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casparb's review against another edition
4.0
It seems that this one is a big deal for a lot of the postmodernists. Bataille is shy in the preface about writing on political economy, and the text reads beautifully - possibly due to his literary background and possibly because I've been stabbing at Hegel lately so most things are easier.
I think this text is the best generalisation of Bataille's work (at least so far as I have read). I prefer Erotism as a stand-alone text, and it's still my favourite of the bunch. But this text is entirely worth heading to directly.
The anthropological mid-section is mixed. The Aztec series is by far the best that I've read from GB, but the Islam/Lamaism section is lacking. Impressed by the insight during the USSR section, especially given the time of writing - could be better, but I think justified overall.
Neato
I think this text is the best generalisation of Bataille's work (at least so far as I have read). I prefer Erotism as a stand-alone text, and it's still my favourite of the bunch. But this text is entirely worth heading to directly.
The anthropological mid-section is mixed. The Aztec series is by far the best that I've read from GB, but the Islam/Lamaism section is lacking. Impressed by the insight during the USSR section, especially given the time of writing - could be better, but I think justified overall.
Neato
janthonytucson's review against another edition
4.0
I'm a fan of this conception of excess/abundance and aligns with my conception that we manufacture scarcity to produce the fiction that we need to rely upon the socially constructed market to mediate our relations.
I think some of the anthropological work is suspect, and I found his interpretation of what Marcel Mauss was describing in the Gift, specifically the Potlatch, to be half right. I am going to reread The Gift to see if I am wrong. I will note that Bataille’s interpretation of the significance of what Mauss uncovered in these rituals is profound and The Gift shook me when I read it as the whole conception of community and time being tied through the exchange of wealth and how this processes socially constructs/molds and defines the possible spread of potential futures is tightly correlated to modern markets and how they are designed to essentially do the same with a different interpretation on scarcity rather than abundance.
I think some of the anthropological work is suspect, and I found his interpretation of what Marcel Mauss was describing in the Gift, specifically the Potlatch, to be half right. I am going to reread The Gift to see if I am wrong. I will note that Bataille’s interpretation of the significance of what Mauss uncovered in these rituals is profound and The Gift shook me when I read it as the whole conception of community and time being tied through the exchange of wealth and how this processes socially constructs/molds and defines the possible spread of potential futures is tightly correlated to modern markets and how they are designed to essentially do the same with a different interpretation on scarcity rather than abundance.
diegokmenendez's review against another edition
5.0
One of the best books ive ever read. It synthesizes well with marx and is a fascinating framework overall. The translation is rough in some spots but many other sections are quite poetic.
jacob_wren's review against another edition
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?
*
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?
volbet's review
4.0
I guess the best way to describe the Accursed Share Vol. I is a piece of political economy written by someone that has no interest in actually economy.
The main thesis is that modern economists have used a wrong approach to their study of human economy. Bataille's interest lies not in the production of wealth, but rather in the consumption of wealth. It is the consumption that, according to Bataille, is a determining factor in how human act and think.
It's therefore important to consider economy in a wide scale, as well. Rather than seeing the study of economy as simply relating to capital, Bataille sees it as energy. Economy is the way humans express their energy, and it's the unproductive excesses of this energy that is the "Accursed Share."
While this is only the first of three volumes, and a rather short read, Bataille does manage to argue his case rather well. Going all the way from the Incas of Mexico, of the Caliphs of the Islamic Empire to the Marshall Plan, Bataille demonstrates how consumption is the determining factor in human action.
It's essentially economy view through the collective lens of Nietzsche, Heidegger and de Saussure.
The main thesis is that modern economists have used a wrong approach to their study of human economy. Bataille's interest lies not in the production of wealth, but rather in the consumption of wealth. It is the consumption that, according to Bataille, is a determining factor in how human act and think.
It's therefore important to consider economy in a wide scale, as well. Rather than seeing the study of economy as simply relating to capital, Bataille sees it as energy. Economy is the way humans express their energy, and it's the unproductive excesses of this energy that is the "Accursed Share."
While this is only the first of three volumes, and a rather short read, Bataille does manage to argue his case rather well. Going all the way from the Incas of Mexico, of the Caliphs of the Islamic Empire to the Marshall Plan, Bataille demonstrates how consumption is the determining factor in human action.
It's essentially economy view through the collective lens of Nietzsche, Heidegger and de Saussure.
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