Batailles Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability

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The French intellectual Georges Bataille saw energy as the basis of all human activitythe essence of the humanand he envisioned a society that, instead of renouncing profligate spending, would embrace a more radical type of energy expenditure: la dpense, or "spending without return." In Bataille's Peak, Allan Stoekl demonstrates how a close reading of Bataillein the wake of Giordano Bruno and the Marquis de Sadecan help us rethink not only energy and consumption but also such related topics as the city, the body, eroticism, and religion. Through these cases, Stoekl identifies the differences between waste, which Bataille condemned, and expenditure, which he celebrated.