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A review by janthonytucson
The Accursed Share, Volume I by Georges Bataille
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.