GIFT, UNPRODUCTIVE EXPENDITURE AND CHARITY:

MAUSS, BATAILLE AND THE PHILANTHROPY PRACTICED BY BILLIONAIRES

Abstract

The notion of gift described by Marcel Mauss will be our object of reflection, especially its ambivalent ethics, which simultaneously encompasses rivalry and the establishment of enduring bonds. We will seek to analyze which aspects of the gift are absent and which seem to persist in neoliberal subjectivation processes, with special interest in virility associated with rivalry. Next, we will address the notion of unproductive expenditure formulated by Georges Bataille. Just as we will do with the gift, we will analyze to what extent the processes of subjectivation and economic practices instituted by neoliberalism move away from the notion of expenditure or incorporate it, and in what ways. Finally, we will deal with the principle of charity. Following Mauss, we will approach this principle as a kind of moral conception of the gift. Understanding philanthropy as one of the contemporary forms of charity, we will focus on the philanthropic actions of billionaire individuals, comparing it with the notions of gift and expenditure and reflecting on their intersubjective and political implications.