The Accursed Share

Notes & Resources

• Is Bataille's Conception of General Economy Credible?

Highlights

Imported: 2025-07-25 10:43 pm

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Preface Page 5

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I had a point of view from which a human sacrifice, the construction of a church or the gift of a jewel were no less interesting than the sale of wheat. In short, I had to try in vain to make clear the notion of a "general economy" in which the "expenditure" (the "consumption") of wealth, rather than production, was the primary object. Page 5

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No one can say without being comical that he is getting ready to over­turn things: He must overturn, and that is all. Page 6

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Indeed, the ebullition I consider, which aQimates the globe, is also my ebullition. Thus, the object of my research cannot be dis­ tinguished from the subject at its bOiling point. In this way, even before finding a difficulty in receiving its place in the common move­ ment of ideas, my enterprise came up against the most personal obstacle, which moreover gives the book its fundamental meaning. Page 6

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Writing this book in which I was saying that energy finally can only be wasted, I myself was using my energy, my time, work­ ing; my research answered in a fundamental way the desire to add to the amount of wealth acquired for mankind. Should I say that under these conditions I sometimes could only respond to the truth ofmy book and could not go on writing it? Page 7

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the sexual act is in time what the tiBer is in space. Page 8

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it is not necessity but its contrary, "luxury," that presents livinB matter and mankind with theirfundamental problems. Page 8

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And yet that is the crucial analysis that alone can adequately circumscribe the opposition of two political methods: that of fear and the anxious search for a solution, combining the pursuit of freedom with the imperatives that are the most opposed to free­dom; and that of freedom of mind, which issues from the global resources of life, a freedom for which, instantly, everything is resolved, everything is rich - in other words, everything that is com­mensurate with the universe. I insist on the fact that, to freedom of mind, the search for a solution is an exuberance, a superfluity; this gives it an incomparable force. To solve political problems becomes difficult for those who allow anxiety alone to pose them. It is necessary for anxiety to pose them. But their solution demands at a certain point the removal of this anxiety. The meaning of the political proposals to which this book leads, and that I fonnu­late at the end of the volume, is linked to this lucid attitude. Page 10

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Page 11

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The Meaning of General Economy Page 12

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The Dependence 0/ the Economy on the Circulation 0/ EnerBY on the Earth Page 12

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Economic phe­nomena are not easy to isolate, and their general coordination is not easy to establish. So it is possible to raise this question con­cerning them: Shouldn't productive activity as a whole be consid­ ered in terms of the modifications it receives from its surroundings or brings about in its surroundings? In other words, isn't there a need to study the system of human production and consumption within a much larger framework? Page 13

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In overall industrial development, are there not social con­flicts and planetary wars? In the global activity of men, in short, are there not causes and effects that will appear only provided that the general data of the economy are studied? Will we be able to make ourselves the masters of such a dangerous activity (and one that we could not abandon in any case) without having grasped its general consequences? Should we not, given the constant devel­ opment of economic forces, pose the general problems that are linked to the movement of energy on the globe? Page 13

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The Necessity of Losing the Excess Energy that Cannot be Used for a System's Growth Page 13

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Is the general determination of energy circulating in the biosphere altered by man's activity? Or rather, isn't the latter's intention vitiated by a determination of which it is ignorant, which it overlooks and cannot change? Page 14

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Man's disregard for the material basis of his life still causes him to err in a serious way. Humanity exploits given material resources, but by restricting them as it does to a resolution of the immediate difficulties it encounters (a resolution which it has hastily had to define as an ideal), it assigns to the forces it employs an end which they cannot have. Beyond our immediate ends, man's activity in fact pursues the useless and infinite ful­fillment of the universe. 1 Page 14

• [N] Man uses resources to solve immediate issues via a utilitarian lens, like survival, hunger, scarcity, restricted economy, but wrongly uplifts this to an ideal, ignoring the excess. Beyond these immediate ends, man pursues to spend the excess, dissipate the accursed share in alignment with cosmic flows, through art, war, ritual, luxury, non-productive expenditure, We mustn't ignore the dissipation of this excess or else it has the potential to be catastrophic, this is the study of the general economy.

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The living organism, in a situa­tion determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintain­ ing life; the excess energy (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an organism); if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, will­ingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically. Page 14

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The Poverty of Organisms or Limited Systems and the Excess Wealth of Living Nature Page 15