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The Poetics of ExpenditureAuthor(s): Susan BloodSource: MLN, Vol. 117, No. 4, French Issue (Sep., 2002), pp. 836-857Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3251920Accessed: 18/02/2010 15:58

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The Poetics of Expenditure

Susan Blood

The development of aesthetic modernism in France, both in the fieldof painting and in literature, has been deeply influenced by post-Kantian modes of thought. To speak very generally, post-Kantianthought affirms the "purity" and specificity of aesthetic endeavor. The

story of modernism in this context becomes a story of how artpurified itself of external influences and began to explore the

possibilities of its own medium. Modern art no longer serves religionor the state and ceases to be of economic benefit to the individualwho produces it. These are some of the tenets of post-Kantianmodernism, and the latter point in particular has figured crucially inthe discussion of French poetry and its development since Baudelaire.The fact that poetry does not pay is a point of honor for poets likeMallarme and Valery, and not only because an unpaid poet stands on

high moral grounds. If pure poetry excludes economic values, this isalso due to the nature of poetic language. Mallarme commented

famously that most language usage amounts to nothing more than

putting a piece of money silently in some one else's hand (368).Language as coinage is a mere means to an end; it enables theconduct of business within the social sphere and its meanings are

conventionally determined. Pure poetry, on the other hand, has noneof these economic characteristics. It is not a simple medium of

everyday communication and its value cannot be measured in eco-

nomic terms. Kant used the expression "purposiveness without pur-pose" to describe this aesthetic resistance to economic ends.

The most succinct attempt to critique the post-Kantian inheritance

MLN117 (2002): 836-857 ? 2002 by TheJohns Hopkins University Press


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in France is probablyJacques Derrida's essay "Economimesis."' It is aclassic deconstructive exercise, set up as a reading of Kant's Critique fJudgment and focusing on the particular paragraphs in which Derridadiscerns a theory of mimesis in the making (2 ?43-51). The funda-mental oppositions in Kant's aesthetic thought-between art andnature, the liberal and the mercenary arts, the fine arts and thesciences-are explicated and shown to be unstable. This generaldeconstructive project underwrites the term Derrida coins in the

essay's title, "Economimesis." Economimesis reflects an alignment oftwo realms which the Kantian system attempts to hold apart: "It wouldappear that mimesis nd oikonomia could have nothing to do with oneanother. The point is to demonstrate the contrary, to exhibit the

systematic link between the two" (3-4). In Derrida's reading, theconcept of economy remains indeterminate. He claims that he is notseeking to establish a link between mimesis and any given politicaleconomy: "[Mimesis] can accommodate itself to political systems thatare different, even opposed to one another" (4). Nevertheless, the

concept of economy in its most general instance entails a kind of

specification.The

attemptto trace the

generaloccurrence of

"politi-cal economy" in Kant's aesthetics thus reveals the occult presence ofa particular political economy: "A politics, therefore, although itnever occupies the center of the stage, acts upon this discourse. Itought to be possible to read it. A politics and a political economy, tobe sure, are implicated in every discourse on art and on the beautiful.But how does one discern the most pointed specificity of such animplication?" (4, my emphasis).'

Derrida's search for the political economy implied by Kant's

aesthetics is conducted on several fronts, but my discussion will focuson one series of observations. While the Critique of Judgment eavespolitics in the wings, so to speak ("it never occupies the center of thestage"), a political figure does appear, strangely disguised, in Kant's

'The essay appears in French in Mimesis des articulations. Richard Klein's Englishtranslation is in Diacritics 11. 3 (1981): 3-25. I will quote from Klein's translation here.

'The above citation is deceptively simple. By stating that a political economy isimplied in all aesthetic discourse, Derrida is making a general proposition. He is

interested in discerning "la specificite la plus aigue d'une telle implication" (the mostpointed specificity of such an implication), i.e. specificity conceived as a generalcategory of thought. To emphasis the issue, I have altered Klein's translation somewhat.Klein uses "politics" and "political economy" as purely general terms, while the originalFrench is more specific: "une politique et une 6conomie politique."

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discourse. This is the Prussian king, Frederick the Great. In keepingwith the professedly apolitical character of the Critique, Kant does notpresent Frederick as a king. Frederick is an exemplary personage, butKant finds him particularly admirable for his poetic talents and notfor his political skills. Kant cites few poets in the Critique, butFrederick comes in for special praise and attention. Of course criticshave attributed this to Kant's servility and possible lack of taste in thematter of poetry. There seems to be no other explanation for his

putting a king in the place of a poet and thereby betraying his ownaesthetic agenda: only a traitor to the doctrine of aesthetic freedomwould bend his knee to a king at the moment when he wishes to payhomage to the sovereignty of genius (Frederick appears in the sectionof the Critique hat Kant devotes to "The faculties of the mind whichconstitute genius").

As compromising as Kant's behavior may appear, Derrida decidesnot to dismiss it entirely. The figurative economy in which a kingcould be exchanged for a poet is not without interest. Such an

economy, Derrida argues, involves more than the simple transaction

suggested bymere

servilityon Kant's

part.The

king-poet exchangebecomes, in fact, the crucial moment through which Derrida will

begin to trace the processes of "economimesis" in Kant's aesthetics.In order to follow the argument, we should look more closely at the

passage in Kant's Critique where this figurative economy is set inmotion.

In "The faculties of the mind which constitute genius," Kant claimsthat genius is distinguished by the ability to produce "aesthetic ideas."An aesthetic idea is one that exceeds the finite character of rational

ideas. Rational ideas need to be precise and are governed by a strictrelationship between words and what they represent. In this sense,rational ideas involve simple transactions; they are useful as currencyin everyday exchange. Aesthetic ideas, however, cannot be confinedwithin the rational economy of give and take because they engenderan excess of thought: "by an aesthetic idea I mean that representationof the imagination which induces much thought, yet without the

possibility of any definite thought whatever, i.e. concept, being ad-

equate to it, and which language, consequently, can never get quite

on level terms with or render completely intelligible" (175-76,original emphasis). The excess of thought in this instance is pro-duced by a defect or lack of adequation between language and whatit is supposed to represent. Excessive thought and defective represen-tation go hand in hand.

In order to illustrate this definition of an aesthetic idea, Kant turns

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to a poem by Frederick the Great. In the stanza that interests Kant,Frederick exhorts himself to die peacefullyjust as the sun sets in quietsplendor. The setting sun is thus called upon to represent "therational idea of a cosmopolitan sentiment even at the close of life"

(178):

Oui, finissons sans trouble et mourons sans regret,En laissant l'univers comble de nos bienfaits.Ainsi l'astre dujour au bout de sa carriere,Repand sur l'horizon une douce lumiere,Et les derniers

rayons qu'ildarde dans les airs

Sont les derniers soupirs qu'il donne a l'univers.

[Yes, let us finish without disquiet and die without regretLeaving the universe overflowing with our benefactions.Thus the star of day at the end of its career,Spreads over the horizon a soft light,And the last rays that it shoots in the airAre the last sighs that it gives to the universe.]3

Kant argues that by annexing the image of the setting sun to arational idea (the cosmopolitan sentiment of a dying king), Frederickcreates an aesthetic idea "which stirs up a crowd of sensations and

secondary representations for which no expression can be found"

(178). The Sun-King is a rich figure precisely because the image is not

adequate to the idea and leaves so much unexpressed. Kant's readingof the poem is at this point in conformity with his general discussionof the imperfect excess of the aesthetic idea. But his reading goesbeyond the general argument as he casts a critical gaze on the imageitself. In the

process,he

appropriatesthe

imageof the sun so that it

becomes crucial, not only to Frederick's poem, but to his ownaesthetic discourse. Kant's critique and appropriation of the imageoccur in an awkward sentence where he describes the imaginativeactivity behind Frederick's poem: as the imagination annexes sun to

king it simultaneously "remember[s] all the pleasures of a fairsummer's day that is over and gone-a memory of which pleasures is

suggested by a serene evening" (178).4 The awkwardness of this

3This is Klein's translation of the poem.4The German here reads: "in der Erinnerung an alle Annehmlichkeiten eines

vollbrachten schonen Sommertages, die uns ein heiterer Abend ins Gemut ruft." Kritikder Urteilskraft, rsg. von Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1957), 252.

J.H. Bernard's translation is somewhat clearer than Meredith's: "in remembering allthe pleasures of a beautiful summer day that are recalled at its close by a sereneevening." New York: Hafner Press, 1951) 159.

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sentence (exacerbated by the English translation, but already presentin the German) comes from the fact that even before the image ofthe setting sun is annexed to the idea of the dying king, that imageitself is strangely complex. The setting sun is both an immediateexperience and a memory. The experience of the serene evening isnot self-contained; it suggests or remembers "all the pleasures of a fairsummer's day" that it literally puts an end to. There is thus a starkdifference between what the setting sun remembers and what it is,what it signifies and what it performs. But this is the very differencethat gives the image its aesthetic quality, enabling it to suggest theexcess of thought that sets off the figurative economy of Kant'sdiscourse. If the image of the setting sun somehow suggests bothmore and less than the idea of a dying king, this inadequacy of

representation s already an inadequacy of self-presentation ith respectto the image itself. Thus Kant's sun becomes a privileged image,prompting Derrida to describe his poetics (along with those of Plato,Hegel, Nietzsche, and possibly Bataille) as a "helio-poetics."5

The complex economy that Kant attributes to the Sun-King ofFrederick's

poemis the same

economythat Derrida attributes to the

King-Poet of Kant's discourse. A chain of associations thereby unfolds

linking sun, king, poetic genius (and Frederick and Kant) in aninfinite figural process. The process is infinite because, while eachterm may suggest the other, no term is fully adequate to the other.The quickening of thought set off by these associations is never shutdown by a completed mental transaction. Critics have commented onthe fact that Kant himself seems to rise to the level of poetry in hisdiscussion of Frederick's poem, perhaps bringing the third Critique

itself into the economy of aesthetic ideas. Richard Klein writes in thisvein that Kant's page devoted to Frederick is "luminous," "the mostaesthetic, poetic, the sunniest, happiest page in the whole flintyvolume."6 Such luminosity indicates that we are here at the heart ofKant's aesthetics, at the moment when his discourse no longer merelydescribes the aesthetic in a constative fashion, but performs it byproducing an excess of thought.

5For a discussion of the sun as a figure in Bataille's thought, see Martin Jay, "TheDisenchantment of the

Eye:Bataille and the

Surrealists,"in Downcast

Eyes:The

Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century rench Thought (Berkeley: U of California P,1993), 223-28. Jay emphasizes that it was Bataille's engagement with the work of VanGogh that led him to make "connections between looking at the sun, self-destruction,and aesthetic creativity most explicit" (224). This nexus of associations is alreadyworking in Kant, as Derrida's argument makes clear.6 Cf. "Kant's Sunshine." Klein's essay is a commentary on "Economimesis".

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One might object to this lyrical assessment that the chain of

associations Kant's discourse sets in motion is somewhat cliched. TheSun-King-Poet-Philosopher is a familiar figure, rather Apollonian incharacter. Of course, nothing prevents a cliche from having aninfinite potential for expansion. Whether the cliche's expansionengenders an excess of thought, however, is unlikely.7 The question tobe asked here is whether Kant discourse remains within an Apolloniancliche of beauty, or whether it moves beyond the clich6 into anotherrealm. Since I am using a Nietzchean vocabulary, the question couldbe rephrased in terms of the Apollonian/Dionysian opposition: isthere a Dionysian element in Kant's helio-poetics, an element that

might preserve the infinite, aesthetic character of the Sun-King-Poet-Philosopher chain of associations, preventing the chain from enter-

ing the order of rational ideas? Does "Kant's Sunshine" (to stealKlein's title) have a dark shadow?

My answer to the question is "yes." The Sun-King of Kant'sdiscourse differs from the cliche in an important aspect: Kant's sun isa setting un, his king is a dying king, the image of "solar majesty" thathe

presentsin the

Critiques one whose excessive

poweris made

apparent at the moment of self-extinction. This is very different fromthe Sun-King image projected by Louis XIV, for example, who investshis subjects with privileges while exacting submission in exchange:Versailles would be the symbol of such a rational economy of power.But the image of power in Kant plays for higher aesthetic stakes,producing not a palace but poetry. The palace may be beautiful, butit does not attain to the infinite aesthetic status of poetry because it isultimately too useful: "in architecture the chief point is a certain use of

the artistic object to which, as the condition, the aesthetic ideas arelimited" (186; 2 ?51, original emphasis). The production of poetryinvolves a more sublime economy of power because the power isbased upon a sacrifice of self. The self-sacrificing Sun-King-Poet,exacting nothing in return, leaves the universe "overflowing" with hisbenefactions. In this particular instance, the dying Frederickbequeathes to Kant the gift of poetry. This is what Derrida means by"economimesis," since Kant is thus in a position not only to receive

71 am speaking here of the cliche as it is exchanged in prosaic discourse. Certainauthors, like Baudelaire and Flaubert, have delighted in extracting a high aestheticcharge from cliches, but this requires a particular disposition of thought. Such adisposition may well be part of the Kantian influence on late nineteenth-centuryFrench aesthetics.

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from Frederick, but to emulate him. Kant becomes a poet as he

identifies with Frederick's gesture of sublime self-sacrifice. This is veryunlike the relationship that critics are inclined to imagine between anegotistical king and a self-serving philosopher whose exchangeswould involve the trading of flattery and favors. If Kant and Frederickhave gained something from mutual commerce, it is the attribute ofPoet. While this may flatter both of them, poetry is a gain that exactsa loss.

The specific political economy that accompanies Kant's helio-

poetics can thus be seen as a form of enlightened despotism. In suchan economy the King may patronize the Poet, but the production of

poetry need not thereby be viewed as a mercenary activity. When

paying the Poet, the King does not render fee for service; instead he

gives without counting in a gesture that imitates the free productionof poetry. By the same token we could say that the Poet in writingpoetry imitates the King's largesse-with this kind of self-sacrificingexpenditure it becomes difficult to say who is imitating whom. Forthis reason it is not accurate to assert that Kant's helio-poetics is

groundedin the

patronage system-whenwe cannot

separate poetryfrom payment then we cannot say that one term is more fundamentalthan the other. The example of Frederick the Great serves tounderscore this ambiguity since he appears, not as the King who paysPoets, but as the King-Poet. It is not clear in Kant's expositionwhether Frederick is first a King and then a Poet, or vice versa. Histwo attributes illuminate one another in an infinite process whichnever finds a conceptual ground. This is in keeping with Kant'sdefinition of poetic inspecificity. Thus, while Derrida's reading of

Kant moves away from the traditional exclusion of economic values, itdoes not simply demystify the sacred aura with which Kant sur-rounded poetry. Instead, the reading suggests a way in which eco-nomic considerations might participate in the process of sacraliza-tion: the chain of analogies that link King, Poet, Sun, Genius (andDerrida adds God to Kant's list) is held together by the idea ofsacrificial expenditure (sacrifice, in its etymological sense, implyingthe production of sacred things).8

The emphasis on analogy in Derrida's essay is worth noting.

8 This is a point Bataille makes in the "Notion of Expenditure". My citations aretaken from (Euvres completes I (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 302-20. Translations are myown. For a complete English translation of the essay, see Allan Stoekl's volume, Visionsof Excess (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1985), 116-29.

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("Analogy is the rule," 13) While Kant sees analogy, or the unfoldingof "kindred representations," as a poetic attribute, Derrida addseconomic implications to the idea. This is possible precisely becausethe poetic analogy between things does not yield a concept of those

things; poetic analogy is infinite, which is another way of saying that itdoes not find its end in a concept. It establishes formal, not

conceptual, relationships between things. So we must conclude thatform is not a static notion for Kant-form is what enables us to relatean infinite number of things. This particular notion of form can alsobe understood in economic terms, as a function of exchange-whencommodities are exchanged for one another, or for money, this isbecause the items exchanged are formally comparable, and notbecause they relate to one another conceptually. For Marx, moneyitself is a form, the "universal equivalent form" through which werelate the most disparate of commodities-corn, linen, tea, iron,gold, etc.'' Derrida does not say this explicitly, but he does use poeticanalogy and economic exchange interchangeably in his reading ofKant. The two are at work in what he calls the sacred commercebetween

God, Poet, King,etc.

The "alternative Kantianism" that Derrida elaborates in "Econo-mimesis" harkens back in many respects to the work of GeorgesBataille. The attempt to read Kant's aesthetics in terms of aneconomics is completely in the spirit of Bataille, who wanted togeneralize the notion of economy to include economically "irratio-nal" phenomena like works of art and the impulses that producethem. Bataille's notion of general economics, which Derrida repeat-edly invokes, underwrites his deconstruction of categorical opposi-

tions in traditional Kantianism. Art and nature, for example, may beopposed to one another in a restricted notion of economics where artis useless and nature useful; in the conceptual framework of generaleconomics, however, art and nature exchange places and imitate oneanother. The process of generalized exchange or analogy that Derridacalls economimesis exceeds the distinction between uselessness andusefulness. Not that exchange value has eliminated use value; it hassimply displaced it in a general economics.'0 Furthermore, I willargue that Bataille's notion of sacrificial expenditure is at the heart of

9 See Capital, vol. 1, pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 3 D: "The Money Form.",0For a more extensive discussion of the relationship between Bataille's general

economics and Derrida's deconstructive project see "De l'6conomie restreinte a1'economie g6nerale" in Derrida's LEcriture t la difference Paris: Seuil, 1967).

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the "sacred commerce" that defines Kant's aesthetics for Derrida.

Bataille's general economics involves the contention that economiesshould be evaluated in terms of the way they waste-modes of

unproductive expenditure, which Bataille calls dipense, are morecrucial to the structure of economies than the utilitarian phenomenathat economists normally study. Bataille's depense s not profane, pettywaste but waste taken to such an excess that it acquires a sacred status.The exemplary instance of this kind of expenditure is sacrifice as it is

practiced in pre-bourgeois societies or in societies that have retainedtheir "archaic" character."l While Derrida does not emphasize the

point, the commerce that links Sun, King and Poet in Kant'saesthetics is sacred because it involves self-sacrifice (perhaps the typeof sacrifice that defines enlightened despotism as a political economy).

I propose to consider two of Bataille's essays which show an"alternative Kantianism" at work in the articulation of what Bataille

occasionally calls "the poetics of expenditure." The purpose of myanalysis is not simply to confirm Derrida's critique of Kant, but to

suggest an approach to the reading of canonical modernist textswhich would benefit from that

critique.The two

essaysin

questionare

"La Notion de depense," which dates from 1933, and "Baudelaire,"which first appeared in Critique n 1947. While the essays are appar-ently unrelated, they represent the extended elaboration of a poeticsin which Baudelaire, named or unnamed, occupies a privilegedposition. In this respect, Bataille's poetics is consistent with themodernist tradition that places Baudelaire at its fountainhead. Bataillediffers from the tradition, however, by seeing economic issues at stakein modernism's debt to Baudelaire.

"La Notion de depense" might have been subtitled "Beyond theUtility Principle," since the essay examines economic practices thatcannot be explained by any kind of usefulness. These include

religious sacrifices, competitive sports and the extravagant rituals

(particularly betting) that surround them, the purchase ofjewels, andthe production of works of art. Such practices, according to Bataille,exhibit the Kantian purposiveness without purpose-they carry theirend in themselves and serve no utilitarian function. In the case of thearts, Bataille divides them into two categories-those, like architec-

ture, that require real expenditure, and those, like literature, that"provoke anguish and horror by the symbolic representation of tragic

" "Archaic" is the term that Bataille uses in "La Notion de depense" to describesocial structures that are not determined by capital in one or another of its forms.

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loss (degradation or death)" (307). So literature involves symbolicrather than real expenditure. This should give literature an inferiorstatus in Bataille's aesthetics-if literary expenditure is symbolic itmay very well not be expenditure at all. Interestingly, Bataille doesnot examine the consequences of the aesthetic hierarchy he hasbegun to articulate. The distinction between real and symbolicexpenditure no longer functions when Bataille turns his attention tothe question of poetry. Like Kant, Bataille places poetry at the top ofthe aesthetic hierarchy: "the term poetry," he writes, "[. . .] may beconsidered synonymous with expenditure: n fact it signifies, in the most

precise way, creation by means of loss. Its meaning is thus close to thatof sacrifice" my emphasis, original emphasis). Bataille goes on to saythat only "an extremely rare residue" of what we call poetry is actuallypoetry. For those rare individuals who have poetry at their disposal"poetic expenditure ceases to be symbolic in its consequences: tosome extent, the person who takes on the function of representationplaces his very life at risk." The poet is given over to "the mostdisappointing forms of activity, to poverty, to despair, to the pursuit ofshadows without substance that

yield nothingbut

vertigo or rage"(307). The possibility that literary expenditure might be merelysymbolic is avoided with poetry which Bataille considers to be thepurest form of expenditure, "synonymous with expenditure" itself.

Bataille here takes the Kantian consecration of the poet, based onthe notion of sacrificial expenditure, and emphasizes its dark side.Like Kant's Sun-King-Poet who gives off light while sinking intoshadow, Bataille's poet is caught in a paradoxical function-thefunction of representation places life at risk, poetic mimesis is a

deadly game. Although Bataille does not mention Baudelaire in the1933 essay, it is clear from his later piece that he must have beenthinking of Baudelaire in his early definition of the poet. Accordingto Bataille, Baudelaire's poetic vocation cost him everything, includ-ing life and the power of speech. The poetic consecration is also acurse, an idea that Baudelaire himself advocated in the openingpoem of Les Fleurs du mal.

12 The beginning of Benediction depicts the mother's curse on her infant: "Lorsque,par un decret des puissances supremes, / Le Poete apparait en ce monde ennuye, / Samere epouvantee et pleine de blasphemes / Crispe ses poings vers Dieu, qui la prenden pitie." [When, by a decree of the supreme powers, / The Poet appears in this jadedworld, / His horrified mother, filled with blasphemies / Shakes her fists at God, whotakes pity on her.] I have examined this topic more thoroughly in "Modernity's Curse."

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This negative version of Kant is, in one respect at least, more

Kantian than Kant. In Kant's aesthetics, mimesis or imitation istreated with caution. If an artist merely imitates nature or anotherartist, the result may be a mechanical work and not a work of fine art.Aesthetic models must be used "not for imitation, but for following.The possibility of this is difficult to explain" (? 47, original emphasis).Derrida's concept of economimesis is designed in part to explain thismimesis that isn't one. In Bataille's aesthetics, mimesis is even more

threatening since it has the potential to make a mockery of the poet'ssacrifice. While poetry may be a mimetic or representational art,Bataille must argue that poetry worthy of the name does not merelysimulate sacrificial expenditure. Bataille's poet, then, must suffer reallosses, ones that may not be compensated for. There is actually aresistance in his thinking to economimesis, i.e. to the process that

compensates the poet in Kant's aesthetic system. This should come as

something of a surprise, since Derrida draws heavily on Bataille toarticulate the concept of economimesis. We might therefore specu-late that the resistance to mimesis marks a moment of tension withinBataille's

thought.While I do not

pretendto have exhausted the

possible implications of such a tension, the rest of my paper will

explore the thesis that Bataille's resistance to mimesis is related to an

unthought contradiction in his theory of general economics. On theone hand, general economics is supposed to account for a wider

range of phenomena than classical economics; on the other hand,general economics is meant to function as a radical critique of

capitalism and the logic of capital. In other words, Bataille's econom-ics is both a general theory and a situated praxis. AsJean-Joseph Goux

has argued, this leaves general economics in a peculiar relationshipto capitalism: general economics must both account for capitalismand supplant it. In Goux's view the theoretical project falls shortbecause Bataille cannot account for expenditure as it takes place in a

capitalist economy.13 My thesis is that Bataille recoils from themimetic potential of capital, i.e. the potential of capitalist investmentto simulate sacrificial expenditure. In the larger frame, the risk is that

capitalism might simulate general economics, thereby destroying thelatter's radical, critical potential.

Bataille's piece on Baudelaire was written fourteen years after the

'3 See "General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism" in Yale French Studies 78(1990), On Bataille, Allan Stoekl ed.

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essay on expenditure.14 While the pretext was a review of Sartre'spreface to Baudelaire's journals, Bataille's intent was also to develophis earlier sketch of the problem of poetry. In fact, Bataille called theBaudelaire piece a "defense of poetry." Sartre made such an epithetnatural by attacking the idea of the accursed poet that Batailleassociated with the definition of true poetry. For Sartre, Baudelaire'sclaim to be under a curse because he served the cause of poetry couldnot be taken seriously. If Baudelaire's life was a sacrifice, Sartreconsidered it an imitation sacrifice, one which was fed by Baudelaire'sfundamental bad faith. By interpreting Sartre's argument as anattack, not on Baudelaire the man, but on poetry, Bataille was layinghis cards on the table-true poetry, whatever else one might say aboutit, is not mimetic. While such a notion of poetry may be "betrayed bythe poem, it is not betrayed by the poet's unlivable life. In the lastanalysis, only the poet's long agony rigorously guarantees the authen-ticity of poetry [. . .]" (54). What Bataille means by "the poet's longagony" is the fact that Baudelaire contracted syphilis and eventuallylost the power of speech. (There is the famous episode of Nadar's lastvisit to Baudelaire-the

photographer provokedhis friend with the

question "How can you possibly believe in God?" and Baudelairecould only reply by gesturing at the setting sun and uttering thesound "Cr6nom"). This latter point is crucial to Bataille's poetics-Baudelaire's poetic vocation (and herein lies the curse) actually puthis ability to use language at risk. For Bataille, this loss of linguisticability guarantees Baudelaire's authenticity more than any poem inLes Fleurs du Mal. The poems in and of themselves stand as a betrayalof poetry. It is only when they are taken together that they put

themselves at risk and attain their true poetic stature.For this reason, Bataille never cites any of Les Fleurs du Mal in hisanalysis. The only piece of poetry he cites is part of a popular songthat fascinated Baudelaire, who wanted to incorporate it into amelodrama that he never wrote. The song is called "Les Scieurs delong," and it runs as follows:

Rien n'est aussi-z-aimableFranfru-Cancru-Lon-La-LahiraRien n'est aussi-z-aimableQue le scieur de long.

14See "Baudelaire" in La Littrature et le mnal (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 37-68.Translations are my owin.

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Chante Sirene Chante

Franfru-Cancru-Lon-La-LahiraChante Sirene ChanteT'as raison de chanter.

Car t'as la mer a boire,Franfru-Cancru-Lon-La-LahiraCar t'as la mer a boire,Et ma mie a manger!"

[Nothing is as lovable as the Sawyer. Sing, Siren, sing! You have reason to

sing. Because you have the sea to drink and my sweetheart to eat.]

Baudelaire saw a potential melodrama in this song-he imaginedthat there was a stanza missing in which the sawyer, who must be

drunk, drowns his wife. This would explain the final lines-you havethe sea to drink and my sweetheart to eat-and would enableBaudelaire to appropriate the popular song to himself. A drunkenman who kills his wife is the theme of one of his early poems-Le Vinde l'assassin (The Wine of the assassin). Apparently Baudelaire was

frequently asked to recite this poem in public, making it a kind of

signature piece. Bataille argues that the drunken murderer and hisdegenerate language stand as a mask for the poet and poetry. Themurderer does not imitate the poet, however ("Franfru-Cancru-Lon-La-Lahira" hardly resembles the refrain of any of Les Fleurs du Mal);instead the murderer "is charged with the sins of the author" (57).The relationship between murderer and poet is therefore one of a

non-mimetic substitution-the murderer takes the place of the poetwithout resembling him, is sacrificed in his place as the scapegoat forhis sins. Bataille does not develop the consequences of his argumentwith great systematicity. If the sacrificial substitution works, for

example, why is it that the poet must undergo the same fate as the

scapegoat? Why must the poet, in the end, come to imitate the

drunken sawyer and his linguistic degeneration? If the structure of

sacrifice is designed to resist mimesis, how do we explain therecurrence of mimesis here? Might Bataille be recoiling from whatcould be called a general (rather than a restricted) economy of

sacrifice, in which loss and expenditure cannot be separated from a

movement of compensation?Instead of addressing these questions, Bataille devotes the closing

pages of the Baudelaire essay to a portrait of nineteenth-century

capitalism. In essence, Bataille argues that capitalist societies are

completely antithetical to archaic economies in which sacrifice plays

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an explicit role. While such an antithesis may seem natural, it actuallyruns counter to the goal of a general economics which would accountfor all socio-economic structures in terms of sacrificial expenditure.The tension that Goux found marking Bataille's thought mostnotably in La Part maudite s present here as well. In this instance, it isBataille's incorporation of one of Baudelaire's reflections that leadsto a "restricted" definition of capitalism. The reflection comes from ajournal entry in which Baudelaire emphasizes the antithetical rela-tionship between work and pleasure: "A chaque minutes nous sommes6crases par l'idee et la sensation du temps. Et il n'y a que deuxmoyens pour 6chapper a ce cauchemar,-pour l'oublier: le Plaisir etle Travail. Le Plaisir nous use. Le Travail nous fortifie. Choisissons" (1:669). For Bataille, the choice that Baudelaire lays out is fundamen-tally an economic one: "The choice always bears upon the vulgar,material question: 'given my present resources, ought I to spendthem or to increase them?"' (60). This is not merely a choice thatindividuals must make. Bataille argues that the same alternativeweighs upon societies and determines their economic structure.

Savingand

spending,as Baudelaire

suggested, both involve a rela-tionship to time: the individual or the society that saves is orientedtowards the future, the one that spends is primarily concerned withthe present moment. By definition, Bataille claims, societies have afuture orientation'5-"but," he adds, "[they] cannot deny the presentand so leave to it an indeterminate portion. This portion belongs tothe festivals, which culminate in sacrifice. Sacrifice serves the interestsof the present moment by expending resources that concern for thenext day would have conserved" (62). Curiously, while Bataille claims

that the conflict between saving and spending, future and present,secular and sacred, characterizes all societies-"they cannot deny thepresent"-his portrait of capitalist society is one in which all conflicthas been eliminated. Capitalist society has chosen the future onceand for all, effectively denying the present. If we are to believeBataille here, expenditure has no place in capitalism. A capitalisteconomy is based upon sheer, endless accumulation. Baudelaire'shistorical significance lies in his resistance to the capitalist ideology of

15His argument is that societies function to compensate individuals for theirweaknesses. Individuals form societies because they are looking towards some futurebenefit. Of course this idea of society could be contested-Rousseau's Second Discourseand Social Contract would be good places to start.

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accumulation, a resistance more radical than the Romantic reaction

which Bataille argues can be reconciled with that ideology.This argument, which closes the essay on Baudelaire, is peculiar in

several respects. Clearly, Bataille's portrait of capitalism is a distortedone. The idea of endless accumulation without expenditure has anhallucinatory aspect-it recalls the figure of the miser more than thatof the capitalist. (Interestingly, there are moments in Baudelaire'spoetry that evoke a similar image of hallucinatory accumulation-the

poem titled Spleen hat begins with the line "J'ai plus de souvenirs quesij'avais mille ans," for example.) What Bataille seems to resist is thefact that the logic of capital is not based upon a reified oppositionbetween accumulation and expenditure-instead, capital accumu-lates through xpenditure. This may be counterintuitive, but it followsthe dynamic of Bataille's notion of the general economy whichinvolves the lifting and realignment of conceptual oppositions. InMarx's analysis of the transformation of money into capital, thefunction of expenditure is primary-money that is not spent willnever become capital.'6 Of course, the logic of capital turns expendi-ture into an imitation

sacrifice,since

moneyis invested

onlyto return

to the investor. Bataille's resistance to this logic once again reveals hisuneasiness at the possibility that sacrifice might be simulated.

As a reading of Baudelaire, Bataille's analysis similarly posesproblems. Baudelaire's relation to the logic of capital is not so

thoroughly agonistic. In his "Conseils aux jeunes litterateurs,"Baudelaire explicitly calls poetry an investment: "La poesie est un desarts qui rapportent le plus; mais c'est une espece de placement donton ne touche que tard les interets,-en revanche tres gros" (2:18). In

"Conseils auxjeunes litt6rateurs" Baudelaire also argues that there isno substance to the idea that poets are cursed and bound to lose

everything: "C'est pourquoi il n'y a pas de guignon. Si vous avez du

guignon, c'est qu'il vous manque quelque chose" (2:14). One coulddismiss these comments as insubstantial, since they were made in1846 when Baudelaire was only twenty-five years old and retainedsome youthful optimism. Later essays, particularly the ones devoted

6 Bataille himself in "The Notion of Expenditure" argues for the primacy ofexpenditure-in primitive economies as the institution of potlatch, and in moderncommerce as well. He criticizes classical economic theory for tracing the origins ofcommercial exchange to the positive need to acquire goods. Exchange, he argues,originates in the "contrary need for destruction and loss," i.e. in the need forexpenditure. See 308-09.

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to Edgar Allen Poe, advance the idea of the curse on poets with real

conviction. But there are other aspects of Baudelaire's poetics thatcannot be dismissed so lightly. One is his theory of universal analogy,or correspondances, hich is often considered to be the crux of his

poetics. It is interesting that Bataille never mentions this theory in his"defense of poetry." The theory would be one way of connectingBaudelaire to Kant, who similarly defined poetry in terms of the

production of analogy. Correspondances lso involve a poetic sacrificeof "the practical order of things," as Bataille describes such sacrificein "The Notion of Expenditure": "[poetic sacrifice] does not involvethe real loss of animal or human life but a represented loss broughtabout by associations of images that destroy the practical order of

things. Such an expenditure, it is true, ceases to be purely symbolic inits consequences" (note 11). Baudelaire's poem Correspondances ould

easily be read in terms of "associations of images that destroy the

practical order of things." Why, then, does Bataille neglect to affiliate

correspondances r universal analogy with expenditure?My answer should not be surprising. Just as the generalization of

analogyin Kant

(asDerrida reads

him)is

fundamentally compensa-tory, so too the poetics of correspondances. hese aesthetic systems,with their coordination of loss and compensation, are not so far fromthe logic of capital as Bataille might wish. If post-Kantian ideas ofaesthetic value have traditionally been defined in opposition toeconomic notions of value, these notions have primarily been under-stood in terms of use-value. An economy based on use-value is not acapitalist economy. Capitalism privileges exchange-value and money,which Marx understands as the form of exchange. As Derrida

demonstrates in "Economimesis," such an economy can be recon-ciled with an aesthetics of analogy, which understands poetry as theform of exchange of ideas and images. In her essay on Baudelaire'stwo poems entitled Invitation au voyage Invitation to travel), BarbaraJohnson has juxtaposed passages from Marx's Capital with fragmentsof Baudelaire's poems and statements by Kant and Valery that sup-port the doctrine of Art for Art's sake.l7 The analogies are striking-the movement of capital becomes infinite since it is not determinedby any principle of finite utility, but has its end in itself. Both Kant and

Baudelaire present the theory of analogy as infinite for similar

17See Defigurations u langage potique (Paris: Flammarion, 1979), 132-39. An Englishtranslation of the essay exists in The Critical Difference Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U P,1980), 21-51.

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reasons. I now propose a brief consideration of the poem Corre-

spondances in order to confirm and extend the foregoing observations.

La Nature est un temple ou de vivants piliersLaissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;L'homme y passe a travers des forets de symbolesQui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs echos qui de loin se confondentDans une tenebreuse et profonde unite,Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarte,Les

parfums,les couleurs et les sons se

repondent.Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,-Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

[Nature is a temple where living pillarsSometimes let out confused words;Man passes there, through forests of symbolsThat watch him with familiar looks.

Like long echos that mingle from afarInto a somber and deep unity,Vast as night and as the light,Perfumes, colors and sounds answer one another.

There are perfumes fresh as infant flesh;Sweet as oboes, green as prairies,-And others, corrupt, rich and triumphant,

Having the expansion of infinite things,Like ambergris, musk, benjamin and incense,That sing the transports of the mind and senses.]

The setting of Baudelaire's poem is intriguing and might haveinterested Bataille insofar as it appears to offer an archaic representa-tion of reality. To the extent that the poem is situated anywhere, that

place has strong sacred connotations-the temple and incense in-voke a world that seems far from the profane places where modern

capital accumulates. Paul de Man has argued that the temple settingsuggests a kind of antique serenity that affiliates Correspondances withthe neo-classical poetic movements of the late nineteenth century(253). If we keep Bataille in mind, we might note another connota-tion of the temple which is not quite so serene: the temple is not only

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an emblem of antique equilibrium, it is also the site of sacrifice. The

sacrificial connotations are reinforced by other elements in thepoem's first stanza. There is, for example, something uncanny in the

way Baudelaire presents the relationship between man and nature.

Traditionally, we think of man as the subject in this relationship, asthe one who is invested with the powers of vision and understanding,while nature is merely the object of the inquiring human gaze. Here,however, the subject/object relationship appears to be reversed. It isnature that looks on man with familiarity while man remains "con-fused." The fact that nature here knows more than man is unsettling.In keeping with Bataille's critical approach to Baudelaire, I would

argue that man is being presented as a potential victim and thathuman subjectivity is sacrificed in the temple of nature. The line"L'homme y passe" would support the sacrificial reading if we takethe word "passe" o be a synonym of dying. This is not completely far-fetched, since Victor Hugo, whom Baudelaire frequently imitates,uses the word in that sense. The exchange between man and nature,in which man loses the characteristics of consciousness while nature

acquires them,is also

typicalof

Hugo-itis the structure of

whatHugo calls "contemplation." In general, then, one can argue that asacrificial note is sounded at the outset of Correspondances.

This sacrificial note continues in the second stanza, as what Bataillecalls "the practical order of things" is lost (and man disappears) in theaffirmation of a synesthetic world view. A world in which perfumes,colors, and sounds talk to one another is also a world in which therational antithesis between night and light no longer functions. The

logic of non-contradiction has been sacrificed and night and light are

now presented as analogous. Bataille's notion of poetic expenditureis telling here, since it enables us to see synesthesia as entailing a kindof loss. Most critical appraisals of Correspondances ocus on the"richness" of aesthetic perception that results from the correspon-dence of perfumes, colors and sounds. But this sensory wealthaccumulates through expenditure, through the "transports of themind and senses" which lead to the disappearance of "man." Thehuman subject is simultaneously enriched and impoverished. In asimilar vein, the intensity of perception that the poem celebrates is

founded upon a "tenebreuse et profonde unite" that lies beyondperception. It is thus possible to combine Bataille's theory of Baudelairewith the traditional reading of Correspondances nd to argue thatsynesthesia involves both loss and compensation.

This loss and compensation can be traced in the dominant figure

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of the poem-that of perfume. Perfume undergoes some interestingchanges in the last three stanzas. In the second quatrain, "perfume"refers to odors in general, i.e. to objects of everyday perception. It isnot fundamentally distinguished from other sensations like colors orsounds. As we move to the tercets, however, "perfume" begins tofunction differently. No longer just a natural sensation, it becomesthe privileged vehicle through which the synesthetic correspon-dences pass: the feel of infant flesh, the sound of oboes, and the sightof green fields all communicate as "perfumes." To paraphrase Marxon money, these perfumes are forms that represent an exchange-inthis case the exchange of natural sensations. There is a loss of natural

perception in this movement, a loss that is often tragically marked inother of Baudelaire's poems-in Le Gout du neant, for example, hewrites "Le Printemps adorable a perdu son odeur!" We should notethat none of the metaphorical "perfumes" mentioned in the firsttercet of Correspondances s actually a natural scent. As perfumebecomes a medium of exchange, as scent becomes the generalizedform of sensation, it is the natural sense of smell that is placed at risk.This

suggestsa

deeperconnection between Baudelaire's sensual

poems, like Correspondances, nd the melancholic pieces that repre-sent what he called "spleen" and depict an allegorical world beyondor below the world of sensation. Critics have traditionally opposedBaudelaire's poetics of correspondances nd his poetics of spleen.Walter Benjamin, for example, sees the two as involving a distinctionbetween sacred and profane experience. In Benjamin's analysis, theloss of sensation described in Le Gout du neant marks an exclusionfrom sacred experience-the splenetic individual for whom Spring

has no scent feels "as though he is dropped from the calendar. Thebig-city dweller knows this feeling on Sundays" (184-85). In contrast,Benjamin sees Baudelaire's correspondances s an effort to recoverfrom the big-city dweller's loss: they reveal the ritual value of theaesthetic and restore the individual to the sacred calendar (182). I donot want to take issue with Benjamin's reading, but merely to insistthat it shows an interdependency f sacred and profane experience inBaudelaire's poetry. The "sacred" aesthetics of correspondances s

compensatory: it too is based upon the loss that the profane poems

explicitly represent.My reading of Correspondances oes not stop with the first tercet,

however: the process of abstraction that changes perfume from anatural sensation into a form does not represent its final transmuta-tion. The ambergris, musk, and incense of the poem's final tercet are

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no longer natural sensations, nor are they metaphorical vehicles

through which other sensations pass. They are perfumes that havebeen produced through human labor and their value is one to whicha price could be attached in a very literal sense. We could say, then,that the perfumes in this poem have evolved from natural sensationsinto commodities. These commodities, Baudelaire tells us, have "the

expansion of infinite things." Elsewhere he marvels that a grain ofincense can fill an entire church.'8 But the property of infinite

expansion has another feature, one that has frequently been noted bycommentators: the final set of perfumes in Correspondances re

organized into an enumerative series which is infinite in the sensethat it is potentially open-ended.l' The enumeration of perfumes isinitiated by a change in the status of the word "comme" between thefirst and second tercets-the first "comme" expresses the relationshipof analogy between infant flesh and oboes, etc., while the second"comme" merely introduces the final list of perfumes ("like amber-

gris, musk, benjamin, etc."). The fact that there are four of these

perfumes mentioned, while there are only three in the previous

stanza,reinforces the

thoughtthat a kind of numerical

augmentationis taking place. This occurs at the point where the form of exchangeor of analogy-the perfume-ceases to be a mere vehicle for meta-

phorical displacements and becomes an end in itself. In the process,poetic expenditure is compensated by an infinite poetic productivity.In Marxian terms, this last transformation of the perfume corre-sponds to the transformation of money into capital. The form of

exchange (money) becomes an end in itself, and this producescapital.

Thus, aesthetic formalism can be seen to dovetail with what couldeasily be called economic formalism-a reading of capital that wouldundermine the distinction between use value and exchange value,between necessity and luxury, production and consumption, conser-vation and expenditure. Bataille's critique of capitalism (as involvingthe repression of expenditure, luxury, and consumption) could inthis way be co-opted for capitalism, and his "general economics," withits lifting of rational distinctions, could be seen as compatible with the

1,See the poem titled Un fantome II: Le parfium." Henri Peyre makes this observation in the introduction of his book What is

Symbolism? aul de Man elaborates on it in the article "Anthropomorphism and Tropein the Lyric" from The Rhetoric f Romanticism New York: Columbia U P, 1984).

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irrationality of economic formalism.20 It is this possibility that mayhave prevented Bataille from engaging in a close reading ofBaudelaire's poetry. The production of perfumes in Correspondances,which can be summed up in the equation 3 = 4, nicely describes theeconomic irrationality of capitalism. If Baudelaire's merit lies in hisattitude towards capitalism, this attitude includes a heightened aware-ness of the latter's irrational potential and a taste for pointing outmoments when "two plus two equals three" and "hallucination [. ..]

conquers the realm of simple reasoning" (Fusees, OC I: 655).21 Byaffiliating poetry and expenditure, Bataille's theory underwrites thelink between Baudelaire and capitalism that Bataille himself expresslydenies. Such a link lays the ground for an extensive reinterpretationof Baudelaire's poetry, a reinterpretation that would emphasize the

relationship between figure and number, metaphor and calculation.With my reading of Correspondances I hope to have given an indicationof the shape such a reinterpretation might take. Not surprisingly,readings like de Man's andJohnson's move in the same direction byshowing what de Man calls "the transposition of ecstasy to [. ..]economic codes"

(251).In

literaryhistorical

terms,such

readingscritique the post-Kantian, modernist tradition with a penetratingedge that has gone largely unnoticed.

The University t Albany (SUNY)

20Jean-Joseph Goux makes a similar argument in his essay "General Economics andPostmodern Capitalism." Goux suggests that there are strong analogies betweenBataille's "general economics" and supply-side economic theory as it was articulated byGeorge Gilder, Ronald Reagan's favorite author. As capitalism enters its postmodern

phase, the similarities become more striking.21 For a stimulating reading of irrational economic structures in Baudelaire's prosepoem Assommons espauvres, see Suzanne Roos, "Essaying Theory."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bataille, Georges. "Baudelaire." La Litterature t le mal. Paris: Gallimard, 1957. 37-68.

"La Notion de depense." (Euvres completes . Paris: Gallimard, 1970. 302-20.

1985. "The Notion of Expenditure." Trans. Allan Stoekl. Visions of Excess.

Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1985. 116-29.Baudelaire, Charles. (Euvres completes. vols. Ed. Claude Pichois. Paris: Gallimard

(Bibliotheque de la Pleiade), 1975-76.

Benjamin, Walter. "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire." Trans. Harry Zohn. Illuminations.New York: Shocken Books, 1969. 155-200.

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Blood, Susan. "Modernity's Curse." Baudelaire and the Poetics of Modernity. Ed. Patricia

Ward. Nashville: Vanderbilt U P, 2001. 147-56.de Man, Paul. "Anthropomorphism and Trope in the Lyric." The Rhetoric of Romanticism.

New York: Columbia U P, 1984. 239-62.

Derrida,Jacques. "Economimesis." La Mimesis des articulations. aris: Aubier-Flammarion,1975. 55-95.

"Economimesis." Trans. Richard Klein. Diacritics 11. 3 (1981): 3-25.

"De l'economie restreinte a 1'economie g6nerale: Un hegelianisme sansreserve." L'criture et la difference. aris: Seuil, 1967.

Goux, Jean-Joseph. "General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism." Trans. KathrynAscheim and Rhonda Garelick. Yale French Studies 78 (1990): 206-24.

Jay, Martin. "The Disenchantment of the Eye: Bataille and the Surrealists." DowncastEyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century rench Thought. Berkeley: U ofCalifornia P, 1993. 223-28.

Johnson, Barbara. "Comme dirait l'autre: Deux Invitations au voyage." Defigurations dulangage poetique. Paris: Flammarion, 1979. 103-60.

"Poetry and Its Double: Two Invitations au voyage." The Critical Difference.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U P, 1980. 21-51.

Kant, Immanuel. The Critique ofJudgment. Trans. James Creed Meredith. Oxford: TheClarendon Press, 1952.

Critique of Judgment. Trans. J. H. Bernard. New York: Hafner Press, 1951.

Kritik der Urteilskraft, rsg. von Wilhelm Weischedel. Frankfurt: SuhrkampVerlag, 1957.

Klein, Richard. "Kant's Sunshine." Diacritics 11. 3 (1981): 26-41.

Mallarme, St6phane. "Crise de vers." CEuvres ompletes. d. Henri Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry. Paris: Gallimard (Bibliotheque de la Pleiade), 1945.

Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Trans. Samuel Moore and EdwardAveling. New York: Modern Library, 1936.

Roos, Suzanne. "Essaying Theory." Unpublished essay.

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