Effects≠intention CHANGE PAGE #s

There are several explanations for why some commentators have misinterpreted Bataille as celebrating archaic practices and ignoring the role of self-interest and exploitation. He is often less interested in the intentions behind transgressive festivals than in how they function in the overall economy, i.e., putting accumulated wealth back into circulation. Analyzing practices on the level of the individual are often his secondary concern, and such abstraction can make him appear uninterested in the motivations of those organizing and participating in transgressive festivals. Moreover, at times he dismisses the stated intentions for festivals as rationalizations that mask unconscious desires towards the squandering of life and resources. This can make it appear as if he is interpreting archaic practices as spontaneous responses to irrepressible impulses. For example, he argues that archaic people rationalized orgies as attempts to ensure a successful crop yield, but this stated intention was subordinate to the primary role of an explosive release of sacred impulses (AS II 115). Similarly, in On Nietzsche, he claims that we always motivate ourselves with the language of utility, even when we desire to unproductively expend energy and resources (ON 37). We are sometimes wracked by powerful unconscious urges to transgress taboos and experience the sacred, but justify the resulting actions in terms of their usefulness, because this allows us to reconcile them with the world of accumulation and self-preservation. This is a plausible interpretation of how ordinary citizens represent transgressive events to themselves: they seize every pretext to fulfil repressed desires, grasping whatever justification is available. It does not, however, fully account for the existence of transgressive festivals. If they exist because human beings always unconsciously organize opportunities to express sacred impulses, then Bataille could not account for a society where this does not happen. This would render his critique of bourgeois capitalism (examined later), as a form of society that does not allow for the expression of sacred desires, incoherent. There is more at work in creating and maintaining transgressive festivals than the unconscious desires of the participants: the exuberance shown by the participants of transgressive events often contrasted with the relatively sober reasoning of those organizing them, who channelled and exploited the malleability of sacred desire.

We can see, therefore, that the criticism that Bataille falsifies archaic rituals and glorifies them as celebrations of unproductive expenditure is unjustified. He does partially invite this criticism by claiming that these rituals are one way of obfuscating the negative consequences of repressing sacred impulses (although, as we will see, there are other means of avoiding ruinous destruction). But he does not succumb to the illusion that the rituals of archaic societies were spontaneous responses to essential human needs. In contrast, he is aware that in organizing transgressive rituals, elites deliberately infused themselves with sacred power. While sacred desires might erupt sporadically and destructively when unchecked, they can also be manipulated by elites and used as a currency to purchase certain goods: personal power, stability, social cohesion, etc.