Walker on LES TROIS INSÉPARABLES | Devin McKinney on 1975 RED SOX | Steph Burt on DAMAGE CONTROL | Elina Shatkin on THE HOLOGRAMS | Chris Spurgeon on THE ALKALI METALS | Carl Wilson on NEW YORK SCHOOL POETS | Barbara Bogaev on THE MOD SQUAD | Franklin Bruno on THE AACM | Judith Zissman on THE FUTURIANS | Mimi Zeiger on ARCHIGRAM | Jacob Mikanowski on THE RATBASTARDS | Lynn Peril on THE DALY SISTERS | Anindita Basu Sempere on MEG MURRY’S FAMILY | Libi Rose on THE ENIAC TEAM | Gary Panter on THE TRIBE OF HIPPIES | Peter Doyle on CORNEL WILDE BOYS | Ken Layne on THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG | Molly Wright Steenson on BAUHAUS | Katie Hennessey on BEAT POETS | Mimi Lipson on THE RUNAWAYS | Jordan Ellenberg on BOURBAKI | Michael Campochiaro on THE SUICIDE SQUAD | Deborah Wassertzug on THE BLOODHOUND GANG | Colin Dickey on ACÉPHALE | Douglas Wolk on SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY | David Smay on THE MYSTIC KNIGHTS OF THE OINGO BOINGO | Karinne Keithley Syers on BLACKLIPS PERFORMANCE CULT.
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