The Accursed Share: Volume 1: Consumption Book

Georges Bataille's book of, um, 'political economy' begins "That as a rule an organism has at its disposal greater energy resources than are necessary for the operations that sustain life [...] is evident from functions like growth and reproduction" and follows this energy surplus of the terrestrial-host animal through to its dissolution "willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically". We receive more energy from the sun than can be spent productively; so it must be expelled unproductively. Bataille asserts with characteristic puissance that the excess of energy & the onanistic inferno of its disposal is the primary process which pulsates through economic systems and activates productive forces--rather than demand, capital, labour power, etc. This doesn't necessarily contradict orthodox theories of the market but insists that we understand them as epiphenomenal functions to a solar metaphysics of thermodynamic circulation.

The energy surplus itself is 'The Accursed Share' because its disposal is a volatile process; for every beneficent carnival, potlatch and festival amid tight-knit social bonds, there is also opulent religious wastefulness, human sacrifice and the evil wars of bloodthirsty empires--special mention to WWI and WWII. And this ritual euthanasia of unspent energy is not merely primary to our survival; disbursal of the explosive plethora of solar residue flows into joy, art, eroticism and transcendence. There is quite a lot of historical / anthropological data used to support the slightly exorbitant claims, which are impossible to prove but interesting to observe in context. Still, for all its research, The Accursed Share will never be taught in an economics class and cannot be arbitrated except by the stiffest criteria of falsifiability--which would be seriously missing the point.

Bataille brought this to speed with the contemporary post-war environment and you could continue to do so long after his death. Think of our depraved piracy of smaller nations, seizing the glut of resources interred there; energy sources converted into a surfeit of corpulent exuberance which are binged to resource our next imperial adventure. Only slightly further afield, think of modern consumerism, proxy / drone warfare and, I would say, certain developments in technology; nanotech, automation, the AI singularity and other shades of posthuman silicone-fetishism may be the final jailbreak of the accursed share.

My only gripe is stylistic. The sentences are really choppy in some places, flip flopping between clauses arbitrarily, an infelicity which frustrated me with Eroticism and Literature and Evil. I don't know if this is a problem with the translations or is being faithfully reproduced from Bataille's French--but the translations of his literary works, especially The Story of the Eye, are very lyrical and pleasant to read (on the level of style anyway...) So what gives?