Parallax

ISSN: 1353-4645 (Print) 1460-700X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tpar20

Economies of Excess
John Armitage
To cite this article: John Armitage (2001) Economies of Excess, Parallax, 7:1, 1-2, DOI:
10.1080/13534640010015881
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13534640010015881

Published online: 03 Dec 2010.

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Date: 12 November 2015, At: 16:16

parallax, 2001, vol. 7, no. 1, 12

Economies of Excess

Downloaded by [UQ Library] at 16:16 12 November 2015

John Armitage

This theme issue of parallax is devoted to a study of the economies of excess a term
derived from the increasingly in uential economic writings of the French cultural
theorist Georges Bataille (18971962) . Identi ed with Nietzschean and Hegelianinspired examinations of inner experience, heterology the science of what is
completely other eroticism and sovereignty, Bataille is also Foucault, Derrida and
Baudrillards premier theorist of excess.1 The Notion of Expenditure and The
Accursed Share announced Batailles opposition to classical or restricted political
economy and elucidated his general economic conception of a world surplus of
biological energy that must not be hoarded but squandered.2 Unearthing a sacri cial
Theory of Religion and potlatch gift-giving ceremonies in which pro tless expenditure
is favoured over possession amongst American Indians, Bataille espoused pro tless
expenditure as the modern foundation of a revitalized economic relationship between
technologically advanced and developing industrial societies.3
Timely in its spotlight on the economies of excess this issue is an acknowledgement that
Batailles economic theory now resonates far beyond France. An electrifying appraisal
of everything from companionship and knowledge to surplus human consumption,
corporeal production and transformation, technology, aesthetics, transnational child
adoption, feminist international political economy and speed, economies of excess is
guided but not con ned by the writings of Bataille, Baudrillard, Nietzsche, Virilio
and Marx. Unravelling these and other signi cant cultural theorists of general
economy and surplus energy, the issues fourteen contributors concentrate on the
expanding universe of excess expenditure, an economic realm liberated from all
previous constraints and almost all comprehension. Discovering self-sacri cial and
near religious cultural ideas and practices embracing individual spending on products
and people amidst opulent consumers and impoverished producers, several of the
authors collected here advocate pro tless expenditure while others interrogate the
postmodern premises of the ruinous contemporary political and economic bonds
between men and women, East and West.
Responding to the ourishing interest in Batailles general economy in the Englishspeaking world, economies of excess includes his previously unpublished article on
Friendship from the 1940s as well as various other essays such as Plotnitskys
Bataillian investigation of unknowing, materialism and the general economy of
the body. Botting and Wilsons text on the lmmaker Quentin Tarantino and the
parallax
ISSN 1353-464 5 print/ ISSN 1460-700 X online 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
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DOI: 10.108 0/13534640010015881

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consumption of excess, meanwhile, provides an outstanding encounter with the postBataillian economic ideas of Baudrillard. The separate Nietzschean in ected articles
of Lingis and Mandoki on corporeal expenditure, materialism and aesthetic
transmutation can be regarded as signi cant essays on general economy, surplus
energy, sacri ce and, above all, potlatch. Critical analysis is given to Batailles
speculations on technology as well as his engagements with pro tless expenditure
and possession by Weinstein and Richardsons individual texts. The four nonBataillian essays on the economies of excess are by Bauman, Vasseleu, Sassen and
Armitage and Graham. Concentrating on contemporary concerns raised by
postmodernists, feminists, Virilio and Marx these texts range across issues relating
to consumer relationships, globalization, female child adoption practices in the
United States and China, prostitution, illegal human tra cking and dromoeconomics or the political economy of speed.

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Finally, I must end this editorial by voicing my thanks to Joanne Morra and Marq
Smith who commissioned me to edit economies of excess, as well as to all the contributors
and to the editors of parallax. However, there are many more institutions and
people to whom I am indebted for their e orts in bringing the project to completion.
Gratitude is owed to the nancial assistance provided by the University of
Northumbria at Newcastles small grants for research scheme, my colleagues in the
Division of Government & Politics and to the research assistance of Arthur A eck.
My appreciation goes to Hager Weslati for providing and translating Batailles
Friendship. Credit is also due to Hager and to Roy Boyne, Neal Curtis, Mark Little,
John Lechte, Nicholas Zurbrugg, Rosie Cunningham, John Donnelly, Charlie Blake,
Kevin Robins and Mike Gane for refereeing articles. Particular credit is due to
Michael Richardson for his crucial interventions regarding Batailles Friendship and
to Marq Smith, Verena Andermatt Conley and Mike Weinstein for their agreement
to referee several essays. Lastly, I would like to thank Joanne Roberts for her
invaluable and continuing advice on my forays into the economies of excess.

Notes
1

Michel Foucault, A preface to transgression, in

Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice:
Selected Essays and Interviews. Edited with an
Introduction by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry
Simon (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977),
pp.2952; Jacques Derrida, Writing and Dierence,
Alan Bass (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981); Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange
and Death, Ian Hamilton Grant (trans.) (London:
Sage, 1993).
2
Georges Bataille, The notion of expenditure,
Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings,

Armitage
2

1927 1939, Allan Stoekl, with Carl R. Lovitt and

Donald M. Leslie, Jr. (trans.), edited and with an
Introduction by Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1985), pp.116129;
Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, vol. 1,
Consumption, Robert Hurley (trans.) (New York:
Zone Books, 1988 [1949]).
3
Georges Bataille, Theory of Religion, Robert Hurley
(trans.) (New York: Zone Books, 1989).