Bataille's Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability

Description

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 expenditure: la depense, 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.