What is excess?

[...] In order to expand our understanding of these actions, and how we create communities of action, we need to look beyond our existing terms of exchange to the realm of excess; embracing anti-economic, political and existential meanings. Making reference to the French writer Georges Bataille, media theorist Wolfgang Sützl has argued in the recent article “On Sharing”, that expanded possibilities (i.e., also the possibility of acting, sharing, making, differently) relates to an inclusion of the visceral, the erotic, and the primeval.

Excess is not simply a description of an amount beyond what is considered normal, sufficient or permitted (as with insurance or business), but in its etymological link to ecstasy, it is linked to the realm of pleasure, Bataille argues. The notion of excess is elementary to Bataille’s view of a ‘general economy’ based upon the intentional production of non-utilitarian goods such as luxuries or spectacular displays of wealth and weapons systems. The general economy is where expenditure (waste, sacrifice, or destruction) is considered more fundamental than the restricted economies of production and utilities that are based on scarcity. He describes, for instance, how the sun freely expands energy without receiving anything in return. If people intend to be free (from the imperatives of capitalism, for instance) he recommends they should pursue a general economy of expenditure (giving, sacrifice or destruction). Only then will they escape the determination of existing imperatives of utility and normative production. For Bataille, people are necessarily beings of excess; full of exorbitant energy, fantasies, need, drives, and heterogeneous desires.

The notion of ‘excess’ energy is central to Bataille’s thinking. He takes the superabundance of energy, beginning from the infinite outpouring of solar energy or the surpluses produced by life’s basic chemical reactions, as the norm for organisms. In other words, an organism in Bataille’s general economy, unlike the rational actors of classical economy (Capitalist and Marxist alike) who are motivated by scarcity, normally has an excess of energy available to it. This extra energy can be used productively for the organism’s growth or it can be lavishly expended. Bataille insists that an organism’s growth or expansion always runs up against limits and becomes impossible. The wasting of this energy is a ‘luxury’ characteristic of any society. ‘The accursed share’ refers to this excess, destined for waste.

> Introduction to Excessive Research