André Breton - Georges Bataille polemic
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André Breton was obviously the driving force behind surrealism, and he ran the movement in a dictatorial style, even expelling several of its members in the Second Surrealist Manifesto in 1929. Several of these ex-members started adhering to Georges Bataille's journal Documents.
Most sources state that Breton called Bataille an "excrement-philosopher" (philosophe-excrément) in the Second Surrealist Manifesto, but in reality these words are nowhere to be found in that text. In the words of Breton, Bataille is presented as a "sick person" who suffers from a « déficit conscient à forme généralisatrice », a sufferer of « psychasthenia » who moves with delight in a "world unclean, senile, rancid, sordid, lewd and senile (souillé, sénile, rance, sordide, égrillard, gâteux).
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