Dépense-recette

Abstract

The article aims to re-examine the “expenditure” of Bataille and its related notions and to question their contemporary relics. First, we will underline the internal contradiction of “expenditure” : it does not exist without a recipe. Then, it will be necessary to understand that in “the society of the spectacle” (Debord) where we now live, “transgression” and “sovereignty” have become goods among others. Where the “expenditure” is turned into economy, it is instrumentalized in a system which passes it off as what it wishes to contradict: a “product” of entertainment, an agreed aesthetic. Finally, we will have to look at the pirate nature of “sovereignty”. We will observe that in the socio-political domain all “sovereignty” has withdrawn in its paradoxical way in the “spectacle”. Neither individual nor State are no longer able to counter the logic of the recipe, which is why we live in the heart of an untransgressable that we never stop wanting to transgress.

Keywords

• expenditure
• revenue
• transgression
• the society of the spectacle
• sovereignty
• the state of exception