The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy; Volume II. The History of Eroticism and Volume III. Sovereignty

by Georges Bataille, Robert Hurley (Translator)

The three volumes of The Accursed Share address what Georges Bataille sees as the paradox of utility: namely, if being useful means serving a further end, then the ultimate end of utility can only be uselessness. In the second and third volumes, The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty, Bataille explores the same paradox of utility from an anthropological and an ethical perspective, respectively. The History of Eroticism analyzes the fears and fascination, the prohibitions and transgressions attached to the realm of eroticism as so many expressions of the "uselessness" of erotic life.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Theory, Economics, France, Politics

460 pages, Paperback

First published October 4, 1976

About the author

French essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers have all written enthusiastically about his work.

Reviews

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only Bataille can provide the universe with a book in which you can read chapters on the "Allurement Linked to the Corpse's Putrification" to the "Difficulty and Timeliness of Knowing What Communism Ultimately Means” in a single tome.

[Michael A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eclectic book for sure. As a previous reviewer hinted at, this might be the only book in existence that talks about the allurement of the putrefaction of corpses and the transgression of taboos, and an extensive discussion of Stalin, communism, de Sade, Gide, and Nietzsche.

For the most part, it seems as though the eroticism section doesn't seem too different from what is elucidated in his masterwork "Erotism: Death and Sensuality". He even repeats similar refrains such as "does shit disgust us because it smells or does it smell because it disgusts us?" and the St. Augustine thing about being born between piss and shit. There is one thing that I don't seem to recall being in the latter though, and that is this that the "object of desire is the universe, or the totality of being". I am not exactly sure what he means by this, but it seems that a theme overall in the book is a complete dissolution of your subjectivity and this can (or does or should?) happen in both eroticism and sovereignty.

Bataille's conception of sovereignty is idiosyncratic, to put it lightly. It seems to mean a multitude of things but ultimately it means, as he repeats multiple times (in all capital letters): NOTHING. It seems in one part "nothing" is synonymous with "unknowing". A sovereign person is first off "opposed to the servile and the subordinate." Examples he gives are familiar, such as pharaohs and kings. But he goes further and says that divinities such as God were/are also sovereign.

Another aspect (or "basic element") of sovereignty is the "consumption of wealth, as against labor and servitude, which produce wealth without consuming it." The Sovereign "consumes but doesn't labor". The non-sovereign "consumes the products without which would production would not be possible" but the sovereign "consumes ... the surplus of production." Another "basic element" is the sovereign's enjoyment of "possibilities that utility doesn't justify". "Life beyond utility is the domain of sovereignty." This leads Bataille into positing that the Sovereign should conern themself only with the present moment, that it is "servile to consider duration first" since it inevitably leads into anticipation of the future - which leads to the anticipation of death. Another element that comes into play is that the Sovereign "partakes at once of the divine, of the sacred, of the ... erotic, of the repugnant..." This leads him to question "how is this possible?" which eventually leads him to say that, following Hegel, knowledge is never just spontaneously given to us, but is a process we work towards and through. This means it is "future-oriented" and, thus, not "living in the moment" or living in the now, and thus knowledge is not sovereign: unknowing (and perhaps synonymously NOTHING) is sovereign.

Interesting quote: "Only by canceling... every operation of knowledge within ourselves are we in the moment, without fleeing it." So for a Sovereign, anticipation and knowledge would dissolve into NOTHING (or unknowing). It is also repeated that Sovereignty is absolutely not an objective thing, but sort of an intersubjective thing that can only be recognized by others (he uses recognition in the Hegelian sense and uses an example of a King being recognized as sovereign by his "subjects"). Sovereignty is a radically subjective mode....but I question if it is even subjective if it is in fact NOTHING. It seems as though, following his definition of Eroticism in his Erotism book, sovereignty is 'assenting to life up to the point of death'. It seems as though to be Sovereign you must radically negate as much as you possibly can to where you effectively become NOTHING.

Two examples of people he gives as those who are Sovereign are Stalin and Nietzsche. The former he says is rather contradictory since the goal of communism is to negate sovereignty. Honestly, I am not quite sure why he considered Nietzsche sovereign - perhaps because he followed the basic elements in some way - I was a bit confused by his Nietzsche chapter - I have essentially no knowledge of him.

Bataille says (writing in the 50s or 60s) that "sovereignty is no longer alive except in the perspectives of communism." Which is strange, since it seems like he thinks communism is attempting to negate this. The book sort of turns into a history of early USSR which I thought was interesting, saying how from 1905-1917 the demands of the Bolsheviks really weren't radical compared to say, moderate Labor policies, but in the context of that era of Russia, they were. And that up until 1917-ish, the Bolshevik line was something like waiting for a Western European revolution to occur so they could star theirs (I think they had their sites set on Germany) with Trotsky being the only one to really think revolution was the way. This changed in 1917 with Lenin declaring they should revolt. The book, while critical of Stalin, is overall pretty sympathetic to him - it declares he made mistakes in not supporting the Chinese or German revolutionaries, but that overall the cruelties of his regime were justifiable given the context of the situation and the goals they needed/wanted to achieve. It also criticizes the idea that in order for a social revolution to occur, there needs to be a bourgeois revolution: as Bataille points out, revolutions have happened due to a breaking down of the feudal order, bourgeois or socialist. This relates to sovereignty because he says that sovereignty is emphatically not the goal of history: classless society is.

Sovereignty has connotations of a hierarchy but Bataille pretty much inverts this saying things like Sovereign people are on the bottom rung of the ladder, etc. I suppose my main question, and it doesn't seem to be answered or perhaps isn't answerable, is why is sovereignty desirable or why would anyone want to have a sovereign subjectivity? He makes a remark that if sovereign people are situated only in the present, they do die of course, but they do not die *humanly*, that is, in a way, they escape death. Sovereignty is also tied to power, which communism ostensibly wants to negate.

Bataille does state a few times his "clumsy" descriptions or how he's "clumsily" described something, usually sovereignty, so maybe it is a state of being that is simply beyond words. Perhaps there is no normative dimension to it and it is simply a descriptive state of subjectivity.The last page of the book reads as follows: "My thoughts direct me toward an undefinable region to which it is vain to try to lead.... I don't want to lose sight of the main thing. The main thing is always the same: sovereignty is NOTHING."

So what to draw from this? I honestly can't say. And perhaps that is the very point Bataille wants to make.

[Volbet · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've ever been seduced by the menstruating corpse of your sibling, then this is the book for you.
Think of all the thinkers, theorists and philosophers that has made you sure humanity would be better off, if we nuked the planet from orbit. Have you list? Georges Bataille has read them as well, and he liked what he read.

At it root, these two volumes deal with transgression, sovereignty and the link between them. Although, as Bataille does best, he also manages to talk about everything else that pops into his head. But somehow it all makes some kind of sense.

The base materialism and borderline divine subjectivity proposed in these texts might be new and shocking, but in their ontological transgressions they're at their most enlightening. You might not agree with Bataille, but he demands your attention and holds it until you've formed an opinion on his work.

[Jacob Wren]

A few passages from The Accursed Share Volume II & III:


*


Men committed to political struggle will never be able to yield to the truth of eroticism. Erotic activity always takes place at the expense of the forces committed to their combat.


*


It is apparent from the foregoing that all accumulation is cruel; all renunciation of the present for the sake of the future is cruel.


*


When a politician had clearly assumed the objectivity of power, he placed himself effortlessly on a level with the sovereignty that he had supremely denied, with weapons in his hands.


*


It was precisely by rising to the level of this “dreadfulness,” by recognizing in the work of Sade the extravagant standard of poetry, that the “modern movement” was able to bring art out of the subordination in which it almost always had been left by artists in the service of the kings and priests. But nowadays the “modern movement” is relatively sluggish and its first burst of energy was mixed with a tiresome braggadocio. The antecedents it appeals to have more meaning that it does. It often seems to me that art gained by serving a system that was organized by the greater or lesser miring down of bygone sovereignty: in this way, it avoided the trap of individual vanity, which substitutes a ludicrous, more degrading, miring-down for the heavy solemnity of times past. But I will never forget the “dreadful” moment when modern art denounced servitude, the least servitude, and claimed the “dreadful” legacy of the fallen sovereigns. Those who spoke in its name were perhaps only fleetingly aware of an “impossible” to which they dedicated their words. They deluded themselves in turn, asserting rights, privileges, without realizing that the least protest addressed to those who represented things placed them in the line of the privileged ones of the past. Whoever speaks on behalf of sovereign art places himself outside a real domain on which he had no hold, against which he is without any rights. The artist is NOTHING in the world of things, and if he demands a place there, even if this only consisted in the right to speak or in the more modest right to eat, he follows in the wake of those who believed that sovereignty could, without being surrendered, have a hold on the world of things. His business is to seduce: everything is risked if he cannot seduce the spokesmen of that world.


*


The tool, the “crude flint tool” used by primitive man was undoubtedly the first positing of the object as such. The objective world is given in the practice introduced by the tool. But in this practice man, who makes use of the tool, becomes a tool himself, he becomes himself an object just as the tool is an object. The world of practice is a world where man is himself a thing, which animals are not for themselves (which, moreover, in the beginning, animals were not for man.) But man is not really a thing. A thing is identical in time, but man dies and decomposes and this man who is dead and decomposes is not the same thing as that man who lived. Death is not the only contradiction that enters into the edifice formed by man’s activity, but it has a kind of preeminence.


*


Gide was a timid questioner; he sagely asked limited questions, having no feeling for tragic, or serious play. He was a man like any other: I could not offer him any higher praise.


*


…the feigned modesty that is the essence of modesty.


*


Arriving at the end of this work, whose progress led only to the distant point where thought loses itself, I have a troubled feeling. Have I not led my readers astray? Or have I misled them twice?

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE SECOND/THIRD VOLUMES OF BATAILLE’S WORK OF “POLITICAL ECONOMY”

Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (1897–1962) was a French philosopher, novelist, and literary critic (and a librarian by profession).

He wrote in the Preface to this 1949 book, “I wanted in this book to lay out a way of thinking that would measure up to those moments---a thinking that was removed from the concepts of science (which would bind their object to a WAY OF BEING that is incompatible with it), yet rigorous in the extreme, as the coherence of a system of thought exhausting the totality of the possible. Human reflection cannot be causally separated from an object that concerns it in the highest degree; we need a thinking that does not fall apart in the face of horror, a self-consciousness that does not steal away when it is time to explore possibility to the limit.” (Pg. 14)

He continues, “…the first volume of this work, where I analyzed the relationship of production to consumption…I was showing, of course, that production mattered less than consumption from being seen as something useful… This second volume is very different, describing as it does the effects in the human mind of a kind of consumption of energy generally considered base. No one therefore will be able to shift from the asserted sovereign character of eroticism of the usefulness it might have. Sexuality at least is good for something: but eroticism… We are clearly concerned, this time, with a sovereign form, which cannot serve any purpose.” (Pg. 16)

He states, “this dual character of my studies is present in this book: I have tried… to outline the consequences of the coherent system of human expenditures of energy, where eroticism’s share is substantial. I do not think, as a matter of fact, that we can touch upon the underlying meaning of political problems, where horror is always in the background, unless we consider the connection between work and eroticism, eroticism and war. I will show that these opposed forms of human activity draw from the same fund of energy resources… Hence the necessity of giving economic, military and demographic questions a correct solution, if we are not to give up the hope of maintaining the present civilization.” (Pg. 17)

He concludes the Preface with the statement, “My book might be seen as an apology for eroticism, whereas I only wanted to describe a set of reactions that are INCOMPARABLY rich. But these reactions I have described are essentially contradictory… Human existence commanded an abhorrence of all sexuality; this abhorrence itself commanded the attractive value or eroticism. If my perspective is apologetic, the object of this apology is not eroticism but rather, generally, HUMANITY… the laxity and lack of tension, the slackness of a dissolute self-indulgence detract from HUMANITY’S VIGOR; for humanity would cease to exist the day it became something other than what it is, entirely made up of violent contrasts.” (Pg. 18)

He states in the first chapter, “I will hold to a starting principle as my book progresses. I will consider the sexual fact only in the framework of a concrete and integral totality, where the erotic and intellectual worlds are complementary to one another and are situated on the same plane.” (Pg. 23)

He admits at the beginning of chapter 4, “if from the world of passion, where without difficulty tragedy and the novel or the sacrifice of the mass form recognizable signs, I pass to the world of thought, everything shuts off: in deciding to bring the movement of tragedy, that ‘sacred horror’ which fascinates, in the intelligible world, I am aware that, disconcerted, the reader will have some trouble in following me.” (Pg. 111)

He suggests, “More generally, the lovers’ consumption is measured STRICTLY, by mutual agreement, in terms of possibility. But love joins the lovers only in order to spend, to go from pleasure to pleasure, from delight to delight: theirs is a society of consumption, as against the State, which is society of acquisition.” (Pg. 162-163)

He says, “I don’t intend to reduce ‘mystical states’ in this way to a ‘transposition of sexual states.’ The whole thrust of my book is contrary to these simplifications. It seems to me no more legitimate to reduce mysticism to sexual eroticism than to reduce the latter, as people do, even without saying it, to animal sexuality. Yet we cannot seriously deny the connections that turn two distinct forms of love equally into modes of consumption of all the individual being’s resources.” (Pg. 170)

He argues, “it would be childish to conclude right away that if we relaxed more and gave the erotic game a larger share of energy the danger of war would decrease. It would decrease only if the easing off occurred in such a way that the world did lose an already precarious equilibrium. Indeed, this picture is so clear that we can immediately draw a conclusion: we will not be able to decrease the risk of war before we have reduced, or begun to reduce, the general disparity of standards of living, that is, the general equilibrium. This way of looking at things leads to a judgment that is clearly only theoretical at present; it is necessary to produce with a view to raising the global standard of living.” (Pg. 188)

He acknowledges, “What I am saying is perhaps poorly supported, far removed from a reality that is neither simple nor pure. But the inner experience that guides me obliges me to maintain the autonomy of this representation with regard to the precise historical data that ethnography, for example, studies.” (Pg. 241)

He suggests, “I don’t know if it is reasonable to propose a ‘radiant future’ ‘to tomorrow’s humanity, but we would do well not to close our eyes to a truth that in part the fight ‘for a radiant future’ keeps one from seeing. We will be able to distinguish the present shape of this truth, where effects cannot yet be known, only if we are not obliged to get ourselves approved by the masses.” (Pg. 278)

He contends, “The respect due to man is meaningful only insofar as I remain associated with the impulse that led men of all times to contest the humanity of all the others. Often this contention is crude, but without it there would not have been humanity since, at bottom, its initial impulse was the repudiation of animality. But it is this contestation that we find from one end to the other in the apparent ascent of man, as well as in the moments of decadence, of unjustified contempt, of baseness.” (Pg. 337)

He explains, “In a rather general way, Nietzsche’s work exerts an irresistible attraction, but this attraction does not entail any consequence. Those dazzling books are like a liquor that excites and illuminates, but leaves a basic way of thinking intact.” (Pg. 365) He adds, “I am the only one who thinks of himself not as a commentator of Nietzsche, but as being the same as he.” (Pg. 367)

He observes, “the miserable idea of ‘art for art’s sake’ showed how difficult it is to perceive the simplicity of the problem that art poses to existence. ‘Art for art’s sake’ means that art cannot serve any other purpose than itself, but this formula makes little sense if art is not first extricated from the insignificant position it has in society.” (Pg. 418)

This is one of Bataille’s major “nonfiction” works, and will be of great interest to anyone studying his thought and its many manifestations.

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhausting, but fascinating read. From ritual sacrifice to gift giving, love and prostitution, kings and communists, Nietzsche and Jesus - Bataille roves though the archives of humanity to give relief to his singular vision of the human condition. Whatever one thinks of his conclusions - which by turns are harrowing and cathartic - the sheer force of creativity and inventiveness on display makes The Accursed Share an unforgettable literary and philosophical romp.

[Severin M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite generally being seen as the worst of the three volumes, the third was to me the most significant, though the first was clearly great on its own. The notion of Sovereignty continues to be a worthwhile critical lens to employ in many facets of art, life, sexuality, and every other arbitrary division we may make of our streams of experience

[Neal Spadafora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm writing a piece on Bataille for my website; however, I'll say that these volumes have already proven to be influential on my thinking. There is much to learn from how Bataille entirely re-thinks notions of sovereignty and eroticism in these two volumes.

May we all be sovereign by engaging in non-productive expenditure--and may it be glorious rather than catastrophic!

[Özge İpek]

Lanetli Pay'ın Egemenlik üzerine olan üçüncü cildini okudum. Birinci cildin Türkçede olmasına karşın bunun çevrilmediğini görmek şaşırttı. Bataille, egemenlik kavramını üretim ve tüketim ilişkileri üzerinden ele alıp faşizm ve komünizmin sonuçlarının aynı yere çıktığını iddia ediyor.

[Colin Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

did not realize that the history of eroticism and eroticism: death and sensuality were two separate works. mildly embarrassing but unsure if it’s even worth reading the latter considering that there’s apparently significant overlap between the two.

[Aman · Rating 5 out of 5]

No god, no man is above me.

[FC · Rating 5 out of 5]

If one wants their life to shaken, they should start reading Bataille…

[Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus (or Nietzsche?), how do I even begin to review this...

This book (or rather, these two books - but let's just take it as one for the heck of it) is a bit of a mess. This is not, however, the author's fault - death tends to make editing rather difficult. Obviously certain parts of this would have been more fleshed out if the author had not passed away, and while Bataille's structure of thought is always disorienting, I get the feeling that things might have been shuffled around a bit in the final stages of editing if these had been made ready for publishing.

Bataille is not for everyone. He brings up topics that make many uncomfortable, and uses those topics to present philosophical ideas that challenge one's sense of self (or one's sense of purpose). But if you abandon yourself to its rhythms, and agree to follow Bataille wherever he goes, you will have a rollicking good time reading this.

To give only a hint of an example from volume III: after many long pages on Stalin and the notion of sovereignty in Soviet Russia, we suddenly jump to Bataille's thoughts on Nietzsche. While the Stalin stuff was relatively calm and objective, almost like a political essay one might find in a periodical, the Nietzsche section dives into Bataille's personal identification with Nietzsche in an astounding shift of tone. Some might scratch their heads at this, but I loved it - it was a tonal shift one will not likely find in modern philosophical literature, and (for me, at least) it worked completely. I nearly shot my coffee out of my nose when I read that part, but even if I had done it, it would have been a coffee-shot of joy, not of outrage.

If you want a philosophical adventure of the best kind, pick this up. After the first volume, of course - you will need to build up to this.

[Lukáš · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice "companion" exploring the ideas outlined in The General Economy (vol. I). Bataille is a fascinating writer - at once incredibly clear, while simultaneously demanding a lot of attention in assembling the fragments together into a coherent whole (reminds me of Leo Strauss a bit, though here, it's more the Hegelian concept of totality running throughout, hintning on the coherence). As with the use, Eroticism in particular has a set of challenging ideas vis-á-vis the human/animal distinction, rendered through the ideas of excess, prohibition and transgression, while Sovereignty is surely my favorite part - nice to see a non-legalistic treatment of the concept that is positioned in a lot of different webs of relations and explored. The discussion of Nietzsche and Communism at the end is a fun read - coming from the former Soviet bloc, some of the considerations about the failure of the symbolic economy seem to have turned fairly prophetic.

[francesca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nowhere near as incisive as "The Accursed Share" this book I picked up and put aside so many times that when a junky stole it I was relieved to no longer feel the nagging need to finish it once and for all! Inevitably I will try again one day, hopefully with greater success.

[PMP · Rating 1 out of 5]

How can you read this book before you are 100 years old?

[Neal Spadafora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vol. I is certainly the meat of this non-systematic systematic philosophy, but I'm more or less at this point entirely Bataille-pilled. He will undoubtably be a key figure in my research and life :)