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Formless: Georges Batailles in the Three Ecologies
Taught by Stuart Kendall (Acid Horizon Research Commons)
Layered on top of one another, Georges Bataille’s notions of base materialism, expenditure, and inner experience reveal what Gregory Bateson called a metapattern: a pattern that connects ecological spheres otherwise treated as distinct—the environmental, the personal, and the social. Bataille assembled these concepts in his theory of general economy, demonstrating that personal exuberance and collective expenditure are not metaphors but material manifestations of the disposition of energy in the cosmos. Human life, at both the individual and communal levels, is an exuberant delay—by turns constrictive and explosive—in the life of the sun.
Thinking through these notions in their explicit relations to one another has never been more urgent. As digital and virtual environments provide increasingly seductive screens that obscure even their own material substrates; as the norms governing taboo and transgression within techniques of subjectivity become ever more disjunctive, producing fractures between individuals and communities; and as the flows of energetic, material, and technological resources are recast and realigned through environmental degradation and climate change, Bataille’s thought offers a framework for confronting these crises at their root.
Considered in light of these conditions, Bataille’s general economy—operative across environmental, personal, and social ecologies—proposes a theory of sustainability grounded not in the elimination of waste, but in the necessity of wasting well. Against models of conservation premised on restraint alone, Bataille insists that excess, loss, and expenditure are irreducible features of life and must be consciously negotiated rather than denied. These ideas are relevant not only to environmentalists, philosophers, political theorists, psychologists, artists, and designers, but also—and more fundamentally—to all of us as we seek new ways of living, new forms of experience, and new modes of community adequate to a sustainable future.
Over four Wednesdays, following a general introduction to Bataille’s life, thought, and historical context, the course examines his approach to each of these ecologies in turn: his materialism, his social and political thought, and his sacrificial understanding of individual experience. Course discussion is grounded in close readings of selected works by Bataille, drawn primarily from Visions of Excess, The Accursed Share, Theory of Religion, and Inner Experience.
Instructor Bio
Stuart Kendall is a writer, editor, and translator working at the intersections of philosophy, poetics, media, and design. He is the author of Georges Bataille (Reaktion Books, Critical Lives) and the editor and translator of seven volumes of Bataille’s writings, including Inner Experience, Guilty, On Nietzsche, The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, and The Cradle of Humanity. He has lectured internationally and taught at institutions including Stanford University, SUNY Stony Brook, Boston University, and the California College of the Arts.
Course Schedule
All sessions on Wednesdays, 7:00–9:00 PM EST via Zoom
Session 1: March 11 — Philosopher, Saint, Madman
Introduction to Bataille’s theory of general economy, his understanding of the circulation of matter and energy through the cosmos, and his biographical itinerary across disciplines, influences, and encounters with the sacred after the “death of God.”
Session 2: March 18 — Base Matter
An exploration of Bataille’s radical materialism: base matter, formlessness, heterology, and the implications of these concepts for modern aesthetics, commodities, and the problem of matter and energy.
Session 3: March 25 — Formless Politics: Acéphale and After
Bataille’s theory of headless politics, sacrificial festival, and the community of those who have nothing in common—situated between utilitarian rationalism and fascist idolatry.
Session 4: April 1 — Formless Experience
Expenditure as experience: sacrifice, transgression, eroticism, art, intoxication, and joy as modes of sacrificial loss aligning individual life with cosmic energy flows.
Taught by Stuart Kendall (Acid Horizon Research Commons)
Layered on top of one another, Georges Bataille’s notions of base materialism, expenditure, and inner experience reveal what Gregory Bateson called a metapattern: a pattern that connects ecological spheres otherwise treated as distinct—the environmental, the personal, and the social. Bataille assembled these concepts in his theory of general economy, demonstrating that personal exuberance and collective expenditure are not metaphors but material manifestations of the disposition of energy in the cosmos. Human life, at both the individual and communal levels, is an exuberant delay—by turns constrictive and explosive—in the life of the sun.
Thinking through these notions in their explicit relations to one another has never been more urgent. As digital and virtual environments provide increasingly seductive screens that obscure even their own material substrates; as the norms governing taboo and transgression within techniques of subjectivity become ever more disjunctive, producing fractures between individuals and communities; and as the flows of energetic, material, and technological resources are recast and realigned through environmental degradation and climate change, Bataille’s thought offers a framework for confronting these crises at their root.
Considered in light of these conditions, Bataille’s general economy—operative across environmental, personal, and social ecologies—proposes a theory of sustainability grounded not in the elimination of waste, but in the necessity of wasting well. Against models of conservation premised on restraint alone, Bataille insists that excess, loss, and expenditure are irreducible features of life and must be consciously negotiated rather than denied. These ideas are relevant not only to environmentalists, philosophers, political theorists, psychologists, artists, and designers, but also—and more fundamentally—to all of us as we seek new ways of living, new forms of experience, and new modes of community adequate to a sustainable future.
Over four Wednesdays, following a general introduction to Bataille’s life, thought, and historical context, the course examines his approach to each of these ecologies in turn: his materialism, his social and political thought, and his sacrificial understanding of individual experience. Course discussion is grounded in close readings of selected works by Bataille, drawn primarily from Visions of Excess, The Accursed Share, Theory of Religion, and Inner Experience.
Instructor Bio
Stuart Kendall is a writer, editor, and translator working at the intersections of philosophy, poetics, media, and design. He is the author of Georges Bataille (Reaktion Books, Critical Lives) and the editor and translator of seven volumes of Bataille’s writings, including Inner Experience, Guilty, On Nietzsche, The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, and The Cradle of Humanity. He has lectured internationally and taught at institutions including Stanford University, SUNY Stony Brook, Boston University, and the California College of the Arts.
Course Schedule
All sessions on Wednesdays, 7:00–9:00 PM EST via Zoom
Session 1: March 11 — Philosopher, Saint, Madman
Introduction to Bataille’s theory of general economy, his understanding of the circulation of matter and energy through the cosmos, and his biographical itinerary across disciplines, influences, and encounters with the sacred after the “death of God.”
Session 2: March 18 — Base Matter
An exploration of Bataille’s radical materialism: base matter, formlessness, heterology, and the implications of these concepts for modern aesthetics, commodities, and the problem of matter and energy.
Session 3: March 25 — Formless Politics: Acéphale and After
Bataille’s theory of headless politics, sacrificial festival, and the community of those who have nothing in common—situated between utilitarian rationalism and fascist idolatry.
Session 4: April 1 — Formless Experience
Expenditure as experience: sacrifice, transgression, eroticism, art, intoxication, and joy as modes of sacrificial loss aligning individual life with cosmic energy flows.