Preview: Georges Bataille's The Accursed Share Vol. 2

After reading the preface of The Accursed Share Volume 2, I was comforted to know that I was at least as confused by Volume 1 as Bataille's contemporaries were. And, it seems that Bataille actually intended to confuse his readers a bit. "I do not now wish to dispel a malaise that I have deliberately provoked," he wrote. "I believe this malaise is necessary. Let one consider the abyss that is open for humanity!"  

Bataille does, however, connect some of the dots he laid out in his first volume. For example, he explains that Volume 1's study of General Economy focused on consumption, particularly needless consumption as an inevitable fact of human existence. Naturally, I found myself asking asking this: "If needless consumption -or profitless operation- is ethically beneficial, or if it fulfills a social need, is it not necessary rather than needless?" 

A woman walks through the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park

Bataille begins to answer this question by introducing the idea of eroticism. Eroticism, Bataille contents, is a base energy that has a huge impact on the human mind, and consequently on human behavior. Unlike sexuality, which is quite useful and necessary for reproduction, eroticism serves no purpose; it's the shameful taboo side of sex that's always present, but never acknowledged in polite society. Bataille makes clear here that he intends to shift his readers' focus from a study of energy consumption in the physical world, to a study of excess within the mind itself.

Anyone who has seen a middle aged man driving a two hundred thousand dollar sports car knows he's wasted that much of his wealth. But does the driver of that car know? In his own mind, he's getting something for the expenditure, prestige, excitement, and maybe something more. Perhaps he's captured the gaze of a beautiful young woman or man who would've paid him no such attention if he was driving, say, a Toyota. Then again, maybe that thought is just fantasy, the daydream of a man who should know better than to think a Ferrari alone would be enough to make up for his glaring insecurity. In either case, Bataille's leap from consumption to eroticism is an enticing turn.

The Accursed Share Volumes 2 & 3, published by Zone Books in 1991, is translated by Robert Hurley. The original book, titled La Parte Maudite, was published in France by Les Editions de Minuit in 1967.