A Bataillean Metaphysics

05/26/2021

Expenditure is the destruction of synthetic cognition, it is the destabilization of stable reality. Thus, the subject of this essay is reality and therefore metaphysics which has reality as its object of analysis.

Expenditure undoes the subject, throwing its “corpse” into a state of sovereignty. In sovereignty, Being is achieved and (isolated) being — the individual is this isolated being — is destroyed. In sovereignty, ontology and its categories are undone. But this also makes one ask the question “‘what about cosmology?’ — the other (and often left out) “branch” of metaphysics. The Sun and its glorious expenditure, has the cosmos as nothing more than its after-effect.

Expenditure is, therefore, the undoing and, at the same time, the unfolding of metaphysics.