| The Accursed Share, Volumes II & III Revised Edition Contributor(s): Bataille, Georges (Author), Hurley, Robert (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0942299213 ISBN-13: 9780942299212 Publisher: Zone Books OUR PRICE: $30.60 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 1993 Annotation: 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. The first volume of "The Accursed Share, "the only one published before Bataille's death, treated this paradox in economic terms, showing that "it is not necessity but its contrary, luxury, that presents living matter and mankind with their fundamental problems." 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. In the third volume, Batille raises the ethical problems of sovereignty, of "the independence of man relative to useful ends." |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Business & Economics | Economics - General - Philosophy |
| Dewey: 330 |
| LCCN: 87034072 |
| Series: Zone Books |
| Physical Information: 1.3" H x 5.9" W x 9" (1.40 lbs) 464 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Georges Bataille considered The Accursed Share, his radical critique of economic theories based on rational categories of need, scarcity, and utility, his most important project. In Volume I, he announced two further volumes, The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty, but he never published them in book form. This Zone edition includes in a single volume a reconstruction of completed versions of these texts as published in Bataille's posthumous collected works. Here, Bataille expands on the notion developed in Volume I of an economics based not on the management of scarce resources but on the exuberant consumption of excess production, the accursed share. In its first part, Bataille identifies eroticism as an ideal form of consumption, since in his view it is useless, purposeless. As this expenditure of excess energy demarcates the realm of human autonomy, the study of eroticism leads naturally to an examination of sovereignty, in which Bataille defines the sovereign individual as one who consumes and does not labor, creating a life beyond the realm of utility. |
Contributor Bio(s): Bataille, Georges: - Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was a French writer, essayist, and philosopher whose works include The Story of the Eye, The Blue of Noon, The Accursed Share, and Theory of Religion. |