Bataille’s Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability

by Allan Stoekl

As the price of oil climbs toward $100 a barrel, our impending post-fossil fuel future appears to offer two a bleak existence defined by scarcity and sacrifice or one in which humanity places its faith in technological solutions with unforeseen consequences. Are there other ways to imagine life in an era that will be characterized by resource depletion? The French intellectual Georges Bataille saw energy as the basis of all human activity—the essence of the human—and he envisioned a society that, instead of renouncing profligate spending, would embrace a more radical type of energy la dépense, or “spending without return.” In Bataille’s Peak, Allan Stoekl demonstrates how a close reading of Bataille—in the wake of Giordano Bruno and the Marquis de Sade— can help us rethink not only energy and consumption, but also such related topics as the city, the body, eroticism, and religion. Through these cases, Stoekl identifies the differences between waste, which Bataille condemned, and expenditure, which he celebrated. The challenge of living in the twenty-first century, Stoekl argues, will be to comprehend—without recourse to austerity and self-denial—the inevitable and necessary shift from a civilization founded on waste to one based on Bataillean expenditure. Allan Stoekl is professor of French and comparative literature at Penn State University. He is the author of Agonies of the Commitment, Subjectivity, and the Performative in the Twentieth-Century French Tradition and translator of Bataille’s Visions of Selected Writings, 1927–1939 (Minnesota, 1985).

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Politics, Anthropology, Economics, Religion, Ecology

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Lukáš · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is on many accounts a wonderful book. Not perfect, but an extreme lot of thought and work has been placed into it, so I can't value it otherwise. The great thing is it provides a very complex way of thinking together religion, economy and energy, and explores these links by a greatly enjoyable reading of the work of Georges Bataille, trying to extend it. It should be of interest just because it already presents a number of links that enable grasping the complexity of Bataille's system. It is also great, because it links it with a number of additional material, bringing about a truly powerful frame through which to think about sustainability and postsustainability, urbanism, architecture and environmental ethics.
And still, I think there is a certain problem. There is - very deep in Stoekl's thought a zone, beyond which he is unwilling to go. In a footnote to Method on Meditation, Bataille explains his difference with Heidegger: "it is a professorial work, in which the subordinate method remains glued to its results: what matters to me, on the contrary, is the moment of detachment, what I teach (if it is true that...) is a drunkenness, this is not a philosophy: I am not a philosopher, but a saint, maybe a madman." I essentially think that Stoekl's approach itself tends to be more this type of professorial work. And I also remain unconvinced that we ought to give away the economical stress on labor in favor of energy, and I hardly see this as a zero-sum game. Moreover, while in his economic explorations, Bataille ceaselessly persists in asking a few questions, such as why people need religion, at a certain moment, Stoekl points to limitations to Bataille's assumption about energy, but at the same moment, seems to rather cease asking why does Bataille make these claims. The end result then seems to me rather limited on certain accounts, resting rather comfortably with a certain presupposition of human innocence (and its passive-nihilist implications), as compared to the stress Bataille places on the paradoxical ethical virtue of guilt. That, however, seems to me a consideration, that would not, nor should not spare interested people from the (guilty) pleasures of reading Stoekl's book.

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

the appeal of the ever-elusive realization of bataille's theories is met only by its ineffability

if anyone has any good feminist readings of bataille, lmk

it's easy to read bataille as an edgelord but i think a lot of it holds:

my existence, first and foremost, should probably be considered as a (glorious) excess, an outflow of energy, a burn-off

this includes the moment of birth but also writing this article here, and yeah all art

i think Stoekl makes you think hard about actions which are by definiton 'productive' and those that are not,

since one always wants to blur the lines between them. I.e. as @fucktheory said, art is a measure of a society's health, not . . . something-something about effecting that state of health

Anyways, there's always this motivation to 'think beyond' the problem we find ourselves in, and my inclination after reading this profound book is that uhm maybe no, we all just need to reduce our caloric intake (the pursuit of bodily aesthetics, yet again, are a form of excessive burn-off) and overall expenditures

I imagine this book being interesting for urban planners because uh there's a chapter on the city

at the very least it got me thinking in a religious or spiritual way about energy, the kind of stoner philosophy you feel on acid but probably don't speak about casually in public less your sanity be questioned

so it's nice that we can have that kind of imagination in (academic) writing

I'll probably return to this book

[Leon Sandler · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a clear explanation of Bataille's theories of base materialism, energy expenditure and urbanomics, the book does very well.

The section on ethics is an interesting rereading of "Against Architecture," but is perhaps too humanist for Bataille. The section on religion is largely unnecessary.

The second part of the book, applying Bataille to peak oil--supposedly the projects's aim--meanders into other topics, but remains relatively interesting.

[Will Sewell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, shocking