The Aff, by printing more money—taking out a debt it has no intention of returning in service of its gift-giving—radically reconceptualizes the idea of waste, rethinking economics.

Having looked at money’s relationship to capital in Chapter 2, its configuration as a form of debt in Chapter 3, and its underlying structures of guilt in Chapter 4, we now turn to a fourth conceptual framework for exploring the theory of money, namely, notions that connect it to waste. This conception of money emerges with particular clarity when it is viewed through the perspective of general economy. The central thinker here is Georges Bataille, who although he remains largely a peripheral figure in anthropology and sociology, is best known for his theory of expenditure and the accursed share. Bataille’s work has particularly strong connections with—although it must also be distinguished from—the arguments of Mauss on sacrifice, primitive classification, and gift exchange, which we considered in Chapter 1. Following a discussion of Bataille in which we consider his notion of money against the background of his philosophy of base materialism, his conception of unproductive expenditure and his theory of general economy, I want to look at two thinkers whose arguments resonate with his, although both move in quite different directions. These are Derrida and Baudrillard. I am not giving general introductions to these figures but focusing specifically on what they had to say about (and how they used) notions of waste and general economy, and more narrowly, what they said about the nature of money in relation to these notions.

By addressing money from the perspective of waste, I am inverting its more customary textbook treatment as a function of utility. This is a familiar theme in the study of consumption: luxury objects express the capacity of their owners to waste what they have, and the “Veblen good” is more coveted the higher its price goes. As Veblen describes it in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), the capacity to indulge in wasteful expenditure—and to make others use up their productive time catering to one’s luxurious tastes—is a key marker of distinction (Veblen 2009). Waste is a cultural symbol, in Veblen’s theory; indeed, one might refer to wasteful rather than conspicuous consumption (Varul 2006: 104–105). Waste is sociologically loaded as well as culturally rich. Alongside gambling, conspicuous or wasteful consumption belongs to the group of “fanciful uses of money” that Bataille associates with expenditure. Having said this, I will focus specifically on theories that view money itself as a form of waste—or what Bataille calls heterogeneous matter.