On Asger Sørensen’s Critique of Georges Bataille

06/06/2021

Now, I have addressed part of this critique before in the essay Solar Econ 101 (see above), but I want to now answer the critiques of Sørensen’s I missed all those months ago as well as the ones I feel the need to address again.

Let’s start with Sørensen’s critique of Georges Bataille line by line:

1. “Bataille does not distinguish clearly between economical profit in terms of money, surplus production in the form of commodities and excess energy, just as he does not distinguish clearly between gifts, consumption and loss”.[1]
2. “[Bataille] has no specific concept of [sur]plus-value … Since he does not share the objectively oriented theory of labor-value of the classical political economy of Locke, Smith and Marx, but takes sides with the neoclassical conception of value as subjectively constituted by desire, it becomes difficult for the general economy to criticize economical inequality at the social level”.[2]
3. Sørensen then mentions Goux’s critique of Bataille.[3]
4. “The requirement of postmodern capitalism as of an ever-increasing demand, however, causes a liberation of desire”.[4]
5. “I think Bataille’s general economy runs into some serious aporias, when considered as a political economy”.[5]
6. “Where he in the micro-perspective fights against the reductionism and objectification of desire in neoclassical economy, in the macro-perspective he himself reduces everything to energy”.[6]
7. “Bataille’s theoretical fight to think the unreduced desire and the flow of energy in nature into economy leaves an impression of economy as totally unmanageable and uncontrollable in a practical sense. The anti-authoritarian, theoretical perspective means that the general economy loses its character of political economy and instead transforms itself into a scientisitic ontology, the alleged necessity of which contributes to legitimate ideologically a total liberation of desire and consumption, which in turn can legitimate a capitalist development without any restrictions”.[7]
8. “It is thus as political economy that the general economy turns out to have its greatest limitations. The basic problem is that with Bataille’s extended sense of economy it becomes very difficult to recommend a definite economical strategy at the ordinary political level”.[8]

Now for my rebuttal:

1. This is not true though. Commodities (objects) cause a certain level reification i.e., we (subjects) become objects and in this movement, objects come to the level of the subject. This doesn’t happen with excess energy for example. I also want to put out there the fact that the excess energy of the Sun is not “produced” via labor (production) but via consumption (expenditure). On the subject of money, apparently, according to Sørensen, money and energy are the same thing for Bataille.[9] But this is not true. Money is connected to production indefinitely: “Money serves to measure all work and makes man a function of measurable products” [emphasis mine].[10]
2. The issue with this is that Bataille firstly, to my knowledge, never claimed to subscribe to any theory of value. Secondly, he lends himself to my theories of surplus-value (see above On (Georges) Bataille and Personal Essays, The Waste-Theory of Surplus-Value, Bataille and Marx: Another Look, Another Conceptualization of my Bataillean Theory of Surplus Value, Outside of the Factory: The Homogenizing Movement of Present-Day Capitalism, My Surplus-Value Theory as a Critique of the Idea That Bataille is a Capitalist, Prisons and Capitalism).
3. (See above A Response to Jean-Joseph Goux’s Critique of Georges Bataille)
4. Firstly, this presupposes that Goux’s critique of Bataille is correct, which it is not (see above A Response to Jean-Joseph Goux’s Critique of Georges Bataille). Secondly, this is exactly why Bataille is opposed to present-day capitalism: it breaks down all limits. There is no transgression in capitalism (see above The Maintenance of Capitalism and the Erasure of the Erotic).
5. This “critique” of Sørensen’s makes no sense. Like I said almost 6 months ago, when I first responded to this critique: general economy is not political economy.
6. This is not a critique. This is just misusing reductionism. Bataille reduces nothing, he recognizes the facts. Bataille is not a monist. He has been said to be a dualist by theorists such as Denis Hollier though. So, this in fact is not true. For Bataille, the universe is essentially formless. Energy/matter is not a substance. He reduces nothing because what Bataille posits the universe as is NOTHING.
7. Firstly, your impressions are wrong. We have the option of expending gloriously or catastrophically. Secondly, there is no scientistic ontology in Bataille. Bataille sees science as a homogenizing movement. The idea that he predicates the unknowable on the known is laughable, and I do laugh! Thirdly, there is no liberation of desire or capitalism latent or manifest within Bataille (see answer to points 3 and 4).
8. (See answer to point 5).

References

[1]: Asger Sørensen, “On a Universal Scale: Economy in Bataille’s General Economy,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 38, no. 2 (2012): pp. 169–197, https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453711427256, 185.

[2]: Ibid., 187.

[3]: Ibid., 188.

[4–5]: Ibid., 189.

[6–7]: Ibid., 190.

[8]: Ibid., 191.

[9]: Ibid., 187.

[10]: Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 138.

Bibliography

Bataille, Georges. Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939. Edited by Allan Stoekl. Translated by Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie Jr.. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.

Sørensen, Asger. “On a Universal Scale: Economy in Bataille’s General Economy.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 38, no. 2 (2012): 169–97. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453711427256.