Katya Mandoki 
The Indispensable Excess of the Aesthetic 
The excessive and the basic appear to be logically opposed. The term 
»excess« is commonly understood as a synonym of the superf luous and in-
compatible with other key categories of aesthetics such as harmony, simplicity 
and unity. For people who consider themselves refined, excess is almost an 
index of bad taste. An excess in color, in jewelry, in accessories, in ornamen-
tation, in gloss... are either laughed at or boasted about, depend ing on cul-
tural background. Excess may be embarrassingly h idden or proudly dis-
played, hoarded or wasted; in any case, it seems to be somehow and some-
times significantly linked to the aesthetic. 
Three authors have more or less explicitly dealt with the not ion of 
excess: Thorstein Veblen, Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille. They all men-
tion the aesthetic but none of them, unfortunately, deals with it in particu-
lar. The three handle the concept of consumption, but it was Bataille who 
worked more extensively on the idea of excess to the degree of proposing a 
Copernican revolution in economics. Counter to views prevalent in this field, 
Bataille maintained that nature obeys a pattern of excess rather than scanti-
ness and limited resources. He stated that a living organism receives much 
more energy than it needs, and that this excess of energy is not only inevi-
table but has to be dissipated else it may become destructive and turn against 
the organism. The excess of sperm for a single ovule, the excess of eggs 
deposited by many species, the tendency to excess in vegetation, the excess 
of energy radiated by the sun, all illustrate this tendency to dissipation and 
exuberance. Leave a garden un tended and it will soon overflow and fill ev-
ery gap. For Bataille, this century's World Wars were the catastrophical con-
sequence of industrial excess that was not voluntarily spent when required. 
I will not at tempt a thorough analysis of this very controversial thesis pro-
posed by Bataille, also incomplete in its argumentation and theoretical de-
velopment. I will only deal with the idea of excess in relation to the aesthetic 
and examine it within the perspective of Mauss' study of archaic societies 
which, in fact, triggered Bataille's own conceptions. 
Bataille explores how excedents are consumed in various types of soci-
eties such as the Aztec sacrificial theocracy, Moslem militarist and Lamaist 
monastical organizations. His work on this subject was inspired, as he ac-
Filozofski vestnih, XX (2/1999 - XIVI CA Supplement), pp. 173-179 173 
Katya Mandoki 
knowledges, by Mauss' investigation on the Tlingit and Haida communities, 
particularly their potlatch ceremony which is a competitive destruction of 
excedents for generating prestige. This ceremony was named by the Chinook 
term potlatch meaning »to feed« or »to consume« (Mauss 6). As Mauss in-
sisted, these gifts and exchange ceremonies are never voluntary, but com-
pulsory in nature. There is an obligation to reciprocate with gifts of equal 
or greater value. 
The hau and the aura 
Mauss began an inquiry on economy and ended with an inquiry on 
morality. He was concerned with understanding the code behind this obliga-
tory reciprocity: »What rule of legality and self-interest, in societies of a back-
ward or archaic type, compels the gift that has been received to be obliga-
torily reciprocated? What power resides in the object given that causes its 
recipient to pay it back?« (Mauss 3) Remarkably, Mauss implies in the sec-
ond question (»what power resides...«) a partial answer to the first: it is the 
belief that there is a power within objects that acts upon people and forces 
them to reciprocate gifts. This power is the hau or spirit of objects, which 
retain part of the soul of their maker. One must relate to this concrete pres-
ence in objects when one introduces them into one 's home. The Maori 
people call »hau« this spirit that clings to an object when ownership changes. 
In our contemporary globalized industrial society, the idea of the hau seems 
like mere childish superstition of primitive, uncivilized people. Yet, we do 
not invest in an artwork unless we are sure it is genuine, even if we can' t tell 
the difference between the original and a copy. This proves that we still 
believe in something similar to the hau of things, at least in artworks. Many 
people call a priest to bless a new house or a ship and organize warming 
parties. It is not too farfetched to associate the Maori idea of hau with what 
Walter Benjamin called the »aura« in the work of art. His idea of the loss of 
aura in the age of mechanical reproducibility may also explain a contem-
porary sense of loss of hau separating objects f rom subjects and becoming, 
as Marx argued, fetishes that turn against their producers in industrial pro-
duction. 
Another case of contemporary Western hau production is the so-called 
»car art«. Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and David 
Hockney, among others, have each decorated a BMW car, converting an 
already expensive piece of machinery into an even more expensive work of 
art. These vehicles must now be carefully packed and transported before 
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The Indispensable Excess of the Aesthetic 
ending up motionless, on display in art exhibits worldwide. Between the car 
and the artwork, the difference is the hau of the artist who painted it. This 
spirit is what, in archaic societies, demands reciprocation, and in modern 
societies justifies a price unrelated to the amount of labor invested in or any 
benefit derived f rom the object. 
Total services and contrasting pulse 
Mauss found among the communities of the American Northwest what 
he termed »total social phenomena« which means that »all kinds of institu-
tions are given expression at one and the same time - religious, juridical, 
and moral, which relate to both politics and the family; likewise economic 
ones, which suppose special forms of production and consumption, or rather 
of performing total services and of distribution. This is no t to take into ac-
count the aesthetic phenomena to which these facts lead, and the contours 
of the phenomena that these institutions manifest.« (Mauss 3) Up to here 
we have most of what Mauss can tell us concerning the aesthetic: hardly an 
allusion. T h e o ther anthropologists relevant to our po in t (Veblen and 
Bataille) prove no more enlightening. What does Mauss mean by saying that 
these facts lead to aesthetic phenomena? I will venture an answer. 
According to Mauss, certain ceremonies have to be per formed because 
»to make a gift of something to someone is to make a present of some part 
of oneself... To retain that thing would be dangerous and mortal...« (Mauss 
12). This belief refers to the hau, and seems to be a better explanation for 
compulsory reciprocity, which lies, therefore, not in the hau or spirit of the 
thing retained, but the act of retaining it. At issue here is the attitude towards 
and the regulations governing retaining or giving. This is what differenti-
ates Western anal retentive societies f rom what Freud would call anal expul-
sive communities like the Haida and Tlingit. The difference, I contend, is a 
question of pulse understood as centripetal or centrifugal attitude in regard 
to our surroundings. There are, on one hand, societies that display centrifu-
gal pulse and pride themselves in their power of giving away, like those com-
munities that practice potlatch or mayordomia. Other societies exhibit a cen-
tripetal tendency, like Western capitalist economies, and value their power 
to accumulate to the degree that prestige and honor are a result of saving 
and hoarding wealth rather than sharing it. 
Thus, the logic underlying obligatory reciprocity would appear to de-
pend less upon the hau of things observed by Mauss, than upon a dynamic 
and communal sense of life, of the world, of work and of its products. As I 
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Katya Mandoki 
ment ioned above, it is a matter of pulse and an attitude towards retent ion 
itself rather than toward what is retained. Compulsory reciprocity comes 
f rom a worldview that considers as mere common sense that we must give 
back what we receive, obvious in natural biological processes as breathing 
and eating, birth and death, sowing and reaping. The circulation of matter 
and energy, the movement of all things, stars, animals and light, the rivers 
and the sea, the changing of the seasons, all evince a pattern of abundance 
and dynamism, not of penury and immobility. 
This holistic awareness explains the practice of reciprocity among the 
societies studied, seemingly not because of the belief that things have a spirit 
that can take revenge, but because everything must be kept in motion. To 
retain or to hoard is, in this context, a contra-natura attitude, equivalent to 
imprisoning or holding hostage an object, animal or person destined to be 
in motion. 
The expressive, the impressive and the excessive 
If Mauss and Malinowski believed they found the origins of economy 
and of law, of religion and morality in these patterns, I would suggest that 
we might also seek therein the origins of the aesthetic. Let us imagine two 
contending tribes in relation of potlatch, each one trying to surpass the 
other, each one offering greater quantities of goods, of better quality or more 
exceptional, brought f rom remoter places or made with greater talent and 
skill. The aesthetic impulse here resides precisely in this desire to impress. 
From archaic communities to Renaissance aristocrats and contemporary 
magnates, in all social classes, some more, others less successful, the propel-
ling drive seems to be the same: provoking admiration, impressing others, 
accumulating prestige. As a consequence of this drive, we have been fortu-
nate to inherit the treasures of monumental architecture, masterfully crafted 
vases f rom ancient Greece and China, spectacular jewels f rom the farthest 
corners of the earth, amazing plays of dramatic, epic and comic impact, 
magnif icent rituals, murals, sculptures, musical traditions. In short , it is 
thanks to this need to impress that we have inherited cultural artifacts that, 
despite the passage of centuries and millennia, retain this power. 
Together with this need to produce an impressive effect (the necessity 
to impress) there is also a necessity to share with others that which is deeply 
meaningful to us (the necessity to express). Thus, in conjunction with the 
impressive or the drive to impress, is the expressive drive tha t many 
aestheticians from Baumgarten to Langer, have emphasized 
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The Indispensable Excess of the Aesthetic 
The exuberant and lavish always impresses, sometimes as beauty, as in 
Blake's saying »exuberance is beauty«, others as ugliness. Regardless of the 
categories involved, the excessive is somehow involved with or symptomatic 
of the aesthetic. Ugliness and the grotesque also result f rom one or another 
kind of excess (of fat, for instance, or of length as a long nose or chin, of 
width as impressive hips) and as such they are also related to the aesthetic. 
Excessively long fingernails, apart from symbolizing a status beyond the need 
of manual work, are considered aesthetic. Excessively high heels are an ex-
plicit statement that the owner not a peasant woman. 
Artwork is ail excessive. Ordinarily, one does not witness as concentrated 
and intense a development of events as are found in drama, of images, colors 
and forms as are seen in a painting or of sounds as are heard in a musical 
composition. Baroque and Gothic art are excessive in forms, Expresionism is 
excessive in emotions, Fauvism in color, Cubism in simultaneous perspec-
tives, Ruben's paintings in flesh, Mannerism in the dramatization of the body. 
Duchamp's Anti-art statement is equally excessive (he could have chosen a 
chair or a table... why precisely a urinal?) Malevich and Mondrian, as well 
as the Minimalists like Smith and Goertitz, are all excessive in their reduc-
tion to the essential. Lucio Fontana, in his search for real space, was a bit 
excessive: why cut the canvas with a scalpel! Of course, excess and hiperbole 
are eloquent. 
The cloak or wig of a j u d g e in French and British courts, the excessive 
space in the lobby of official buildings, the excessively slow gait of the priests 
in religious liturgy, the excess of solemnity in a weekly school ceremony, are 
all maintained for their aesthetic effects. Ajewel is always excessive in the 
labor it implies. A hand woven carpet, a perfume, the fermentat ion of fruits 
for liquor, all are aesthetic in that they contain something beyond, more en-
hanced, more condensed, more profuse than the strictly essential. Fur coats 
are warm and soft, jewels gleaming, perfumes are pleasant, good wine is lus-
cious, carved wood is exquisite, chocolates delicious and bonsai cute; none 
are necessary, all are excessive and each is aesthetic. 
Display of excess inevitably captures attention, engages our sensibility 
and seizes our imagination. The utmost prototype of excess taken to sub-
lime proport ions is the Palace of the Nazirs at the Alhambra in Granada: 
the most excessive of all excesses. We may react with pleasure or displeasure 
to the excessive, but we can never remain indifferent to it. Excess is never 
aesthetically neutral. 
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Katya Mandoki 
The indisp ens ability of excess 
I hope to have argued convincingly enough so far that there is a salient 
relation between the aesthetic and the excessive. Demonstrating that this 
excess is indispensable, however, requires substantial argumentation. Excess 
has simultaneously opposing effects: both dangerous and inevitable follow-
ing Bataille's thesis, as well as generous and indispensable as I contend here. 
For Western cultures, both the aesthetic and the technological revolve 
around the same axis, pleasure, but in opposite directions: While the tech-
nological promises to reduce displeasure, the aesthetic promises to increase 
pleasure. If a single flower is pleasurable, a whole bouquet is even more so. 
For non-Western cultures, on the other hand, the aesthetic and the techno-
logical also revolve a round the same axis, but in this case, are aimed in the 
same direction: The aesthetic does not oppose the technical but is a kind 
of technology for persuading the gods or maintaining a certain balance in 
the world. 
As Veblen contraposed the instinct of workmanship to financial invest-
ment, (which is a kind of leisure conspicuously consumed and exhibited by 
aesthetic means), this opposition can also be reformulated in terms of a 
technological instinct of preserving and producing things versus an aesthetic 
instinct of dispensing. In other words, the technological drive is an impulse 
to save, reduce, restrict and be reasonable while the aesthetic is an impulse 
to expend, dissipate, distend. 
These two opposing drives echo Nietzsche's Dionysian vs. Apollonian 
forces in his The Birth of Tragedy (1872). For Nietzsche, the Apollonian rep-
resented the reasonable, judicious, rational, reliable, useful e l ement in 
human nature, while the Dionysian is the ardent, enthusiastic, passionate 
element, as personified by the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. The walls 
of Apollo's temple at Delphi bore two Greek maxims, »Know Thyself« the 
axiom of reasonableness and »Nothing in Excess«, the fundamenta l prin-
ciple of temperance. While aesthetic theory has emphasized the Apollonian 
aspects admiring unity, harmony, symmetry, regularity and rhythm, the im-
portance of the Dionysiac excessive aspect has been greatly underest imated 
in theory, although never in art. 
Apollo is temperance and logos, while Dionysus is excess and pathos. 
He is in fact the Greek god of abundance related to every kind of excess: 
mystic in the religious, orgiastic in the sexual, ecstatic in its ritual dances, 
euphoric and inebriated in the Bacchanals. Dionysus was hence patron of 
wine and of arts like song, drama and poetry. His symbolic presence leads 
to a sense of f reedom, fertility, generosity and ease. 
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The Indispensable Excess of the Aesthetic 
While Aristotle advised temperance, what we really enjoy and need is 
excess: it assures us that life is magnanimous and the world abundant . Con-
sequently, in a context that is bountiful and good, it becomes only natural 
to be kind and generous. Strict calculation and control of people 's time, 
desires, energy and privacy, such as occurs in totalitarian regimes leads, 
Bataille insisted, to uncontrollable fear and destruction through war, dehu-
manization, reiñcation and surrender of the most basic human values. What 
is indispensable is this possibility and actuality of the excessive itself, the 
feeling that excess is real, that we can lose without remorse, that there is a 
margin for vagary and play, that life gives more than we can take. 
Works Cited 
Bataille, Georges, 1987. La parte maldita. Francisco Muñoz de Escalona 
(trad.). Barcelona: Icaria; f rom L'usage des richesses. Paris: Minuit 1949. 
Benjamin, Walter, »The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduc-
tion« in Berel Lang and Forrest Williams (eds.) Marxism and Art. David 
Co. 1972, pp. 281-300. 
Kant, Immanuel , Critique of Judgment [1790] trans. James Creed Meredith. 
Electronic version from the American Philosophical Association Go-
pher. 
Malinowski, Bronislaw, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922; repr. 1961). 
Marx, Karl, »The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof«, in 
Capital; a Critique of Political Economy. New York: The Modern Library, 
pp. 81-96. 
Mauss, Marcel, The Gift. New York: Norton and Routledge 1990. W.D. Halls 
(trans.) f rom »Essai sur le Don« in Sociologie et Anthropologie Presses 
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Veblen, Thorstein, Teoría de la clase ociosa, México: FCE. Theory of the Leisure 
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