/lit/ - Literature

>>18944807
I have the same doubts, bump

Debunked by economics

>>18944807
to be good it would first have to be an actual thing, which it is not

>>18944998
What do you mean?

>>18945037
expenditure as Bataille describes it does not exist, it is a projection of his absurd assumptions.

>>18945055
Does he say that it doesn't exist or do you just want to say that using excess in such a way is not real? Please elaborate, I don't want to keep asking the same thing for each post. Thanks.

>>18945055
What, you don't think a society, or an organism for that matter, amasses more energy than it can use and has to dispose of the excess in some, broadly-speaking, wasteful way? Perhaps some of Bataille's conclusions are disagreeable but the starting point of a general economy feels fairly solid.
>>18944807
The Notion of Expenditure essay imo is only useful if you are interested in the history of a writer's thought. Bataille's final, more developed word on it is from The Accursed Share.

>>18944807
>Is expenditure a good thing?
Expenditure cannot be described in ethical terms, but only in economic/political ones. Every organism consumes stuff for its growth, bu that growth has a limit, and when an organism reaches it, the excess energy produced from its consupmtion has to find a way to be released. That release can be found in procreation or "luxury" production, in wasteful production, such as the arts, sex, and such. The most cataclysmic release of that energy is war. That's Bataille's argument very broadly speaking. What part of it do you not understand?

>>18945193
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.
Since his 'mystical' side is what I'm more interested in, should I also keep something else in mind from this essay or even the Accursed Share (I might read it eventually, but it's really not my goal).

>>18944807
Do you mind explaining expenditure as explained by Bataille? Not everyone's read him here and it's hard to assess how "good" or "bad" it is with no explanation.

>>18945199
>What part of it do you not understand?
The point of the essay, really. Maybe I should have formulated my question differently. I understand what expenditure is and different contexts he explains them in, but I don't know where he's going with all that. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked "is expenditure a good thing", but something like "is nonproductive expenditure expressed as the usage of the excess something beneficial to the individual or the community etc etc". I hope you get what I mean.

>>18945209
I'm asking people who've read him and understood him to help me understand him. My question was in the context of his own essay and philosophy so even if I explain what expenditure is, you can't really answer my question. Besides, it's 13 pages long, if you're willing to participate in the thread you can probably read it before this shit is archived.

>>18945270
Trying to work out in your own words what you don't understand too much yet is always helpful. And alright, yeah fair enough.

>>18945270
>but something like "is nonproductive expenditure expressed as the usage of the excess something beneficial to the individual or the community etc etc". I hope you get what I mean.
I can only go off of what I know from my readings of the neoclassical orthodoxy and heterodoxy, of marxism, and neo-ricardianism but I have to ask what do you think are the assumptions behind what is and is not productive? As far as he explains it at least. The distribution or destruction of surplus is relevant for all economic systems, after all. Even Bataille as implied.

>>18945207
If there's a sort of key to his whole project it would be "heterology," which unites sovereignty, the proletariat, the accursed share, the sacred, the erotic , and so forth. All have a sort of equality of existing as marginal or different from the bourgeois homo oeconomicus/faber

>>18945157
the word "excess" as he uses it, regardless of what he says, does not apply to anything in the real world. not seeing how this is hard to understand.
>>18945193
>What, you don't think a society, or an organism for that matter, amasses more energy than it can use and has to dispose of the excess in some, broadly-speaking, wasteful way?
no. even if this is true of scattered particular examples it is not a general principle of the natural or social universe. all of Bataille's examples are based in outdated and unacceptable "anthropology" or are situations that can be more easily and coherently explained literally any other way (like muh Aztec human sacrifice). It is patently obvious that if there is any general economic principle in human existence it is scarcity. the amount of willful blindness and edge you have to adopt to see excess and waste everywhere just because coomerdaddy Bataille says so is astounding.

>>18945308
By 'nonproductive' expenditure I was really mostly saying it as he did
>humanity recognizes the right to acquire, to conserve, and to consume rationally, but it excludes in principle nonproductive expenditure.
but I guess I'd say that it means nothing more than expenditure itself as the usage of resources for, let's call them, non-life-preserving purposes.

>>18945320
>It is patently obvious that if there is any general economic principle in human existence it is scarcity
Everyone more or less considers the poor to be subhuman anyway. So if you discount the obvious evidence of scarcity, which socities do, ignoring that large swathes of people have almost nothing relative to the rest, at that point there is certainly a surplus which does not get used to ensure everyone is living in comfort or without need, but for some other abstract purpose like the demonstration of power through disposal and destruction. And from this observation is it also not apparent that scarcity is a problem of distribution of the energy available? That the abundance was used to make more humans than a society is interested in actually providing for becomes a sort of revolutionary game of chicken, as if to say, "look at how much inequality we can manifest to appear all the more magnificent by comparison."

>>18945320
>It is patently obvious that if there is any general economic principle in human existence it is scarcity.
"As dreadful as it is, human poverty has never had a strong enough hold on societies to cause the concern for conservation-which gives production the appearance of an end-to dominate the concern for unproductive expenditure." - Notion of Expenditure itself.
Even if we ignore your projections, the question in the OP was in the context of Bataille's philosophy.

>>18945341
I mean, even on the basis of utility there would be situations where there will be groups who would go to war exactly because they lack surplus or excess energy. Part of things like weighing potential costs against potential returns is where even the loss of life or a generally "wasteful exercise" is better than having to lose both the resources and potential gains in general.

An example may be like Charles X's situation in Sweden: large army but short on cash to pay its troops. Ya boy notices the Poles are in a bit of a pickle and the Swedes initiate a little thing called the Deluge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(history)

Another might be that expenditure and accumulation is for risk-insurance which is part of what offers the standing reserve of things (to use a Heideggerianism).

In a sense, the point may be that things like 'productive' and 'unproductive' can only make any real sense retroactively. There is no proper a prior way to declare that an action or usage is going to be an unproductive expenditure if say the entire point of the conflict was something completely unrelated. I do admit that I haven't read Bataille yet but that's cus it's quite late and cus I'm dealing with this given all I know from my general reading of economics, philosophy, and history. I'll get to reading something of his tomorrow.

>>18944807
Don't bother with Bataille he was a deranged and sick man
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/05/french-philosopher-georges-bataille-founded-a-secret-society-and-wanted-to-carry-out-a-human-sacrifice/

>>18945650
Based

>>18944807
What do you mean by "good thing"? Bataille's concept of expenditure is a transcendental trait: something that is common to all matter that is individuated. (Like it or not, you and I are expending right now, conscious and unconsciously)

>>18945650
Cope, moraloid.

>>18945528
Haha thanks, but my question was really of expenditure in context of Bataille's philosophy and especially this essay, but-

>>18945899
-I guess I should have been as broad and as blunt with my question, so thing might help us all:
What's the point of the essay. Why is it 13 pages long instead of a paragraph explaining what expenditure is?

>>18946012
Sorry my man. I guess the question Battaile was posing is just different from what most economists think is relevant, which is a definite something for his novelty at least. It is only a question if it's a positive novelty or an irrelevant one.

>>18945650
we live in a society, acephalics need to rise up...
>>18946012
>why write a lot instead of a little
you must be new to philosophy

>>18946372
>>why write a lot instead of a little
Not my point

>>18944807
Despite, or besides, what others have said itt, expenditure is, let's face it, kind of a "good" thing for Bataille, or what he's in favor of. Against, that is, its restriction: restricted economy, work, the principle of utility. Expenditure is the position of sovereignty, of the summit. Concretely, the excess to be spent known as the accursed share can be done so (spent) in "good" or "bad" ways, in expressions of art and festival or in war. Like that it can be good for the community, but - and here Inner Experience, Guilty, On Nietzsche come in - at the same time, what Bataille can only accept, cannot but desire even, it is not a contented goodness, a completed happiness; it is rending, rending the security of the self (individual or collective) apart. . .

>>18944807
Bataille really tries, inspired by late Marx (Althusser red.), to be nonmoral about his analysis: He shows the progress of history and the current contradiction. If you want his personal view you should read Sacred Conspiracy.

>>18946710
Yeah, I read that one before the Notion of Expenditure, but I didn't know what to take from it. Maybe I should reread every essay after every other one.

To continue >>18946710
Here's a link to a recitation of the text since /lit/ is a horse cum collector board and no-one here actually has read anything ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEqFJeSBMPU

>>18946727
Arh you're going with my list!
The essays really elaborate on each other - what is clear to me in these two essays is that Bataille's metanarrative, the reason why he rejects capitalism and modernity in favour of something more communal is that he thinks capitalism with its lack of what Artaud terms culture - an expenditure through culture - is fucking ugly, not an existence worth falling in love with, you know.

To continue >>18946775
We need to remember when Bataille quotes Blake and states that "Exuberance is Beauty"

>>18946775
>he rejects capitalism and modernity in favour of something more communal
cringe

>>18946868
Capitalism is pretty gay desu, senpai. Especially consumer capitalism. It's so fucking soul-sucking and dead.

>>18944807
Expenditure = plenitude after the death of God, or the facticity of plenitude/superabundance without using the concept of God to explain it.

>>18946985
>It's so fucking soul-sucking and dead.
sure but i don't buy this 'return to community' hippie bs either

>>18947321
Your local community and family is all you really have sometimes my guy.

>>18947321
>>18947398

He's really REALLY not a trad.

I do not find a Bataille x Alasdair MacIntyre synthesis impossible: McIntyre's communalism which avoids falling into nationalist traps and with a Marxist literacy together with Bataille's Materialist mode of analysis of religious communities could really be a trip.


Some very inadequate definitions to better understand my earlier comments.
Modernity=the relation to the world where the world merely exists for the subject.

Capitalism=The mode of production where this sovereign subject is capital.

>>18947477
>I do not find a Bataille x Alasdair MacIntyre synthesis impossible
I haven't read much of them but they seem very antipodal to each other

>>18947477
I could tell he's not. It's fine. My political economy is more of a mix of Piero Sraffa's physicalism, Hayekian uncertainty, and Veblen and Baudrillard's consumption interpretations of capitalism. It's an odd mix I will admit.

>>18947713
>Baudrillard's consumption interpretations of capitalism
Isn't this just updated Bataille?

>>18945270
>is nonproductive expenditure expressed as the usage of the excess something beneficial to the individual or the community etc etc
>beneficial to the individual or the community
It doesn't matter, the point Bataille is making is that wasteful expenditure exists and cannot be avoided. It can be aimed at benefical things, like art, sex and luxury, or it can be aimed at destructive endeavors, like war. Bataille is not a moralist, so he doesn't advocate for an ethical use of expenditure since, again, expenditure cannot be understood in ethical terms (which in your repharsing you are still assuming). It is a fact of general economy, the point is that it has no utilitarian purpose since it's excess energy that is going to waste regardless. I think the idea might not make much sense to you since you are trying to understand it in terms strange to it, i.e. ethical terms/benefical-harmful/etc

bummmmmp

>>18949801
bum

>>18946012
>Why is it 13 pages long instead of a paragraph explaining what expenditure is?
Bataille's way of writing is pretty weird: sometimes he write stuff that need 15-30 pages on 1 paragraph (see: Formless), sometimes he write something that has no relation at all with the title of his text (see: Materialism [the entry to the Discourse Magazine Dictionary]). You souldn't expect him to be consistent or clear or anything, hes just weird. I have the theory that it was because he masturbated a lot.

>>18951395
Fascinating theory, I'll keep it in mind.

>>18951395
>I have the theory that it was because he masturbated a lot.
kek
I think it's his dada/surrealist roots shining through

>>18946441
Just to add your post, I think it's specifically useless expenditure Bataille likes. Even religious sacrifice can serve a real utility if it is formalized and ritualized as an outlet/release lever that only better establishes and legitimates the community. The useless expense Bataille seems to like appears more like suicide or orgasm.

>>18951520
>The useless expense Bataille seems to like appears more like suicide or orgasm.
Can you elaborate please

>>18951589
it has no relation with maintaining individual-cosistency, but consistency wastage: dying, unbeing.

>>18951694
Does he discuss suicide in some of his writings?

One more bump