Notes1 The Threshold of Religion, p. xxxi; quoted in Kerr (1991:249).
2 A draft of this ideal-type as well as further outlooks highlighting the religiosity of rave
can be found in Gauthier and Ménard (2001). The ideal-type was drawn from
personal observation and from printed material on rave, most of which can be found
cited in the bibliography.
3 For a more thorough discussion on the odds and ends of this distinction as a basis for
a comprehensive understanding of religion today, see Ménard (1999).
4 Even Peter Berger (1999) is acknowledging today the mistake social sciences and
humanities made by ruling out the religious component from cultural and political
analysis. Berger’s understanding of the religious, meanwhile, remains more restricted
than the views presented here.
5 As far as I know, there has yet to be any translation of Roger Bastide’s text Le Sacré sauvage
(Bastide 1997:209–29); nor do I know of any use made of his categories
‘institue/‘instituant’ and ‘sauvage’/‘domestique’. The difficult task of introducing this
terminology in English therefore falls upon my shoulders and I hope that the liberty
and responsibility this involves will be greeted with some leniency.
6 While ‘instituted’ religion is easily translated from the French ‘institué’, the case of
instituant religion is somewhat problematic. ‘Instituant’, in French, is the present
participle of the verb ‘instituer’ (to institute), and could therefore warrant the use of
the English equivalent ‘instituting’. However, the present participle in French is more
restricted in its use, rarer, almost specialized, compared to its relatively common use in
English (Morton 1979:42). Therefore, calling on a certain tradition of translating
concepts verbatim while aiming to maintain the specific meaning and depth of Bastide’s
theory, I will plead for the introduction of the term ‘instituant’.
7 It is the aim of the Christian mass, for example, to help relive the instituant experience
of Christ. When the mass no longer purports instituancy and is unable to renew itself,
the ritual dies out and new ones emerge. The Protestant Reformation, for this matter,
is an excellent example of the instituted ritual of mass renewing with the instituant
fervour that drives the Christian faith.
8 Bastide gives the Brazilian macumba, a highly syncretistic and feral version of African
religion, as an example of this (1997:209–29).
9 The profusion of anything and everything ‘extreme’ (either lived or mediated) is an
example of this. The French anthropologist David Le Breton has written substantially
on this phenomenon (see Le Breton 2000).
10 As Robert Hurley translates (Bataille 1989), from the French ‘part maudite’. This is
not the place to discuss such things at length, and so I will stick to Hurley’s English
terminology for the remainder of this contribution. Personally, though, I think
‘damned’ or even ‘blasted’ has a somewhat punkish and provocative feel that could
better serve Bataille’s radical ideas than the priestly ‘accursed’.
11 The original version of La Part maudite (Bataille 1949) was prefaced by La Notion de
dépense, which is close to essential for understanding the latter and which is
unfortunately absent in Hurley’s translation.
12 Bataille understands violence as being essentially a rupture or transgression of an
order.78 FRANÇOIS GAUTHIER