Georges Bataille and the Sacred Pre pu

The Exploitation of Sacred Desire; Rethinking Georges Bataille’s Political Theory

Abstract
In this paper, I argue that the political significance of Georges Bataille’s work has been
underdeveloped and that his work provides significant resources for understanding and evaluating
contemporary societies. I argue that he offers an account of politics as the management of two
contradictory desires that drive human existence: the desire to gain distance from the horrific
squandering of life at the heart of nature, and the desire to experience this realm of violent
squandering (sacred desire). The former desire drives the creation of a world of work that
prioritizes resource accumulation and self-preservation, while the latter desire takes a multitude of
forms, some of which are destructive and antisocial, and some of which promote social cohesion
and political stability. We should interpret Bataille’s historical analysis of different political
formations as an account of the management and exploitation of sacred desire by elites that
recognize its power. This historical analysis yields a general normative principle: all societies must
develop outlets to satisfy sacred desire, and the most effective means to do so is to channel it into
avenues that build intimacy with the violent squandering at the heart of nature, rather than abstract
forms that falsify reality. I argue that capitalist forces have increasingly begun to commodify the
sensation experienced in intimacy with violent squandering, ecstatic-horror, but without effective
oversight, this process will tend towards increasingly violent transgressive practices. Finally, I
suggest that authentic artistic and cultural productions offer a more palatable way to cultivate
intimacy with violent nature.

Introduction

In this paper, I argue that Georges Bataille develops an original account of politics as the
management of two contradictory desires that drive human existence: the desire to distance oneself
from the horrific squandering of life at the heart of nature, and the desire to glimpse and experience
this realm of violent squandering. The first desire drives the creation of a world of work, which
prioritizes resource accumulation for its ability to partially mitigate against the destructive world of
nature. The second desire, which here I will term sacred desire, is a vague and impressionable desire
that often takes forms that are abstracted from its source, the violence of nature. It can be expressed
in antisocial and destructive forms, such as random violence or organized war, but can also be used
as a force for social cohesion and political stability, by binding the members of a community
through shared, meaningful experiences. The political implication of Bataille’s account of human

existence is that the quest for productivity and utility must be offset by satisfying sacred desire,
channelling it into forms that strengthen the community rather than destroy it. His historical
analysis demonstrates that the most effective way to satisfy sacred desire is to channel it into
avenues that build intimacy with the violent squandering at the heart of nature, rather than falsifying
or denying natural existence. I argue that his thought, therefore, provides a conceptual schema for
analyzing contemporary capitalist-democracies and can also be used to rethink their strategies for

responding to sacred desire. First, I unpack Bataille’s claim that human existence is driven by two
contradictory desires, before distinguishing between three different manifestations of the desire to
experience the realm of violent squandering. Second, I trace how the interplay of these two
contradictory desires forms the basis for Bataille’s analysis of archaic societies, early bourgeois
capitalist societies, and fascist regimes. In particular, I refute the claim that he idealizes precapitalist societies for their commitment to satisfying sacred desire. Third, I apply the insights
gathered from this political analysis to contemporary capitalist democracies. I begin by using his
conceptual schema to examine why capitalist-democracies have been more durable than he
predicted, and argue that the weakening of traditional bourgeois morality has allowed capitalist
forces to exploit sacred desire, primarily by commodifying the sensation experienced in intimacy
with violent squandering: ecstatic-horror. Finally, I suggest that this process will tend towards the
emergence of increasingly violent transgressive practices, and consider the resources in Bataille’s
work for developing other strategies for building intimacy with violent nature, such as the
expenditure of surplus resources on producing authentic works of art.

The Flight from Nature and the Paradoxical Obsession with its Excesses

Bataille claims that humans possess a paradoxical attitude towards nature. Viewed from the
standpoint of self-preservation, the natural world horrifies us. Nature tends towards creating
increasingly elaborate and “burdensome” forms of life, condemned to be squandered by disease or

catastrophe, clearing the way for new life (AS 33-35).1 This process has an explosive and
extravagant character, as great quantities of energy are concentrated in organisms and then abruptly
squandered. The horrific character of nature is rooted in the inevitability of death, where we are not
merely annihilated but rejoin “abject nature and the purulence of anonymous, infinite life” (AS II
80-81). Bataille lavishly describes the “sickening” character of nature; for instance, we experience
decay as revolting: “This nauseous, rank and heaving matter, frightful to look at, a ferment of life,
teeming with worms, grubs, and eggs, is at the bottom of the decisive reactions we call nausea,
disgust or repugnance... Death will proclaim my return to seething life” (E 56-7). The inevitability
of death, itself a heavy burden, is made unbearable by the indifferent fashion with which nature
squanders individuals, apportioning disease and disaster indiscriminately and exposing bodily
integrity to the vicissitudes of chance.

We cannot bear to face such an existence squarely, let alone live according to the “destructive and
implacable frenzy” of nature (AS II 62).2 The horror of indifferent squandering fuels a collective
flight towards the safety and security offered by the world of work, as we seek to distance ourselves
from the excesses of nature (AS II 23). Devising tools enables primitive man to produce surplus
resources and partially overcome the chance distribution of misfortune and death (AS II 45). The
stability required for efficient production is made possible by establishing taboos that regulate
behaviour and outlaw disruptive violence. Bataille conjectures that early burial rituals appeared
with the dawning of the world of work; communities set up taboos to govern the treatment of

corpses, in an attempt to banish primordial violence (E 44). When primitive man distances himself
from the “dead body crawling with maggots” by constructing death rituals he begins the process of
detaching himself from the “biological disorder” of nature (E 46-47). The sight of death draws
attention to the impossibility of indefinite self-preservation, but this disquieting thought is contained
by ritually disposing of corpses, which is one method for effacing “the traces, signs and symbols of

death” (LE 66). Society is “governed by the will to survive” and tends to rank future preservation
over present satisfaction (LE 18). In adopting the role of a producer man reduces himself to the
status of a thing, object, or tool, useful for achieving future ends (AS 57/AS III 218). The world of
work ascribes use value to everything, and this process relegates everything without obviously
quantifiable value to the status of being useless.

The second strand of our paradoxical attitude towards nature arises because we experience this
reduction of man to just another thing, a cog in the world of labour who is constantly required to
prioritize the future over the present, as degrading: “It is this degradation that man has always tried
to escape. In his strange myths, in his cruel rites, man is in search of a lost intimacy from the first”
(AC 57). The world of production and self-preservation is unable to generate the experiences that
give life its splendour and grandeur, and it is these experiences that make life feel meaningful.
Moreover, it is impossible to fully escape the horrific aspects of nature. For example, we cannot
suppress our knowledge of death, our eventual return to “silence without appeal and anonymous

putrefaction” lurks in “the background of every thought” (AC II 82). This awareness continually
conflicts with our desire for indefinite self-preservation, creating the ubiquitous human condition of
anguish (AS II 85/AS III 218). In any peaceful and contented moment, we can be suddenly struck by
the rigours of the “inexorable movement” of life, the violence lurking beneath imaginary repose
(PJD 235). The absurdity and emptiness of the world of work, combined with suffocating anguish,
strengthens the paradoxical desire to glimpse and experience horrific nature (AS III 224); the
aspects of existence that we cannot bear to face squarely exert a “monstrous temptation that draws
us to ruination” (AS II 107), and provoke the desire to recklessly squander our safety and certainty.
Becoming aware of horrific nature provokes a feeling of vertigo, but precisely this uneasiness and
sense of uncertainty cause intoxication and exhalation (E 69/AS II 108-9). When we are pushed to
the limits of what we can bear we experience a combination of divine ecstasy and extreme horror

(TE 207). Human life, therefore, exists between two impossible states: living in accordance with the
indifference of nature, and complete detachment from nature.

Sacred Elements

In imposing the taboos that delineate the world of work, we transform the way we experience the
world that is excluded. Nature acquires a forbidden allure that deifies it and even violence is
elevated above a “purely natural and animal affair” to assume “divine significance” (E 116). Since

we habitually reason by calculating interests, we struggle to articulate the significance of a realm
that has no goal and cannot be described using the language of utility (LE 18). Even while
conceding the ultimate impossibility of describing this realm, Bataille continually invented new
terminology to try to convey something of its meaning: “continuity”, in contrast to the
“discontinuous” world of isolated individuals (E 15) ; “the summit”, a state of exuberance that he
contrasts with the “decline”, a state of exhaustion where we prioritize the future (ON 39); the world
of “intimacy”, which he contrasts with the “real order”, i.e., the world of things (AC 57); and,
finally, following Émile Durkheim, the “sacred”, in contrast to the “profane” world of work (PF
141-2).3 It is this final term I will adopt here. This difficulty in pinning down the object of sacred
desire means that what originates in an obsession with horrific nature is a vastly malleable desire,
capable of varied manifestations. As we will see, it is this malleability that enables sacred desire to
be exploited. Bataille commonly uses ‘the sacred’ as a catch-all term for everything excluded from
the world of work, a definition reproduced by his commentators. 4 However, we gain conceptual
clarity by distinguishing between three types of sacred element. Each has its origin in the
fascination with horrific existence, though they are progressively abstracted from nature. Their
obsessive value varies with how intensely they signify violent nature. These categories enable us to
categorize and assess different responses to the political challenges posed by sacred desire.

First, we desire to experience the horrific squandering of nature directly through violence, which
Bataille defined broadly as anything violating the integrity of individual beings. Violence offers a

window into the “nauseating void” (AS II 101) and “limitless abyss” (AS III 238), disrupting the
stability of the world of work. For Bataille – and this will become important later - it is impossible
to assimilate a certain degree of violence into the mindset of self-preservation and resource
accumulation. There is, therefore, a threshold, varying from individual to individual, where violence
remains irredeemably other, i.e., unassimilable and, therefore, shocking: “there is nothing that can
conquer violence” (E 48). Violence is starkly represented by “vertiginous” and “hypnotizing”
thoughts of death that provoke horror and fascination (E 13/AS 56). There are limits to this process:
although the harder something is to assimilate, the more it can potentially inflame desire, at a
certain point the horror becomes unbearable and desire vanishes: a “rotting carcass”, for instance, is
(usually) undesirable, despite directly invoking violent nature (AS 96). The feeling of ecstatic-horror
generated by contact with the sacred can be invoked through direct glimpses of natural horror, or
more subtly, through artistic representations, such as literature and theatre that can provoke “dread
and horror through symbolic representations of tragic loss (degradation or death)” (NOE 120).

Second, something can possess obsessive value – that is, sacred appeal – because it invokes the
character of non-violent, that is, material, squandering. Anything that contravenes the principles of
the world of work develops a transgressive appeal: “We are constantly tempted to abandon work,
patience and the slow accumulation of resources for a contrary movement, where suddenly we
squander the accumulated riches, where we waste and lose as much as we can.” (AC II 107).
Anything interpreted as “nonproductive expenditure” can possess at least some of the allure of

violent squandering. Jewels are paradigmatic: they attain obsessive appeal by virtue of their
tremendous cost and, therefore, signify the squandering of the general economy without invoking
violence (NOE 119). Expensive recreations similarly consume material resources without obviously

quantifiable gain. The habit of accumulating resources is periodically undermined by the urge to
squander them, or at least to witness such squandering.

Third, the inherent meaninglessness of the world of work fuels the desire for any state that
transcends the boundaries of atomized existence. In Eroticism Bataille conceptualizes this feeling as
the desire to experience the primal continuity that lurks behind the discontinuous (bounded by life
and death) existence of individuals (E 15)5). The abstract nature of this desire means it can assume
myriad forms, and this third category of the sacred includes anything where the desire to experience
a lost intimacy is detached from any connection with natural existence (AS 57). For instance,
Bataille describes the fundamental religious feeling as an “anguished quest” for redemption from
the world of things and a renewed intimacy between beings (AS 57/E 118). In the case of organized
religion, the initial lure of sacred experience – the feeling of “terror and awe” that underpins the
appeal of religion - is often not only separated from its connection to horrific nature, but also
transmuted into a religious code that denies the realities of horrific nature, such as mortality and
transience (E 69). The figure of God embodies the desire for a totalizing meaning that redeems
otherwise agonizing squandering, and the desire for lost intimacy has, therefore, become

intermingled with the yearning for peace and safety that initially drove the creation of the world of
work.

The Politics of Archaic Societies

The tension between the desire for self-preservation and the obsessive desire for the sacred has
substantial political consequences. Bataille’s analysis of different political formations tends to focus
on how these contradictory desires are managed. Many of the manifestations of sacred desire are
inherently destructive to the world of work, and must, therefore, be managed politically if it is to
continue to function. I argue that Bataille’s historical analysis reveals that sacred desire has been

managed and exploited by various elites capable of recognizing their power, for various purposes
including ensuring political stability, consolidating their own power, and enhancing social cohesion.
I begin with his much-maligned analysis of ‘archaic’ societies, defending him against the frequent
criticism that he misconstrues the meaning of ancient rites.

Bataille usually analyses societies on the level of the grand economy (the sum of the circulation of
energy), probing how they dispose of their excess resources (their ‘accursed share’). He argues that
a range of societies across historical eras conform to an underlying pattern: they enforce rigid and
inflexible moralities and taboos for the purposes of preserving their existence and accumulating

resources, but they punctuate this routine with festivals where they squander surplus resources
and/or suspend select taboos (E 68). Frequently, the public squandering of resources coincided with
displays of horror. The Aztecs, for instance, sacrificed foreign warriors, and this sacrifice
squandered potential resources and temporarily lifted the prohibition on murder. Similarly, they
crowned lavish banquets with the murder of useful slaves (AS 66). In a particularly costly
transgressive event, for “certain oceanic peoples” the sovereign’s death was the cue to violate every
taboo, including murder and looting stored resources. The death of the king was a catalyst to release
the build-up of sacred desire: “When it struck the king, death would strike the whole population at
its sore point and then the latent pressure would be directed towards a reckless dissipation” (AC III
200). This period of lawlessness only ceased when the sovereign’s flesh had rotted, exposing the
skeleton (E 66).

Bataille’s interpretation of such practices has been criticized as, at best, naïve or, at worst, willfully
ignorant. One prevalent interpretation of his argument has been that archaic societies expended their
surplus resources nonproductively and spectacularly, resolving the problem of how to dispose of
surplus resources in a way that satisfied sacred desire. According to this interpretation, Bataille is
claiming that archaic societies demonstrated a profound awareness of vital human needs - one that

has, for the most part, since been lost. Those who interpret Bataille thus charge him with falsely
interpreting historical sources – particularly Marcel Mauss’s The Gift - glorifying violent rituals for

reflecting a profound understanding of human needs, while being painfully unaware of the (often
rational) complex exchange motivating such practices. 6 For instance, Michael Richardson claims
that Bataille misunderstood the whole principle of The Gift by interpreting gift-giving as “pure
generosity or exuberance” rather than as “part of a complex system of exchange”, and Richard
Wolin likewise castigates his “naive deployment of Mauss’s findings”. 7 Such critics have especially
maligned his interpretation of human sacrifice in Aztec civilisation. Wolin, for instance, rebukes
Bataille for de-contextualising cult practices by (supposedly) claiming that acts of sacrifice have
“no ends beyond themselves” when they actually aimed at reproducing existing power relations.8
Richardson scathingly characterises Bataille’s interpretation of sacrifice as “a vulgar popularisation
fuelled by his own wish fulfilment”.9 Similarly, Bataille is chastised for failing to see that the
potlatch of the Indians of the American Northwest was not “an end in itself” but was “fully
implicated in the production and reproduction of social power”. 10 This line of criticism, then,
contends that Bataille ignores the self-interest that frequently motivated the organizers of
transgressive practices, and instead idealizes this for a commitment to non-productive expenditure
as an intrinsic good. It will become clear later that this misreading has significant repercussions for
evaluating the normative political implications of Bataille’s thought.

Bataille’s actual position is more nuanced and also more defensible than this mischaracterization of
his position. It is accurate that he claims that many archaic societies achieved sufficient equilibrium
between work and sacred desires to resolve the threat of internal violence and disorder. And it is
true that some form of this equilibrium is imperative if a society is to remain stable. But, crucially,
he does not idealize the particular equilibrium that existed in archaic societies, because he
recognizes that it was frequently the result of political elites manipulating sacred desire for their
own, often unpraiseworthy, ends, rather than because of a commitment to nonproductive

expenditure. There is evidence, overlooked in these critical appraisals of Bataille, that he is fully
aware of the self-interested motivations to the organizers of transgressive festivals, who are
invariably wealthy political elites who furnish the resources that are squandered.

There are two primary types of motivations for elites to manipulate sacred forces. The first relates
to their desire to consolidate and expand their power. The expender of resources imbues himself
with sacred qualities. His place in the political and social hierarchy depends upon being seen to
possess these qualities, such as rank, prestige, and glory. Rank, for instance, is the “opposite of a
thing”, established and justified by sacred association (AS 73). Bataille links social rank with the
capacity to expend resources in his early essay, The Notion of Expenditure, arguing that wealth is a
necessary but not sufficient condition for maintaining high social rank; elites must be willing to
expend a portion of their wealth on “unproductive social expenditure such as festivals, spectacles
and games” (NOE 123). This theme recurs in The Accursed Share, where Bataille argues that the
significance of the practice of potlatch was the rank acquired from demonstrating a capacity for
gift-giving (AS 71). Glory and prestige can similarly be acquired by becoming associated with
squandering resources. Gift-giving is a sign of the chief’s glory, exhibiting his wealth, good fortune,
and power (AS 65). While he can reasonably anticipate his gift being returned, perhaps with interest,
any material gain pales into insignificance besides the effect of his gift-giving on how he is
perceived; Bataille approvingly quotes Mauss’s assertion that the chief’s symbolic power would be
enhanced the most if he were to offer an unreturnable potlatch (NOE 122/AS 70). Elites use
different strategies to mark themselves with the sacred: one strategy is demonstrating their
willingness to squander resources, and a second is demonstrating their ability to wield violence:
those capable of wielding the power of “destructive violence” transcend the world of things (AS III
214). Both strategies can be employed to gain association with the allure of the sacred world,
testifying to the malleable nature of sacred desire. Bataille readily concedes that elites regularly
exploit their association with the sacred, using their perceived otherness as “shameless sources of

profits”: “The weak are fleeced, exploited by the strong, who pay them with flagrant lies” (AS 745). In the practice of potlatch, for example, rich men gift resources that might otherwise be used to
benefit their impoverished citizens to other rich men, for the primary purpose of reinforcing their
difference from the destitute (NOE 125). Furthermore, authentic non-productive expenditure would
necessarily be undertaken without regard to future ends, and thus the presence of an audience would
be a matter of indifference. However, transgressive practices in archaic societies usually took the
form of public spectacles, since elites were aware that their power derived from their observation
(AS 69). The actual intention behind the gift-giving was irrelevant: for the gift to invoke the sacred,
it must simply appear to recklessly dispose of vital resources.

The second motivation for managing the sacred desire is that, despite it being inherently hostile to
the world of work, it can be re-directed to serve the good of the community. Bataille’s detailed
accounts of transgressive practices generally focus on the effect they had on spectators. For
example, when the Aztecs selected a foreign prisoner, treated him exquisitely for months, and then
“utterly destroyed” him atop a temple, this was designed to integrate him into the world of things,
so that his usefulness could then be squandered, restoring him to the sacred world. Human sacrifice
was not a spontaneous representation of the frenzy of nature but, rather, a performance, staged to
plunge its spectators into anguish and provoke a feeling of “vertiginous, contagious destruction” in
them (AS II 106). Bataille claims that in the sacrificial moment the prisoner radiated “intimacy,
anguish, the profundity of living beings” onto spectators (AS 59). This sight provoked frenzy in the
spectator (AS 59-60) because he experienced “the continuity of all existence with which the victim
is now one” (E 22). It is, for Bataille, such “moments of intensity” that “are necessary for the
foundation of the social bond… for the moments of intensity are the moments of excess and of
fusion of beings” (LE 70).

Bataille recognizes that human sacrifice was a cynical representation of the savage frenzy of nature,
a controlled ritual designed to achieve specific ends for its organizers (AS II 106). Any event that
successfully taps into the allure of horrific nature can generate similar feelings. Such performances
protect the community from the build-up of potentially ruinous forces, as the glimpse they offer into
horrific nature temporarily satiates the desire for the sacred, releasing its pressure. This release
liberates the community from the threat of destructive violence (LE 123). Transgressive events have
a binding effect on the community: in rupturing the everyday world, individuals, who suffer from
their separateness, experience an intimacy that “blends them indiscriminately with their fellow
beings” (AS 59). Experiencing the natural world ecstatically gives existence meaning, and the
shared nature of these experiences binds the community and strengthens the social bond (LE 70).
Periodic festivals and rituals can, therefore, be used to give purpose to communal life, and therefore
justify the everyday drudgery of the world of work.

There are several explanations for why some commentators have misinterpreted Bataille as
celebrating archaic practices and ignoring the role of self-interest and exploitation. He is often less
interested in the intentions behind transgressive festivals than in how they function in the overall
economy, i.e., putting accumulated wealth back into circulation. Analysing practices on the level of
the individual are often his secondary concern, and such abstraction can make him appear
uninterested in the motivations of those organizing and participating in transgressive festivals.
Moreover, at times he dismisses the stated intentions for festivals as rationalizations that mask
unconscious desires towards the squandering of life and resources. This can make it appear as if he
is interpreting archaic practices as spontaneous responses to irrepressible impulses. For example, he
argues that archaic people rationalized orgies as attempts to ensure a successful crop yield, but this
stated intention was subordinate to the primary role of an explosive release of sacred impulses (AS
II 115). Similarly, in On Nietzsche, he claims that we always motivate ourselves with the language
of utility, even when we desire to unproductively expend energy and resources (ON 37). We are

sometimes wracked by powerful unconscious urges to transgress taboos and experience the sacred,
but justify the resulting actions in terms of their usefulness, because this allows us to reconcile them
with the world of accumulation and self-preservation. This is a plausible interpretation of how
ordinary citizens represent transgressive events to themselves: they seize every pretext to fulfil
repressed desires, grasping whatever justification is available. It does not, however, fully account
for the existence of transgressive festivals. If they exist because human beings always
unconsciously organize opportunities to express sacred impulses, then Bataille could not account
for a society where this does not happen. This would render his critique of bourgeois capitalism
(examined later), as a form of society that does not allow for the expression of sacred desires,
incoherent. There is more at work in creating and maintaining transgressive festivals than the
unconscious desires of the participants: the exuberance shown by the participants of transgressive
events often contrasted with the relatively sober reasoning of those organizing them, who
channelled and exploited the malleability of sacred desire.

We can see, therefore, that the criticism that Bataille falsifies archaic rituals and glorifies them as
celebrations of unproductive expenditure is unjustified. He does partially invite this criticism by
claiming that these rituals are one way of obfuscating the negative consequences of repressing
sacred impulses (although, as we will see, there are other means of avoiding ruinous destruction).
But he does not succumb to the illusion that the rituals of archaic societies were spontaneous
responses to essential human needs. In contrast, he is aware that in organizing transgressive rituals,
elites deliberately infused themselves with sacred power. While sacred desires might erupt
sporadically and destructively when unchecked, they can also be manipulated by elites and used as
a currency to purchase certain goods: personal power, stability, social cohesion, etc.11

Bourgeois Capitalism and the Challenge of Fascism

Bataille’s analysis of capitalist-democracies is cursory, presumably because he condemns them as a
short-lived phenomenon, which will inevitably give way to other forms of political organization (P
198). This damning judgment stems from two arguments that relate to the genesis of a capitalist
spirit that is hostile to unproductive expenditure. In the first, he follows Max Weber in crediting the
Protestant Reformation with a decisive role in shaping the capitalist spirit (AS 123). In the MiddleAges, Catholicism masterfully manipulated the desire for squandering by institutionalizing
indulgences and other forms of buying spiritual credit, and by spending its prodigious wealth
lavishly on churches that were packed with awe-inspiring but otherwise useless ornaments (AS
122). Nobles and merchants felt obliged to match this spectacular expenditure, creating an
ostentatious equilibrium (AS 122). When Luther insisted on “the Gospel’s principle of hostility to
wealth and luxury” he drove the imposition of a moral code opposing excess and squandering (AS
121). This destroyed “the world of unproductive consumption” and obliterated the remnants of
religion’s sacred appeal (AS 127). In the second argument, Bataille claims that capitalistdemocracies emerged from revolutions awash in antiauthoritarian fervour, including hostility
towards institutions that have traditionally tapped into sacred desire, notably the monarchy, church,
and the military (PF 158). This atmosphere fostered the rise of the bourgeoisie, a ruling class
peerless in their hatred of expenditure, who are unwilling to fulfil their “obligation” to expend part
of their wealth gloriously (AS 124-5). Capitalism is, then, an “unreserved surrender to things”, a
“metamorphosis” in the “civilized world” where future accumulation is prioritized over present
desires (AS 136/LE 55). Democratic politicians are merely spokespeople for the world of work,
competing with rival plans for economic efficiency.

Ignorance of sacred forces is, for Bataille, politically catastrophic. Not only does it reflect a lack of
awareness of the experiences that make human existence meaningful, it also exposes society to the
explosive release of repressed forces. Many commentators have emphasised Bataille’s concern that
the decline in spectacular festivals under bourgeois capitalism will lead to an excess of sacred desire

and surplus resources being invested into imperialistic adventures and catastrophic wars on a scale
hitherto unimagined.12 Another consequence of societies neglecting sacred desire is that they
become increasingly vulnerable to the challenge posed by charismatic leaders who establish
otherness to the world of work. This increases the likelihood of populist movements and exposes
society to the extreme expression of this tendency: the risk of fascist coups.

Fascism is the supreme example of a system where sacred impulses are directed into avenues
abstracted from the natural world. Fascist leaders embody sacred force by establishing their
otherness from the everyday world: “opposed to democratic politicians… Mussolini and Hitler
immediately stand out as something other” (PF 143). This otherness, which accounts for their
psychological sway over the population, derives from a confluence of abstract sources. Fascist
leaders exploit the desire for lost intimacy, conjuring up and exploiting nostalgia, both real and
imaginary, promising the “recovery of the lost world” and a rejuvenated communal life that opposes
democratic disintegration. They capitalise on crises by promising “vulgar and facile solutions” (NC
204). They bolster this power by appropriating the power of traditional institutions capable of
generating, disciplining and controlling sacred impulses. Fascist societies tend to exploit the
military model, expanding it to encompass the entire state. The leader performs the role of the army
chief, who embodies “intense sacredness” through identification with the glorious triumphs of the
institution. Each soldier equates himself with the leader’s glory, and thus people from “different
origins” are symbolically assimilated into the collective (this contrasts with other elites, such as
monarchies, characterised by their otherness to the lower classes (PF 154)). The chief’s glory forms
and disciplines individuals: “the mass that constitutes the army passes from a depleted and ruined
existence to a purified geometric order, from formlessness to aggressive rigidity” (PF 151). Bataille
observes that military authority alone rarely secures “long-lasting domination”; the leader usually
needs to co-opt the sacred appeal of religion by adopting a quasi-divine role (PF 151-2). The fascist
leader exploits sacred impulses to generate allegiance and underpin the world of work by imposing

“duty, discipline, and obedience” (PF 155). Thus, sacred impulses are placed firmly in the service
of the world of work and its ideals. Unruly elements are suppressed by “socially heterogeneous
institutions like the government, army and police”. 13 For Fred Botting and Scott Wilson, the
imperative to sacrifice oneself for the world of work and the good of the community reached its
most excessive form in Nazi Germany, producing its truth in “genocidal extermination”. 14

For Bataille, fascism is not a primitive formation, a return to the violence of nature, but a
manifestation of the drive towards order and purification from nature, the same drive that creates
the world of work. Its methods for generating sacred power are abstract, removed from association
with the violent squandering of nature and unproductive resource squandering. It might be objected
that part of the appeal of fascist leaders is that they wield the power of violence, and this connects
them to the natural world of squandering. Fascist violence, however, has little in common with the
indiscriminate squandering of nature. This is not just because it is organized violence – we know
that, for Bataille, Aztec violence was both organized and invoked horrific nature. The Aztecs,
however, made every effort to disguise the fact that they were sacrificing an outsider to the
community by spending months integrating him into the community, parading him around and
showering him with gifts (AC 50). Fascist violence, on the other hand, is explicitly directed at those
it portrays as outsiders to the community, at those it considers impure and inferior. When the idea of
the sacred loses contact with natural horrors, such as when it is expressed in a desire for lost
continuity and when it is embodied by authoritarian demagogues, it loses the power to enduringly
captivate and satisfy sacred desire: “The reckless flight from death is impossible and self-defeating,
only serving to produce new forms of servitude” (AS II 217). These new forms of servitude are
fascist and religious societies where sacred associations are used to justify subordinating citizens to
the world of work. Even when not used for this end, fascism still falsifies the fundamental
conditions of life, attempting to imposing order upon a violent movement that we can neither escape
nor fully eliminate from awareness. The promise of purity and order offered by fascism and

religion, among other forces, is undermined by the disorder of nature, which cannot be suppressed
indefinitely. The outcome is a “profoundly disappointing” and “stifling” society – once the
otherness of the leader wanes, the fascist state can only preserve itself by brutally enforcing
discipline (NC 204).

The Political Implications of Bataille’s Analysis

Many commentators have attempted to construct an account of Bataille’s political commitments by
piecing together his philosophical ideas, political statements, and the manifestos of the various
societies and journals he was involved with. There has been substantial divergence, however, in the
conclusions that have been drawn, and the analysis I have undertaken here sheds some light on the
cogency of these interpretations. One strand of analysis is exemplified by Richard Wolin, who, as
we have seen, charges Bataille with glorifying and aiming to resurrect the practices of archaic
societies. Wolin argues that Bataille advocates anything that he interprets as involving unproductive
expenditure, including wars, provided they are fought for “non-utilitarian” reasons: “Bataille’s
understanding of the prospects for a return of the sacred is relatively pluralistic. The revitalization
of any one of a number of rites and occult practices that have been summarily banned by the rise of
modernity’s “instrumentally rationalist culture” (Weber) will do”.15 Wolin argues that Bataille is
committed to all forms of irrationalism and that at times Bataille endorsed a political project that
can be best described as “left-fascism”, by which Wolin means using fascist tactics for tapping into
the sacred to pursue a radical left agenda. My analysis here has, however, undermined this reading
of Bataille, since I have shown that he is acutely aware that the rituals of archaic societies were not
genuine acts of unproductive expenditure, but were rooted in the self-interest of elites, who
frequently exploited sacred desire for their own ends. While Bataille is committed to the claim that

society must engage in some form of unproductive expenditure, this is a far narrower field of
practices than Wolin allows for and precludes archaic societies and fascism.

Jean-Michel Besnier develops a more plausible reading of Bataille’s political commitments, arguing
that these commitments are encapsulated in Bataille’s phrase “the politics of the impossible”. 16
Bataille’s political remarks unfolded in the context not only of his rejection of bourgeois capitalism
and “the political establishment”, but also his awareness of “the evils” of the revolutionary projects
of Soviet communism and fascism. 17 For Besnier, Bataille refuses to commit to any specific mode
of political organization, and instead engages in a revolt against existing political formations: “a
revolt against anything that pretends to be completed, full, transparent, and necessary… a politics
of the impossible… underpins revolutionary action while it resolutely rejects the goal of a takeover
of political power”. Such a commitment to an “unplanned uprising” and a “politics of the
unforeseeable” clearly precludes any return to the dominance exercised by elites in archaic
societies, not to mention any endorsements of the totalizing order and discipline of fascist regimes. 18
Bataille’s commitment to a ‘politics of the impossible’ is a rejection of all past and present political
communities, and also undermines the search for an idealized form of political community in his
work.19 This fits with my argument that Bataille’s analysis demonstrates that the history of political
societies is one of the exploitation of sacred desire by political elites. If the exercise of political
power has consistently involved manipulating sacred impulses, then we can understand why
Bataille eschews existing political formations and commits himself to the politics of the impossible.

This approach to interpreting Bataille’s own political position does not, however, exhaust the
resources in his work for theorizing about politics. In the remainder of this paper, I argue that his
conceptual terminology can be fruitfully employed to analyze developments in contemporary
capitalist-democracies and that his work also provide resources for evaluating the effectiveness and
desirability of different strategies for managing sacred desire.

Since most capitalist-democracies have thus far endured fascist challenges, we must reassess
Bataille’s prediction that they would collapse through their neglect of sacred desire. One line of
argument has been suggested by Jean-Joseph Goux, drawing upon George Gilder’s Wealth and
Poverty account of the evolution of capitalism. Comparing Gilder and Bataille’s (coincidentally)
similar vocabulary, Goux argues that, for Gilder, capitalism has begun to reward practices of
unproductive expenditure, inadvertently developing a version of Mauss’s notion of the gift. The
increasing need to invest resources without the guarantee of return leads Gilder to the
counterintuitive conclusion that: “giving is the vital impulse and moral center of capitalism”.20 For
Gilder, contemporary capitalism transcends the risk-aversive attitude of its bourgeois beginnings.
Thus, it is possible, on this reading, to argue that late-capitalism exhibits sufficient squandering of
wealth to placate sacred desire. There are, however, several weaknesses in this explanation. This
account relies solely on the sacred appeal generated by material squandering. Although material
squandering can mimic the violent squandering of nature, and thus to an extent captivate sacred
desire, Bataille’s historical analysis suggests that material squandering is most effective at invoking
the sacred when joined with glimpses into the horror of the natural world, such as when lavish
banquets featured ritual murders, rather than when it is entirely detached from natural existence,
such as in financial speculation, or in the case of jewels. It is unlikely that material squandering
alone, divorced from natural horror, can provide a long-term satisfy sacred desire. Even if we are
justified in interpreting the more speculative end of financial investment as a form of nonproductive
expenditure, let alone gift-giving (Goux does question the soundness of this argument), such a
practice seemingly cannot fulfil Bataille’s specifications for effective transgressive practices. The
importance of traditional gift-giving is its place within spectacular festivals, either as a centrepiece
or adornment to ceremonial occasions such as initiations, marriage, and funerals (AS 67), and
contemporary financial speculation lacks the spectacular aesthetics that might satisfy sacred desire.

A second, more plausible, explanation of capitalism’s longevity can be located in the increasing
willingness of Western democracies to dispense with traditional moralities, which, William Pawlett
argues, have tended to have been cast off as “antiquated forms of repression”. 21 Obliterating moral
constraints allows capitalist forces to commodify (usually) sacred fields, selling glimpses into the
aspects of life that we ordinarily distance ourselves from. Bataille understood better than anyone the
power of transgressive material, as evident in his penning of pornographic literature, and his
account of his ecstatic contemplation of a photograph of the Hundred Pieces torture: “Through this
violence - even today I cannot imagine a more insane, more shocking form - I was so stunned that I
reached the point of ecstasy” (TE 205-6).22 The increasing availability of horror films, violent
video-games, media violence, and pornography can be interpreted as attempts to distil the sensation
of ecstatic-horror to be sold to an audience infatuated – consciously or otherwise – with dizzying
nature.23 Legalisation creates spheres where practices become legal but remain subject to social
stigma, allowing individuals to violate taboos without legal consequences. In contrast to the
infrequent collective rituals that characterized archaic societies, modern capitalism is developing
constantly available outlets for destructive impulses. Such outlets, per Bataille’s logic, can release
the pressure of sacred desire by syphoning it into less explosive channels. This is a promising
argument for at least partially explaining capitalism’s longevity. Whether these kinds of
transgressive practices sate the demand for experiencing the sacred, or whether they detrimentally
divert abstract desire into explicitly violent channels, is an on-going debate.24

Whatever conclusion we draw about the expanding market for transgressive practices, we should
bear in mind that the exploitation of the sacred by capitalist forces does not equate to the effective
management of sacred forces, and any positive effects that have been accrued are accidental
byproducts of the drive for profit. Although capitalism’s quest to profit from sacred desire might
ward off the threat of revolutionary violence in the short-term, there are reasons to suspect this
process will escalate in intensity. When a sacred element is commodified this bestows exchange

value, reducing these elements to the status of a thing, and thus integrating them into the world of
work (AS 129). If assimilating the more subtle transgressive experiences into the world of work
strips their sacred appeal, this suggests that capitalist forces, if left unchecked, will drive inexorably
to tap the most powerful sacred elements. As we approach the source of sacred desire, horrific
nature, experiences are more likely to retain their transgressive appeal despite the desensitizing
effects of cynical manipulation by capitalist forces. Violent is the most excessive element of the
sacred because it is impossible to fully assimilate into a world-view that prioritizes selfpreservation. We can, therefore, expect increasingly visceral glimpses into the tumultuous
underbelly of civilization, as capitalist forces aggressively mine the value in selling the sensation of
ecstatic-horror.

The dystopian novels of J. G. Ballard magnify and examine capitalism’s tendency to assimilate and
exploit transgressive elements. In one recurring theme, order and productivity appear to have
triumphed over the chaotic elements of existence, but this surface conceals an undercurrent of
sickening violence. In Super-Cannes, for instance, Ballard describes a hyper-modern and ultraefficient community that has seemingly banished violence and disorder, before gradually revealing
the concealed violence built into its structure. The psychiatrist Penrose is the organizer and
spokesperson for this philosophy, as he prescribes “carefully metered violence, microdoses of
madness”, in the form of periodic violent excursions, to stimulate communal health, relieve
boredom, provide communal meaning and stimulate productivity. 25 In Ballard’s dystopian vision of
the excesses towards which late capitalism is tending, the surface of the productive community is
ordered and austere, but this is enabled by injected doses of disordered and frenzied violence,
mostly inflicted upon communal outsiders.

Is violence an inevitable part of satisfying sacred desire? As we have seen, Bataille’s historical
analysis does suggest that political communities cannot, in the long-run, repress the source of sacred

desire in natural horror. Consequently, as Paul Hegarty argues, we must face violent nature squarely,
without falsifying it.26 It might be concluded from this that violence is inevitable. Kenneth
Itzkowitz, for instance, argues that for Bataille violence is not only inevitable but is also desirable
as the most powerful entry into the sacred, and that the normative implication of his thought is,
therefore, that we should seek to substitute “less damaging acts for the more violent alternatives”,
because “violence is the only key we have to the experience of the miraculous, of the sacred”. 27 This
conclusion is, however, too quick, and assumes that only violence can offer insight into natural
horror. There are plenty of indications in Bataille’s texts that there a