For this next instalment of the bower books workshop series, our host Lily Dalton will be taking us through Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share across its three volumes; moving through excess, eroticism and sovereignty.
These are guided, interactive and discussion-led workshops rather than lectures. Together we will read selected passages from Bataille, respond to contemporary examples, and work through a number of participatory exercises designed to put the ideas into motion. There is no prior knowledge of Bataille or philosophy required, and no expectation that you will have read The Accursed Share beforehand.
There will be three sessions in total, and attendance of one, two or all three is entirely up to you. Tickets will be available for Zoom and in-person. In-person tickets include food, drink and extra material. Zoom tickets include live-stream, participation, digital extra material.
Sessions will be held on Thursdays, across the 29th of October, the 5th of November & the 12th of November. They will run for two hours, 6.30pm to 8.30pm, in Brunswick, Melbourne. Full address provided on ticket purchase.
Information on the workshop below.
What happens when a society produces more wealth, energy, desire or possibility than it can meaningfully absorb?
When desire exceeds the rules meant to contain it, when we try to imagine a life that does not have to justify itself through productivity, progress or use, what do we really see?
‘the tiger in space’ is a three-part workshop moving through the three volumes of Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share: excess, eroticism and sovereignty. Across close reading, collective discussion and participatory exercises, we'll use Bataille’s work as a set of problems to think through, and interact with.
Beginning with his theory of surplus and expenditure, we'll ask why accumulation eventually reaches a limit, and what determines whether excess becomes generosity, luxury, spectacle or destruction. From there we move into eroticism. On prohibition, taboo, transgression and discuss how we are told not to look at often, for nostalgia and reflection make up a powerful political, and personal tool. Finally, we arrive at sovereignty. This concludes on Bataille's difficult idea of a life no longer organised entirely around useful ends.
Along the way, the workshop will bring these questions into contact with contemporary life. Things top of mind for us all, the billionaire, ecological overproduction, militarisation, sexual spectacle, the commodification of desire, productivity culture, AI, leisure, art and how in this world, the primary motivator seems to be ‘usefulness’.
You do not need prior knowledge of Bataille, economics or philosophy, and there is no expectation that you will have read The Accursed Share beforehand. In fact, we're going in relatively blind (except for Lily, who knows what she is doing). Selected passages will be read together in the room, with supplementary material available for anyone who wants to keep pulling at the threads afterwards.
The point is not to leave having “understood Bataille.” A suspicious objective for someone famously verbose and aloof. The point is to spend three sessions inside a set of questions that remain difficult in our world today:
What happens when there is more than can be usefully kept?
Why are we drawn to what we prohibit?
What remains of a life lived beyond the demands of utility?
session one | excess
what happens when there is more than can be usefully kept?
Beginning with Volume I, we'll look at Bataille's idea of the “general economy”: a world organised not only around scarcity and production, but around surplus. Through reading, discussion and a participatory exercise in accumulation and expenditure, we'll think about wealth, growth, gifts, waste, luxury, war and the question of who gets to decide what can be spent.
session two | eroticism
why are we drawn to the things we prohibit?
Moving from wealth to desire, we'll explore Bataille's account of prohibition and transgression: how societies construct boundaries around sexuality, behaviour and the body, and why crossing those boundaries can become pleasurable precisely because they exist. We'll bring this into conversation with contemporary forms of shame, censorship, spectacle, moral panic and the commodification of desire.
session three | sovereignty
what remains of a life lived beyond the demands of utility?
Finally, we'll ask what it would mean to experience something without turning it into an investment in the future. Bataille's sovereignty appears in moments that resist calculation — art, laughter, pleasure, eroticism, idleness — but these moments are unstable. What happens when hobbies become side hustles, personalities become brands, leisure becomes self-improvement and even “doing nothing” has to be justified?
who is hosting: Lily Dalton is a researcher and writer based in Melbourne, currently completing a thesis at the University of Melbourne on Gilles Deleuze, control and what she describes as “societies of ambience.” Her work moves across continental philosophy, literary theory and postmodern literature, with previous research on Samuel Beckett and Georges Bataille, particularly questions of waste, sovereignty and usefulness. She is interested in what happens when difficult ideas are brought out of academic space and into conversation with other people.
content note: Bataille's work engages directly with sex and sexuality, violence, war, death, religion, pornography and political conflict, and some historical passages contain racist and colonial terminology. These subjects will be approached critically and in context. No graphic visual material will be shown, and participants will never be expected to disclose personal experiences.
