Georges Bataille considered The Accursed Share, his radical critique of economic theories based on rational categories of need, scarcity, and utility, his most important project. In Volume I, he announced two further volumes, The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty, but he never published them in book form. This Zone edition includes in a single volume a reconstruction of completed versions of these texts as published in Bataille's posthumous collected works.
Here, Bataille expands on the notion developed in Volume I of an economics based not on the management of scarce resources but on the exuberant consumption of excess production, the accursed share. In its first part, Bataille identifies eroticism as an ideal form of consumption, since in his view it is useless, purposeless. As this expenditure of excess energy demarcates the realm of human autonomy, the study of eroticism leads naturally to an examination of sovereignty, in which Bataille defines the sovereign individual as one who consumes and does not labor, creating a life beyond the realm of utility.
Über den Autor Georges Bataille
![]()
Georges Bataille wurde 1897 als Sohn reicher Bauern in der Auvergne geboren. Er studierte Bibliothekswissenschaften, seit 1922 Konservator an verschiedenen Bibliotheken. Im Umkreis der Surrealisten Zusammenarbeit mit Carl Einstein und Michel Leiris an der 1929 gegründeten Zeitschrift "Documents". 1935 schloß er sich der antifaschistischen Intellektuellen-Gruppe "Contre Attaque" an, 1936 gründete er mit Michel Leiris und Roger Caillois das College de Sociologie, 1946 die noch heute existierende Zeitschrift "Critique", die er bis zu seinem Tode im Juli 1962 herausgab. Auf deutsch erschienen zuletzt von Bataille "Die Tränen des Eros" (1981).
