General Economy 1: Bataille

Genealogies

General economy is the theoretical mode developed by Bataille in response to the ideas and discoveries that both defy traditional thinking and define modern intellectual history. Beyond Bataille's own insights concerning the conditions demanding such a new—anti-epistemological—theoretical mode, these developments include the work of Nietzsche, with whom Bataille felt a particular affinity and who is the single most important presence in Bataille's writing; modernist literature and art, especially the works of Proust, Joyce, Blanchot, the surrealists, and the Cubists; the modern social sciences such as economicsand anthropology; psychoanalysis; and modern mathematics and science. Bataille's ambition and ability to interrelate these diverse frameworks and fields enabled him to practice this discursive multiplicity in his writing and extend general economy into a very broadly conceived theory—antiepistemology—of social, historical, and political, or politico-economic, processes. Responding to the conditions, including those of his own experience and writing, no longer accountable for in classical terms, Bataille conceived of and practiced a complex variety of discursive modes, styles, and genres. General economy is what, according to Bataille, theory could be under these conditions.

The genealogy of general economy is complex and multilinear. Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and modern anthropology, as developed by Emil Durkheim, Marcel Mauss and Claude Levi-Strauss, appear to be its most significant sources. One can argue, however, that Bataille's work on general economy was significantly influenced by modern science and, specifically, quantum physics, often directly invoked by Bataille himself. Considerable textual evidence is available to support this claim: the relevant references, ideas, and metaphors permeate Bataille's texts. In historical terms, Bataille developed and refined his theoretical ideas more or less simultaneously with Bohr's development of complementarity. There is, however, a curious bit of historical evidence, by way of a footnote—an acknowledgment (in either sense)—in The Accursed Share: "Here I must thank my friend Georges Ambrosino, research director of the X-Ray Laboratory, without whom I could not have constructed this book. Science is never the work of one man; it requires an exchange of views, a joint effort. This book is also in large part the work of Ambrosino. I personally regret that the atomic research in which he participates has removed him, for a time, from research in 'general economy.' I must express the hope that he will resume in particular the study he has begun with me of the movements of energy on the surface of the globe" (The Accursed Share, 191 n. 2; La Part maudite, 54 n. 1).

Both historically and theoretically, then, one can ascertain not only the general economic character of quantum mechanics, particularly Bohr's complementarity, but also a kind of "quantum mechanical" and complementary character of general economy. Genealogies of both ideas overlap. It is true that one can equally relate Bataille's conception to thermodynamic—entropic—theories. Insofar, however, as the interactions with, and the metaphorical models based on, physics are concerned,the more radical anti-epistemological implications of general economy connect it to quantum theory. For, as will be seen, general economy entails more radical statistics—a deeper stochasticity and something deeper than stochasticity—analogous to quantum physics, or to certain anti-epistemological interpretations of this physics, such as Bohr's. As Deleuze has pointed out in Nietzsche and Philosophy, the indeterminacy of Nietzschean play, which is one of Bataille's key sources, is far more radical than the statistical dreams of chemistry or thermodynamics or, by implications, of any classical model. More generally, the theories whose metaphorical models are based on classical physics—whether Newton's mechanics, classicalstatistical physics such as thermodynamics, special or general relativity, (some versions of) chaos theory, or more classically conceived quantum theories—appear to be restricted economies—epistemologies rather than anti-epistemologies. More recent examples would include Foucault's, Deleuze's (his own or with Guattari), and Michel Serres's economies, many recent applications of chaos and complexity theories, and Adorno's earlier metaphorical economy of force-field (Kraftfeld). Deleuze's analysis in Foucault shows how classical geometry and physics function in Foucault's economy. It can be shown, however, that Foucault's geometry of force is still a restricted economy, as are "geometries" developed in Deleuze's own works, such as A Thousand Plateaus and The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, even though Deleuze uses complex mathematical models, such as Riemann spaces, which are also the basis of Einstein's general relativity. More classical, restricted-economic interpretations of quantum mechanics, or of Bohr's views, are also possible and have been advanced throughout the history of quantum physics. The argument of this study is for the general economic character of Bohr's complementarity and, conversely, the complementary character of general economy.

Bataille's ideas have had a major impact upon recent anti-epistemological developments and throughout modern intellectual history. One can trace his influence across poststructuralist theory—in the work of Lacan, Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Irigaray, Cixous, and many others, most of whom commented on Bataille's significance for their work and elaborated on Bataille's ideas directly. Deleuze and Guattari's analysis of capitalism and schizophrenia in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus may be seen as, among other things, a recasting or translation of Bataille's The Accursed Share, which may itself be seen as, among other things, an analogous recasting of Marx's Capital. The Accursed Share is invoked at the outset of Anti-Oedipus (4), and one can trace its significance throughout Deleuze and Guattari's work. Derrida's work, however, offers arguably the most radically anti-epistemological application of the principles of general economy.

Definitions

According to Bataille, the general economy is a "science"—a theoretical framework and a textual practice—by means of which one can relate to the production, material or intellectual, of excesses that cannot be utilized. As he writes:

The science of relating...