BETWEEN UNPRODUCTIVE EXPENDITURE AND ECOLOGY: THE ACTUALITY OF GEORGES BATAILLE

Abstract

This work aimed to constitute a critical reading about the unproductive expenditure in the work of Georges Bataille from his perspective of heterology and how it would function as a foundation of the archaic societies studied and theorized by Marcel Mauss. In this way, we will be involved in how this bataillean anti-philosophy crosses his work in order to support his theses towards what the author minimally understands as heterogeneous. From this, we realize that Bataille's reading of Marcel Mauss's gift is subject to criticism, allowing us to tension the perspective of the French author since there is no unilateral gift without return, as well as that the French thinker did not take into account issues related to the accumulation of energy that human beings were able to sustain throughout the history of civilization in the period in which he theorized excess as the foundation of our capitalist societies. In addition, we present our criticisms as a way of supporting the idea that not only did the author of Story of eye read Maussian anthropology in a problematic way, but also that the economic theory demonstrated in The notion of expenditure and The accursed share is based on a rushed anthropological reading. Finally, we will summarize our criticisms as a way of not only illustrating the tensions and problems within Bataille's work as a way of presenting a possible ethics with socioeconomic, existential and ecological consequences, but also of highlighting how we can carry out a rereading of the author for our current context of civilization.