This Saturday, for those who were attending last quarter, we will be returning to Bataille. For those who are new, we will be introducing Bataille. For both an introduction to Bataille’s Summa Atheologica, an area of his thought based around God, writing, and “I” (an “I” not to be assumed as an Ego). Bataille’s Summa Atheologica is complementary with his economic thought:
I insist on the fact that there is generally no growth but only a luxurious squandering of Energy in every form! The history of life on earth is the development of luxury, the production of increasingly burdensome forms of life
though, is not directly referenced in the Summa Atheologica since the three works that composite the Summa: Inner Experience, Guilty, and On Nietzsche, were compiled prior to the Accursed share. We are instead given early glimpses of the Accursed
Share, with thoughts on excess, but more importantly, an “internal landscape,” that comes to be the battleground of this excess, where forces fight it out.
It is in this way that this lecture can be seen as dealing with Writing. Not aesthetically, not formally, but, economically. How we come to write in the world. To explore this how we come to write in the world, the lecture is going to explore specifically Madness, God, and the Ideal. A way to prepare for this component is to quickly read through the Preface from Madame Edwarda, and then, more slowly look over the abstract from On Sin, noting connections between the two. (There is also an earlier blog post from last quarter going into a greater depth about Bataille as Bataille)
What is going to follow is an introduction on theory to get us ready to go on Saturday. First a collection of Fragments, followed with an explanation.
Fragments:
Excess is the marvelous, the miraculous…; and excess designates the attractive, if not the horrible, attraction, if not horror-designates everything which is more than what is, than what exists (Notes, Preface Madame Edwarda,145).
The space that labor and technical know-how open to the increased reproduction of men is not, in the proper sense, one that life has not yet populated. But human activity transforming the world augments the mass of living matter with supplementary apparatuses, composed of an immense quantity of inert matter, which considerably increases the resources of available energy. From the first, man has the option of utilizing part of the available energy for the growth (not biological but technical) of his energy wealth. The techniques have in short made it possible to extend- to develop- the elementary movement of growth that life realizes within the limits of the possible. (Accursed Share, 36)
Initially, they use a portion of the surplus energy, but then they produce a larger and larger surplus. This surplus eventually contributes to making growth more difficult, for growth no longer suffices to use it up…henceforth what matters primarily is no longer to develop the productive forces but to spend their products sumptuously (Accursed Share, 37).
Life is a result of disequilibrium and instability. Stable forms are needed to make it possible however. Going from one extreme to the other, from one desire to another, from a state of collapse to frantic tension if the movement speeds up, there can only be ruin and emptiness. We have to stake out courses that are stable enough. To shrink from fundamental stability isn’t less cowardly than to hesitate about shattering it. Perpetual instability is more boring than adhering strictly to a rule, and only what’s in existence can be made to come into disequilibrium, that is, to be sacrificed. The more equilibrium the object has, the more complete it is, and the greater the disequilibrium or sacrifice that can result. These principles conflict with morality, which necessarily is a leveling force and an enemy to alternation… (Guilty, 29)
Explanation:
The concepts of Excess and Growth can be seen linked together, and thought of in every day material ways. An excessive harvest. An overgrown lawn. Mold and moss. And, even applied to us: population growth. What Bataille is exploring with this notion of Excess is the possible (extension), and the impossible (the limit). Not just seen in the body, what is possible for the body to do (in a manipulative sense), but, as well in the world, how the world is possible. How, a broken bone can limit the body completely, returning it to a state of “infantness”, and how a broken key can end a persons day rather quickly. More than what is. The two are intertwined, the body and the world, as the possible, and a possible that increases. If we were not dying by growing older, we would be trapped in a single physical possibility for the body would not change and the interaction with the world would not change.
The interaction with the world, for Bataille, needs to be understood not in terms of a physical concept, “in breaking my key I am unavailable to get into my car, unable to get to my destination”, but instead, in terms of an excess, in breaking my key, I lose the consumption of excessive fuel, both of my own and at my disposal. My own, for my bodies energy, spent on pressing the petal, turning the wheel, is a physical expenditure that is less than having to walk to the destination myself. A common sense perspective, yes, but, staggering when we apply this conception of the possible to the materialization of the present, and come to conceptualize that the world is as it, for we expended our body in the way to materialize the present. The importance of writing.
In writing a sentence, there is the foundation of a structure. In the foundation of a structure, there is a foundation to stand upon, is, permanent, until re-written. This foundation acts like a damn, acts as accumulation. One sentence becomes two, becomes three, becomes four… In the same way, our using of exterior tools “augment the mass of living matter with supplementary apparatuses, composed of an immense quantity of inert matter, which considerably increases the resources of available energy.” Wikipedia, general economy. We have introduction of short cuts, memory, which increase ours possibilities (excessiveness), by taking up, consuming the demands, of the first expenditure, continually building the first building ever built…I don’t have to do the work to materialize the present.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD8HDta7Z_4
But as we write, the body’s interaction in the world, becoming more and more possible, since there are more and more sentences, I becoming each sentence that I read. But unfortunately, there are also more and more sentences to re-write, and in this re-writing we begin to feel burdened, lost in the library. Where is that book? Matter begins to accumulate. “I” can no longer sleep. what matters primarily is no longer to develop the productive forces but to spend their products sumptuously. If I don’t act, I will drown, like Mickey. But, “I” have lost places to act openly, for openness has been lost in structure, that which is maintaining the accumulating of the excess. From once what was the construction of the Pyramids, freedom manifest(o)s on the page one of the few places I can act openly, cf. Proust.
“The more equilibrium the object has, the more complete it is, and the greater the disequilibrium or sacrifice that can result.” To sacrifice is to risk, and to risk, is to change the possible. The sentence embedded on the page, rather than being re-written, is erased. By taking the chance, destroying the component of identity, the sentence being read, excess is dissipated and an openness returns to being, a place where to write the sentence again. The weight of the sacrifice is felt in its equilibrium, the amount of excess that it creates by removing burden from self. To sacrifice is to risk then, all of being, forgoing the present, that which attempts to preserve the excess (morality), and letting new possibilities become being, as the excess is returned to. In this returning to, there is a re-engagement with the world, with being, and with others: the essence of communication: an eruption of self from the destruction of the present.
This is a start. See you Saturday.