Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 15:09:20 +0100
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Sex and Power Rant


In message <v03102805b1435ca9aafc-AT-[128.146.5.55]>, Yoshie Furuhashi
<furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu> writes
>There may be no free lunch, but the erotic can be produced and given away
>for free or at a nominal cost. The only obstacle is that most of us are so
>titillated by the eroticization of exchange relations that we _prefer_ to
>pay for what we can get for free. I would very much like to see that
>preference disappear or at least challenged.

In his The Accursed Share, Georges Bataille argues - convincingly - that
the erotic is born of a necessity to consume the surplus product. The
realm of desire is a realm in which necessity plays no part, and the
erotic therefore knows no principle of compulsion.

Its a compelling acount which is nonetheless blind to its own basis. The
production of a surplus, the basis of the realm of freedom that Bataille
takes for granted, is the exploitation of labour in industry. For the
majority who are still stuck in the realm of necessity, free time is
little more than recuperation for the next day's work. But for the
minority who monopolise society's surplus time as surely as they do its
surplus product, free time is indeed the realm of the erotic. 

However, to say that the erotic is free is to ignore that somebody is
indeed paying for it - just not the same people who are enjoying it.
-- 
James Heartfield


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