No abstract

The aim of the essay is to situate Bataille’s idiosyncratic thought on consumption in the context of the modern debate on this topic, to unravel its vacillations and contradictions, and to tease out its main implications. The modern philosophical and ideological debate on consumption, while highly variegated, can be usefully divided into two main camps, two broad intellectual traditions or lineages, a Marxist and a Nietzschean one. These camps are diametrically opposed in all important respects, including consumption, yet paradoxically enough, Bataille had roots in both. This point is of crucial importance for understanding his position and its striking peculiarities. Bataille’s contradictory political position is explored, a position which overtly embraces radicalism but remains in fact profoundly attached, it is argued, to capitalism.

This essay undertakes a scrutiny of Georges Bataille's ambiguous relationship to capitalism. On the one hand, Bataille subscribes to a fundamentally Nietzschean, romantic critique of capitalism, which is censured as grey and banal, at the same time as he indirectly apologizes for capitalism inasmuch as risk, chance, torment and permanent commotion are ontologized. On yet another level, however, Bataille represents an interesting and sometimes highly original attempt to fuse Marx and Nietzsche, combining the dream of Dionysian unleashing with Marx's realm of freedom. Given Bataille's elitist and nihilist presuppositions, however, this dialectical option necessarily remains a largely unfulfilled promise.

No abstract

In their appreciation of modernity, Marx and Nietzsche have a lot in common. It is mistaken, for example, to assume that Nietzsche was interested chiefly in ethical and cultural matters, as opposed to Marx’s supposed fixation on the economic ‘base’. Nietzsche’s whole notion of culture was predicated upon a keen appreciation of the indispensable role of the economic base in sustaining all culture, while Marx, conversely, was deeply concerned about the fate of civilization. In that respect, it is useful to underline their ‘agreement’. Their disagreement concerns their respective social vantage-points: Marx envisioned a society overcoming class divisions, whereas Nietzsche directed all his powers at preventing precisely such an outcome. I will attempt to illustrate the usefulness of juxtaposing Marx’s notion of ‘the social individual’ with Nietzsche’s famous depiction of ‘the Last Human’, arguing that their true meaning emerges best when they are brought together.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract