Engaging with Bataille: How Notions of a “General Economy” and “Sovereignty,” can be Reworked for Chinese Religious Environmentalism

The Pacific Northwest “potlatch” cultures were found by Boas, Mauss, and Bataille to engage in profligate “waste” and “destruction” of wealth, from the viewpoint of our capitalist addiction to production and accumulation. The sacrificial, feasting, and shamanistic cultures of Bronze Age China shared this ethos of excessive ritual expenditures. These acts of celebratory consumption and destruction of wealth are now greatly diminished in the age of modern capitalist self-discipline and utilitarian harnessing of labor for endless production, utility, and efficiency. In contemporary China, despite the state developmentalism and capitalism, surprisingly, one finds that the spirit of wasteful consumption and sacrifice to the gods is still alive. The sun, noted Bataille in The History of Religion, showers all life on Earth with its inexhaustible energy. In the Age of the Anthropocene, can we tap into this abundant solar energy and sparks of archaic effervescence, for a flourishing and renewable planetary life?