The Transgressive Economy

Abstract

This chapter examines Georges Bataille’s groundbreaking theory of the “general economy” for insights into a number of economic and political dynamics evident in a time of globalization and digitalization—forces that defy the concepts and categories, such as “sovereignty” and “the economy,” through which modern states organize collective responses to pressing problems. Today’s technologically advanced economies have amassed vast untapped surpluses of productive as well as wasted power. Firms increasingly chase new consumptive ends in the context of performative rewards characteristic of the digital economy, for example. Such dynamics are resha** the structure of societies, altering the uses of science and technology, capital and credit, labor relations and trade. The erosion of trust associated with any number of public goods appears to be related to these developments, and the specter of fascism lurks once again. Bataille’s originality lay in calling attention to the risks associated with economic and social dynamics that fostered ever-increasing energies and expenditures at work well beyond the domains of traditional forms of production and exchange. Managing these emerging forces becomes an essential task of statecraft in this day and age.