Of Excrementality: Ecanomie, Signification, and Autoimmunity

The author concentrates on a re-machining of Bataille’s notion of a sovereign “accursed share” of general economy by adding a theoretical dimension he terms “ecanomie,” which suspends the traditional moral-numerical restrictions of a hitherto dominant economic housing. The lodging here of this portmanteau is coined to uncannily combine the previously separate concepts of “economy” and “anomie” into something that suspends the classical modelling of each. The author then utilizes Heidegger’s “signification” (Bedeutung) to uncover embodiments that such ecanomic acts formally indicate or entail. Signification, it is argued, is not some abstract upper layer or mere outer ontic shell of representation, but a materially networked substance that works-over all individual comportments. Finally, the author explores signification through the optic of Derrida’s “autoimmunity,” in the concrete re-signification of “the suicidal” within social networking ecanomic technologies of the self.