Death haunts the works of Georges Bataille (1897-1962), where it is the object of deliberately provocative description. The reason for this is simple : death belongs to the world of the sacred. It is from here that we get the two rites – the one horrific, the other more expected – which mark its appearance : necrophilia and the wake. These two rites appear to be very different, but they are, in fact, identical : they both underline the necessity, as pointed out by Hegel, an inspiration to Bataille, of bearing in mind the negativity of death. Placed in a contemporary context, Bataille seems to have thus anticipated the “denial” of death and of the dead body which, according to the experts, characterizes today’s society, a denial which the author of the article illustrates through his personal experience (case of a French village affected by the “de-ritualization” of funerals). To remedy this crisis, Bataille proposes that the living not turn away from the dead.