Since the publication in France of his Oeuvres Completes in the mid-1970s, the breadth of Bataille's writing and influence has become increasingly apparent across the disciplines in, for example, the fields of literature, art, art history, philosophy, critical theory, sociology, economics, and anthropology.

Fred Botting and Scott Wilson both teach in the Department of English at Lancaster University. They are co-editors of George Bataille: A Critical Reader (1997). Fred Bottings publications include Gothic (1996). Scott Wilson is the author of Cultural Materialism: Theory and Practice (Blackwell Publishers, 1995).