CARLO GINZBURG AS READER OF GEORGES BATAILLE

HISTORY, MYTH AND FASCISM

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss Carlo Ginzburg's approach to Georges Bataille's work and trajectory in Europe during the 1930s. He appreciates it in two distinct moments, however, constructed in a similar way. In both essays, the Italian historian interprets Bataillean intellectual production as a necessary "deviation" for a discussion about characters as distinct as they are supposedly linked to Bataille and the philosfascism of the French thinker. In the first essay, the French mythologist Georges Dumézil; in the second, the famous artist Pablo Picasso and his work Guernica (1937). In this sense, this study seeks to problematize these two approaches and to lead the reader to some final considerations about Ginzburg's appreciation of Bataille's thought.