Sustainable Development and Well-Being: A Philosophical Challenge

If ‘sustainable development’ is to be defined in the way the Brundtland report has done, i.e. as meeting our current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs (WCED 1987), then the way in which ‘needs’ are conceptualized is key to imagining sustainable business strategies. One can only develop an understanding of ‘needs’ that is related to our conceptions of well-being, if the tacit normative parameters that underpin it can be revealed. The idea goes back to at least Nietzsche: our understanding of the world is mediated by language, and metaphors are an important linguistic tool that plays an immense role in the way in which we ‘construct’ reality, and also morally desirable realities. However, as Nietzsche pointed out, metaphors live their own way and people become unaware of the fact that they are metaphors in the first place, like ‘used coins’ on which the face of the king they represent is no longer visible (Nietzsche 1886/1973). Metaphors reveal some aspects of reality (that is why they use them), but they hide at the same time perspectives that other metaphors could have revealed. Insofar as we are mostly unaware of the metaphorical character or our use of language, we are likely to forget that our way of thinking and our way of seeing things is largely perspectival. Many scholars in organization studies have explored the fundamental role, be it constructive or ambiguous, of metaphors in management (Cornelissen et al. 2008). An important distinction around the analytic form that metaphors take is the difference between a contextual, cognitive–linguistic approach to metaphors and a contextual, or ‘discourse’-based approach to metaphors (Cornelissen et al. 2008, p. 9).

The first approach considers, in the way in which we presented Nietzsche’s reflections on metaphors above, metaphors as tools of thought that organize our experience, as ‘patterns of thinking’ that appear in different contexts, that structure our perspective on reality in a way we are largely unaware of. The second approach examines how specific metaphors are used in specific contexts and ‘actively employed to ‘manage’ interests in social interaction’ (Cornelissen et al. p. 13). Both approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but the perspective is different. The first approach suggests a metaphorical mapping of the mind in which we are trapped and the second a manipulative use of metaphors to defend interests. The way in which metaphors crop up in the sustainability discourse suggests that both approaches are relevant.

When we looked at the metaphors operative in sustainability discourses, we highlighted well-being = wealth as a dominant cognitive–linguistic root metaphor, which is linked to a whole range of other metaphors used in existing contextual discourses, which may elicit, or foreclose certain insights around sustainability. From the cognitive–linguistic perspective, the metaphors within the corporate sustainability discourse help us understand certain cognitive proclivities around well-being and wealth. This is important since well-being = wealth, as a ‘root’ metaphor, informs our most basic forms of understanding and as such helps us gauge what is considered to be of value and how this is measured and pursued. Audebrand (2010) defines root metaphors as follows: ‘Root metaphors make up the ultimate presuppositions or frames of reference for discourse on the world or a domain within it’. Corporate sustainability’s calculative mindset persists because of the existence of root metaphors of which the content has become distorted. In the case of the ‘business case for sustainability’, corporate sustainability perpetuates the implicit understanding that wealth has to be understood as monetary wealth.

Within the corporate sustainability discourse, one of the most dominant contextually operative discursive metaphors is that of ‘natural capital’. With this metaphor comes a range of other assumptions. The ‘root metaphor’ that the notion of ‘natural capital’ draws on is related to the cognitive–linguistic structure that well-being = wealth: capital can be stored, built up through investment, used instrumentally, or it can be depleted, or lost. It therefore needs to be measured, managed and manipulated through instrumental procedures and rationales. From a discursive perspective, the metaphor ‘natural capital’ was proposed with the best intensions, i.e. as a ‘boundary object’ to create common ground between diverse actors and assert the importance of the protection of the environment as a non-negotiable condition for flourishing. However, if it covers over certain cognitive prejudices, such as that well-being is related to monetary wealth, it can also become a hegemonic concept (Akerman 2005, p. 45). It can surreptitiously serve to entrench calculative practices and calculative agency and, in doing so, make it harder to think about the environment in any other terms (Blewitt 2005, p. 72).³

When one looks at the cognitive assumptions that ‘natural capital’ make, and relate it to the root metaphor of well-being = wealth, the notion of ‘natural capital’ seems to gloss over the real differences between financial capital and natural capital. It has been proposed that this danger could be obviated by refining the use of related metaphors. Gough (2005, p. 97), for instance, argues that the exploratory power of the metaphor of ‘natural capital’ is in tension with its explanatory power. Financial stock’s value is at any given time (t) taken to be the net present value of the total flow of benefits as at t, plus the benefits which it is expected to provide in future, minus the costs (the corresponding value of any present or future costs) associated with maintaining the stock in being. But ‘natural capital’ does not operate in the same way, largely because the relevant present knowledge may be irreducibly incomplete and the degree of uncertainly of the value is dramatically higher than in the case of the stock market (Gough 2005, p. 98). Gough (2005, p. 99) goes on to argue that employing the notion of ‘real options’ as a sub-metaphor to deal with ‘natural capital’ makes much more sense because it can accommodate this uncertainty and complexity. In sustainability marketing, reference is sometimes made to the ‘living product’. This also represents an attempt to deal with the uncertainty of dynamic and flexible natural configurations (Mitchell and Saren 2008). In our view, these mitigation strategies are ultimately still subject to an implicit calculative scheme of ‘moral accounting’. It does little more than acknowledge the inherent complexity involved in such calculative endeavours.

In her analysis, Akerman (2005, p. 38) proposes that the ‘natural capital’ metaphor influences the rules according to which claims about sustainable development can be made, as well as the way in which the objects of environmental knowledge are constituted. The notion of ‘natural capital’ evokes two very different images of nature, i.e. as a financial asset and as an ecosystem. However, the former of these images, with its implicit link to monetization, has gradually begun to predominate. As a result, the meaning of the concept of ‘natural capital’ has narrowed within the field of corporate sustainability. It has come to denote a kind of ‘productive machinery’ (Akerman 2005, p. 46). In its wake, various calculative practices based on the presumption of biophysical and monetary competition have emerged. The dominance of this calculative thinking has essentially marginalized other ways of expressing the relationship between humans and nature (Akerman 2005, p. 48).

The ascendence of calculative thinking in the field of corporate sustainability is also associated with the introduction of another metaphor: ‘industrial ecology’ (Hess 2010). The precise relation between biological ecosystems and industry is, of course, far from unambiguous. Hess (2010, p. 271) therefore argues that it is important to distinguish between the ecosystem as a model and the ecosystem as a metaphor. Understood as a model, an ecosystem’s various underlying representations are simply not all amenable to transposition. For instance, the circular way in which one agent’s waste serves as another’s resource within natural ecosystems does not necessarily correspond to industrial systems’ linear model of manufacturing, consuming, storing, or discarding. Hess (2010, p. 274) argues furthermore that regularity, abundance, and diversity are not necessarily properties of industrial symbiosis, nor of companies, which are after all not natural organisms. By drawing attention to the significantly different implications of understanding ‘industrial ecology’ as either a metaphor or a model, Hess encourages a more considered employment of this, and other metaphors within the field of sustainable development. Valuable as this may be, it does not really seem to have the power to propel our discourses beyond the gravitational pull of calculative thinking.

The ascendence of calculative thinking is evident in the predominance of utilitarian arguments in the moral justification of business behaviour. The oft-touted ‘business case for CSR’, which is an instance of ‘corporate’ or ‘weak’ sustainability, is a familiar case in point. In a similar vein, corporate philanthropy is advocated as a way of creating ‘moral capital’ for the firm. This has led to an attempt to rationalize philanthropy as a form of ‘enlightened self-interest’. This is done by means of tying philanthropy directly to strategy, or by embedding philanthropic activities more explicitly within a defined CSR strategy. The paradoxical effect of this is that the more firms become ‘socially responsible’, the more the discretionary scope of philanthropy is limited (Spence and Thompson 2009, p. 373). Within the realm of ‘strategic philanthropy’, there is also an intense preoccupation with measurement technologies. The result is that whatever cannot be measured and reported on is deemed valueless. Corporations also extract surplus value from their participation in philanthropic activities and mine the emotional commitment of various stakeholders to particular causes to help build their brands (Spence and Thompson 2009, p. 385). All of this may be taken as indications of the extent to which an insidious kind of ‘moral accounting’ has become normalized within business communities in recent times.

There is an implicit conflation between monetary wealth and moral wealth in this kind of instrumental reasoning. It provokes moral contempt for any perceived form of waste, as this entails a loss of wealth and well-being. Furthermore, it creates intolerance for anything that cannot be justified in instrumental financial terms. Spence and Thompson (2009), for instance, have drawn attention to some of the moral impasses thrown up by business’ ‘pathological profit-seeking’ and unwillingness to contribute to anything unless it yields some sort of business benefit. They point out how justifications for so-called corporate philanthropy are inevitably predicated on the notion of ‘the deserving poor’. The fact that charities have to prove that their constituencies ‘deserve’ corporate largesse is clearly incoherent and inappropriate within the context of ‘altruistic’ giving. Similar paradoxes may be observed within the field of sustainable development. Banerjee (2008a, p. 58), for instance, argues that the efficiency–legitimacy dichotomy within corporate sustainability discourse often becomes problematic because legitimacy is subordinate to efficiency.

A critical reassessment of the tacit ‘well-being equals wealth’ construct that seems to inform so much contemporary thinking about sustainable development is a good place to start. The equation of well-being with wealth is problematic in both directions: on the one hand, the pervasive preoccupation with calculability that shapes our language tends to preclude other possible conceptions of well-being. On the other hand, the use of ecological metaphors obscures the differences between flourishing, as it is experienced within the context of the non-human world, and the accumulation of financial wealth. In fact, associating industrial ecology with natural ecology, and financial capital with natural capital, may serve only to perpetuate misconceptions about the true objectives of business activity. The problem seems to lie on two levels: (1) the calculative mentality that pervades contemporary thinking about sustainable development and (2) the fact that calculations are almost exclusively performed in pecuniary terms, and more likely to focus on the individual, rather than collective level.

However, these problems are ultimately no more than the inevitable implications of a much more basic set of common assumptions regarding the nature of human agency. In many business communities, ‘homo economicus’ remains an implicit and largely unchallenged orthodoxy. If human beings are, as subscribers to this orthodoxy suppose, essentially rational, calculative and self-interested individuals, whose actions follow from careful consideration of their own economic interests, then it stands to reason that they should employ rational, financial calculation in their approach to sustainable development. However, this account of human agency largely ignores experienced forms of ‘subjective well-being’ that may influence the perceptions and behaviour of individuals and groups. It cannot meaningfully accommodate the interaction between subjective and objective and individual and collective well-being variables. It also underscores the assumptions inherent in the discursive employment of metaphors.

A prominent metaphor that has been deployed within current sustainability discourses is the ‘journey’ metaphor, which is an excellent example of the discursive approach to metaphor. Milne et al. (2006) start from the observation that in the debate about sustainability we can easily distinguish between scholars—and business people—who defend ‘weak sustainability’, that is the idea that sustainability will be realized through incremental improvements in which business will explore eco-efficiency and ultimately find win–win strategies that combine sustainability with profitability, and other scholars who argue that sustainability can only be reached on the basis of a far more radical change of our economic and social system. According to the latter, an incremental approach is hopelessly insufficient to reach sustainability: we have to end growth in human (demographic) and economic terms. Milne et al. (2006) observe that the surprisingly frequent use of the metaphor ‘journey’ to characterize the transition towards sustainability allows to weaken the tension between short incremental business initiatives and the radical requirements of a sustainable human civilization on earth. They illustrate how the use of this metaphor (by business people and international organizations in particular) reassures society insofar as it suggests many things at the same time and equally hides some other aspects. ‘Journey’ suggests that we are on our way, that there is a commitment, and it assumes implicitly that economic development and the planetary constraints can be reconciled at some point. It simplifies the picture and, in fact, distracts our attention from the real decisions that should be made right now. The authors judge the journey metaphor as dangerous insofar that insufficient changes will be made. However, although the ambiguous role of the metaphor is convincingly demonstrated, the authors argue merely that it conveniently allows business people avoiding fundamental discussions that would question the legitimacy of their business activities, but they do not explicitly argue that business people have actively been using this metaphor to legitimize continuing business as usual. The metaphor plays an ideological role, but no ideology creator is identified. At most, we could conclude that the paper makes an implicit ‘cui bono’ conspiracy argument: business people unconsciously perpetuate certain root metaphors that fit in with their financial interests, especially since these are hardly ever challenged.

Audebrand (2010) proposes that we should, from the perspective of strategic management, consciously search for powerful metaphors, that is, metaphors with a high heuristic value that will lead to creativity and innovation. On the other hand, Audebrand argues, we should stop using metaphors, like the prevailing ‘war’ metaphor, that narrow our mindset and that do not allow integrating sustainability in strategic management. In a similar vein, we believe that Bataille can be helpful in understanding why certain metaphors, as cognitive–linguistic structures, as well as the discursive use of metaphors towards certain purposes, fail to help us to further meaningful sustainable actions. We believe that some assumptions that current metaphors make around well-being = wealth misinterpret what human beings really value and how we become well. With Küpers (2005, p. 228), we argue that well-being is not something that individuals ‘have’, but that instead emerges out of the communal interplay and interchange between individuals, communities and their environments. In what follows therefore, we begin to explore a conception of human agency that does not require us to deny or gloss over the complexities of subjective, interrelational experience. We offer this conception of ‘non-calculative sovereignty’ as an alternative to homo economicus’ calculative autonomy. We believe that its capacity to include, rather than exclude the important role of subjective experience in human behaviour ultimately makes it a more appropriate conceptual basis for thinking about sustainable development.

Although Bataille himself considered his work as an economist (in La notion de dépense, and La part Maudite) as his most important work, it has never been taken seriously by economists (with one exception⁴). This is easy to understand if one considers the radically different viewpoint Bataille develops. Jean Baudrillard succinctly observed that Bataille ‘attacked the metaphysical principle of the economy’ (Baudrillard 2010, p. 149). Bataille did so by posing a fundamental challenge to the scope of the concept of ‘utility’. The conception of the market economy that informs most contemporary textbooks is based on the assumption that economic agents (be they consumers, producers, employers, employees, etc.) are rational utility maximizers. Such agents maximize the satisfaction of their preferences by weighing up alternative choices, cutting costs, optimizing output with given input, maximizing profit, permanently calculating and optimizing against given parameters or against the changing strategies of competitors in a complex market environment. Moreover, these rational agents save and invest, i.e. they optimize in a context of risk and uncertainty, which implies that they always focus on the future. In Bataille’s description of capitalism, he draws attention to its participants’ pervasive obsession with ‘utility’ (in the more narrow sense of ‘usefulness’). The logic that follows from this obsession dictates that spending should be limited to useful things that will contribute to future benefits. Although this is not Bataille’s wording, we believe that the well-being = wealth metaphor is implicit in the mainstream way of conceiving the economy, or in Bataille’s vocabulary, the ‘restrictive’ economy.

From Bataille’s perspective, most people have come to see the capitalist economy as the pursuit of well-being through wealth (materialistically defined), both in theory and in practice. However, there is, according to Bataille, another not really hidden, but rarely recognized dimension to the economy. A narrow focus on the rational maximization of utility obscures what Bataille sees as the real sources of human motivation and well-being, much of which we could situate at the interface of the consciousness and culture quadrants of Fig. 1 (Cf. supra). Bataille studied anthropology and was aware of the fact that even in archaic civilizations the economy produced much more than people actually needed to survive. This surplus production allowed the ‘sacrificial expenditure’ of resources-including human labour and lives. Surplus resources were often consciously depleted, destroyed, consumed, wasted or squandered without any consideration of utility. One may of course argue that this only occurred in primitive economies like the ones described by anthropologists like Malinowki or by the Jesuits who described the Aztec culture, but not in the contemporary capitalist system. And indeed, Bataille argued that the typical bourgeois in the capitalist economy is characterized by what he calls a ‘servile’ attitude: all decisions are considered in terms of future benefits. Everything is carefully calculated and optimized. However, what ultimately really mattered in primitive economies were precisely those moments when calculation, anticipation of the future and considerations of utility played no part in shaping the behaviour of groups or individuals. Bataille insisted that this is also true of our own time, though it may be harder to recognize or admit. Little wonder that he gave the title ‘Au-delà de l’utile’, (beyond usefulness) to a draft version of ‘The Accursed Share’—the book in which he developed these ideas. Bataille sees this transgression of what he calls the ‘utility constraint’ as something positive. For him, it is a liberation from servility. He therefore uses the metaphor, ‘sovereignty’ to describe it. For him, there is something almost miraculous and sacred in this disregard of utilitarian constraints. Like a king, people act sometimes as if they were beyond calculation and servility. In this sense, the discursive employment of Bataille’s description of ‘sovereignty’ redefines the root metaphor of well-being = wealth, embracing ‘wealth’ from a general perspective. This would involve a sense of detachment from the cost cutting, optimizing and calculating utility-maximizing attitude of the homo economicus.

The self-avowed objective of Bataille’s theoretical project is a general critique of the ideas that subordinate human activities to aims different from the useless consummation (sometimes erroneously translated as consumption⁵) of their resources. He wants to destroy those ways of seeing that justify ‘servile forms’ (our translation, Bataille’s italics 1976, p. 10). We should note here that the French word that we translate as ‘consummation’ has the connotation (according to Larousse) of ‘the action of destroying something, progressively or totally, like by fire’. So, the point is not necessarily to consume in a hedonistic way (although hedonism is not systematically absent, even in Bataille’s examples); it is rather that the expenditure or the destruction of the resource serves no further purpose. It is in that sense that it is a sovereign ‘consummatory’ act. It has a kind of ‘intrinsic’ value—a value in, and of, itself. It neither requires nor submits to utilitarian justification. For Bataille (1976, p. 11), a system in which everything is compelled to submit to the tyranny of utilitarian calculation, and nothing is ‘sovereign’, is ultimately absurd.

Bataille (1991) therefore criticizes bourgeois power’s preoccupation with scarcity, productivity, frugality and instrumentality/utility. This concern with utility in capitalist bourgeois societies found a powerful partner in Christianity’s advocacy of hard work and frugality (Taylor 2004, p. 316). Bataille argues that capitalism’s unrelenting utilitarian imperatives effectively forced human beings into servility. The frivolous, useless and dangerous were gradually marginalized and ostracized. A convergence of economic, social, legal and moral power was required to create and sustain this system. Bataille draws our attention to some of the latent tensions in contemporary capitalist societies: male bourgeoisie regularly transgress their own calculative edicts in acts of war and luxurious expenditure. For Bataille, these are essentially consummatory acts of sovereignty. In turning to a prostitute, for instance, the bourgeois man turns to something beyond the systems of usefulness. He luxuriates in a kind of wasteful expenditure, which is an act of consummatory sovereignty inasmuch as it serves no purpose beyond itself. The widespread fascination with the figure of the criminal (consider here the plethora of popular TV shows focused on crime) may also be attributable to its apparent wanton destruction and wasteful expenditure of property and lives. Similarly, the wars of the twentieth century are instances of catastrophic expenditure, which followed the excessive growth and expansion brought about by industrial capitalism. In Dorfman’s (2002, p. 38) reading of Bataille, ‘Our fantasies, silences and immoralities are products of the limited nature of the real, the articulated and the moral’.

Maybe the easiest way to catch the starting point of Bataille’s vision on the economy consists of taking a look at the monthly supplement of the Financial Times with the unapologetic title ‘How to spend it’ (http://​howtospendit.​ft.​com). In this supplement, you find advertisements for extravagantly expensive watches, yachts, fabulous vacation resorts, private jets, etc. These pages are particularly addressed to people who spend their working day inventing cost-cutting measures, arbitrage on financial markets, investing, optimizing and managing. That is, perfectly ‘servile’ activities. And yet, these people seem fascinated by the idea of spending huge resources just for fun. Bataille (1976, pp. 248–253) offers a number of other examples of ‘sovereign’ behaviours. He describes driving around in a car, for instance, on what he calls a ‘contemplative journey’. This may be strange nowadays but one has to imagine what it meant in the 1950s to drive around in the French countryside in an act of ‘contemplation’. This activity is completely unrelated to the conventional ‘use’ or ‘usefulness’ of a car. It is not directed towards the future. Instead it is an act of complete presence in the moment without a defined aim (Bataille 1976, p. 253). For Bataille, ‘sovereignty’ is fundamental to being human: to feel free to do or refrain from doing whatever one likes/dislikes, to be completely absorbed in one’s experience of a moment, to remain unperturbed by any particular aim or concern for the future (Bataille 2011, pp. 181–182).⁶

Bataille’s distinction between a ‘general’ and a ‘restrictive’ economy is helpful in understanding our preoccupation with pecuniary calculation. The ‘restrictive economy’ focuses on the scarcity of resources within a particular system and as such supports the conventional model of rational, utilitarian exchange between profit-maximizing economic agents. Bataille’s alternative notion of a ‘general economy’, however, focuses on the excess of energy (wealth) within a broader economic system. As such, the general economy also encompasses those resources that are available for sovereign consummation within an economic system, including the social, the sexual or the sacred. From this ‘general’ perspective, we may understand ‘poverty’ as the inability to ‘consummate’ the resources that are produced in the economy, rather than the inability of the economy to produce enough resources for ‘consumption’ (Bataille 1991, p. 39). Bataille’s analysis allows us to recognize that the widespread corporate aversion to waste is informed by a ‘restrictive’ economic perspective. From this perspective, the corporation’s agents feel compelled to make productive use of what they perceive as ‘scarce resources’, in order to benefit the corporation and its immediate stakeholders. The scarcity motive enhances and perpetuates the calculative impulse, which operates in the ‘business case’ for sustainability. It mandates that investments always yield measurable financial benefits. It compels individual and corporate actors to rationalize their actions by means of careful cost–benefit analysis.

Typically, the ‘business case for sustainable development’ has to be made convincingly before corporations are prepared to commit themselves to it. Corporations want to see how social investments will translate back into financial gain, which, in turn, can be re-employed in the pursuit of further profit (Margolis and Walsh 2003). The implicit goal in all of this seems to be to avoid ‘waste’.

However, paradoxically, much of the preoccupation with reinvesting the surplus of labour into further growth seems to yield, on the level of the ‘general economy’, even more wasteful consumption of useless goods. As Rehn and O’Doherty (2007) point out, our contemporary lives are characterized by an endless array of unnecessary products and services. This proliferation of the excessive is indeed the complete opposite of the frugal ‘economization’ of costs, marginal utility and economic rationality (Rehn and O’Doherty 2007, p. 99). In the case of the middle and working class, their ‘waste’ emerges from a desire to become well amidst the complex interplay of individual, collective and systemic dynamics, which make no clear sense from a rational perspective. The fact that this expenditure is ‘useless’ is precisely the point. It is, as Zwier et al. (2015) describe, a kind of pressure valve, which allows the transformation of energy into growth to continue. Without this excessive release or expenditure, either catastrophically or gloriously, the system cannot continue.

What would it mean to approach sustainable development from the perspective of the ‘general economy’? It amounts to a move away from scarcity and frugality to the acceptance of excess and ‘waste’ as an inevitable part of human society. Though ‘waste’ and ‘expenditure’ are related, there is also a possibility of considering certain types of expenditures as ‘glorious’, rather than catastrophic. Within the context of sustainable development, global interdependencies and growing need, excess may flow towards ‘objective’ need, but it also becomes available for the ‘sovereign’ consummation of ‘subjective’ desires, which allows for glorious expenditure on arts, cultural festivals and science for its own sake, rather than for utility (Zwier et al. 2015, p. 371). Sorensen (2012, p. 180) points out that Bataille’s analysis of ‘sovereignty’ contains ‘an irreducible and principled opposition between the ‘objective’ needs of the human being as such and the ‘subjective’ desire for sovereignty’. For Bataille, it is important to recognize the important role of this subjective desire in our economic activities. Bataille’s admonitions in this regard may be more important ever as we collectively endeavour to shift towards a more sustainable general economy. He, however, allows us to go beyond criticism to a fundamental assessment of the paradoxes involved in being human.

Bataille’s distinction between ‘objective’ need and ‘subjective’ desire may help us redefine our understanding of ‘well-being’ and, by extension, ‘wealth’. Some researchers have calculated that there would be ample resources to feed and clothe every human being globally, if only the wealthier strata of global populations were willing to forsake certain luxury commodities such as perfume, alcohol and branded designer clothing. This seems to represent a clear-cut, rational case for an alteration of certain consumer behaviour. If people are essentially rational, calculating agents, why do they remain so unaffected by this kind of ‘objective’ calculative logic? The answer is surely that calculations of ‘objective’ need do not give us insight into, or control over, ‘subjective’ human desire.

In Bataille’s political economy, we find an argument for moving away from a calculative economic logic towards an appreciation of the important role of ‘subjective well-being’ in our economic behaviour. From Bataille’s perspective, human beings’ tacit desire for ‘sovereignty’ inadvertently compels them to venture beyond the constraints of the calculable, controllable and predictable. As such, ‘subjective’ desire may hold the key to an alternative conception of ‘wealth’ and, by implication, ‘well-being’. The question, however, remains, how can ‘sovereignty’, i.e. the squandering of energy and resources on unproductive and useless activities be reconciled with responsible stewardship of our planet’s finite resources?

Of course Bataille, like almost all people at that time, assumed unlimited amounts of resources and energy and had no ecological concerns (Cf. Stoekl 2007, p. 39). Prima facie, Bataille’s ideas about purposeless consummation of resources seem at the opposite of sustainable development. But the underlying sense of expenditure is sovereignty, the need to satisfy subjective desire: doing things for their own sake and not in a calculative way, for reasons of future profit. In Bataille’s view, the energy delivered by the sun to biological beings is unlimited. Plants develop in an exuberant way. Animals sometimes expend more energy than they strictly need to survive. In human animals, this excess of energy ultimately ends up in pure expenditure that Bataille qualifies as a ‘consciousness of nothing’, which raises self-consciousness to a higher level (Bataille 1991: p. 190). The possibility of depleting energy (which does not mean oil or something similar, but rather time and effort) to ‘nothing’ is ultimately liberating (Geerts et al. 2014). Within contemporary capitalist societies though, ‘subjective’ desire has come to revolve around the consumption of commodities, but it doesn’t need to be like this. Stoekl (2007, p. 58) clearly distinguishes Bataille’s expenditure from the consumerist utopia. Expenditure is not about justifying the use 80 million barrels a day of oil, but accepting the ‘wastage’ of human effort and time.

The subjective desire of sovereignty is also present in the social, playful and creative parts of people’s lives. Could we perhaps discard the notion of ‘homo economicus’ in favour of ‘homo ecologicus’? That is to say, mankind as ‘playful’ living organisms instead of mankind as rational economic agents (Nodoushani 1999, p. 335). The point is not so much about destroying resources, but about being, like a sovereign, beyond calculation. Gift-giving is just another possibility of a sovereign detached attitude towards resources. Bataille explicitly mentions Marcel Mauss’s famous essay: ‘The Gift. The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies’ as a major influence in the writing of his economic texts.⁷

In his interpretation of Bataille’s contribution to sustainability discourses, Stoekl (2007, p. 50) also seems to believe that an embrace of the general economy may indeed serve the sustainability agenda, but not through frugality, restraint or calculation of costs.⁸ Instead, Bataille foresees a society that is sustained precisely because of the human collectivity’s capacity for excessive and transgressive expenditure, in which individual energy becomes part of larger energy flows. His vision helps us envisage a world where we cease to rely on fossil fuels and other storable energy resources and instead rely on the sun’s excessive energies and communities’ ability to share it. Zwier et al. (2015) even argue that a sustainability strategy like the bio-based economy will only succeed if it gives up on the scarcity model that underpins it and embraces the pressure valves of glorious expenditures.⁹

‘Energy’ is another way of thinking about the ownership of wealth. In a restrictive economy, it is something to be extracted, stored, used, recycled, always ‘productively'. But this comes at a cost to society, both in cultural and in systemic terms, which is often unacknowledged. Banerjee’s (2011, pp. 325–326) critique of ‘management by extraction’, ‘management by exclusion’ and ‘management by expulsion’ serves to illustrate what is at stake here: when certain natural resources are extracted and boundaries drawn around them, the free flow of energy is disrupted and blocked. For instance, when forests are treated as if they are no more than carbon sinks, their broader significance for local populations—not only as sources of food, livelihood, sources of medicine, housing, but also of culture, society, polity and economy—becomes obscured (Banerjee 2011, p. 326). In other cases, indigenous populations are displaced to make space for infrastructure and energy projects like dams. These forms of ‘containment’ disrupt the flow of energy as wealth within a general economy. More importantly, such restrictive perspectives on energy and the practices that follow in its wake destroy our capacity to live in harmony with nature. If dimensions such as topophilia and solastalgia are important dimensions of well-being, we can see that such actions clearly undermine well-being, but not in a way that is completely calculable. A case in point is the way in which capitalist discourses around private property destroyed native populations’ intimate relationship to the environment (Banerjee 2003). In such instance, the utility of the action is privileged, and the subjective desires, which lie in the interface of the individual and the cultural, are ignored.

Bataille (1991, p. 31) argues that the ‘utility’ of certain social practices (he for instance discusses lavish gift-giving practices in ancient culture) cannot be calculated, because the criteria by which they are judged are those of social ‘acceptability’. From the perspective of the general economy, some resources must be consummated for people to experience a sense of sovereignty and social stability. In the process, energy seems ‘wasted’, yet subjective desires are fulfilled. We could therefore argue that instead of narrowly reducing ‘development’ to capital growth, it could be opened up to encompass phenomena such as the emergence of a new social structure, the solidification of existing social relations and the protection of beautiful spaces.¹⁰ The goal of these practices is to facilitate the flows of energy and resources within a society, which forms part of the ecosystem, rather than standing outside or against it. The criteria for sustainability projects then relate to their capacity to allow for the forms of cooperation, sharing, and energy circulation. Such practices may seem ‘wasteful’ from a utility point of view, yet they do not deplete energy sources, whether these sources be human, organic or inorganic. In addition, they fulfil certain important subjective desires.

The point of this paper is to illustrate that much of what we do in the area of sustainability may not be productive in terms of monetary outputs and growth. From the perspective proposed by Bataille (1991, p. 31), sustainability is not ultimately a question of ‘utility’, but one of ‘acceptability’, both in terms of how it facilitates social relationships and in terms of how it facilitates sovereign consummations. Following Bataille’s logic, one could argue that sustainability emerges when social concern, economic concern and the harmony of the natural biosphere are equally essential in broadening our understanding of ‘development’. As such, pursuing ‘sustainable development’, rather than just ‘corporate sustainability’, will require a much more complex analysis of the paradoxes inherent in sustainability. Placing some forms of concern in the service of the calculative rationality of the other makes this impossible. Bataille makes a strong argument that one should approach the problems we face within political economy from the perspective of the ‘general economy’, because the ‘particular’ perspective is always trapped within perceptions of a lack of resources. He illustrates this in terms of the specific problem of poverty (Bataille 2011, p. 65ff). The inequalities in the world make it evident that some nations are in need of exudation, whereas others are in need of growth. Excess should therefore be directed to where growth is needed as a non-reciprocal exudation, a oozing forth that expects no return. The problem, however, is that as long as scarcity exist, at least in the mindset of the ‘restrictive’ economy, the scheme of ‘moral accounting’ will be in place and the question: ‘What can we expect in return?’ will inevitably be posed. There is such a preoccupation with ploughing all excess back into new opportunities for growth that the prospect of non-reciprocal expenditure does not present itself as defensible option. Reinserting a concern for social harmony means grappling with the incalculable. The paradoxes inherent in pursuing both individual autonomy and social relationships, both short-term choice/freedom and long-term respect for nature, defies categorization. It challenges the ‘utility’ that our systems of moral accounting rely on. But if we take it seriously enough, it might make exudation, the oozing forth and the fulfilment of subjective desire possible again—even if, and precisely because—there is no financial benefit associated with it. It would also allow us to integrate the hedonic (the pleasurable), with eudaimonic (the meaningful) as mutually reinforcing aspects of becoming well (Küpers 2005, p. 229).