Pleasure and excess: Using Georges Bataille to locate an absent pleasure of consumption (2013)

This article will engage with some recent changes in addiction discourses and research in order to introduce a new version of pleasure. Looking at how addiction research has reframed the 'addict' as a socially situated and contingent 'consumer', I will try to understand the role of excess in the distinction between 'normal' and 'problematic' consumption. This distinction remains prevalent, even in recent works on pleasure and drug-use. Pleasure is crucial here, because it is intimately related to consumption, yet has been previously ignored in research. Whereas the previous distinguishing feature of 'addict' and 'non-addict' can be argued to have been one of 'production' and 'consumption' (alongside a whole list of other attributes), the current debate seems to focus on various forms of consumption - the pursuit of pleasure through consumption being contentious. I argue that Bataille's formulation of overwhelming pleasure offers a way of combining excess and pleasure in a manner that is not problematic, further breaking down the distinction between 'normal' and 'abnormal' consumption. However, at the same time a new dichotomy is created between 'overwhelming' and 'purposive' pleasure, a distinction that might offer new ways of distinguishing 'problematic' and 'unproblematic' consumption in relation to drug-use. The version of pleasure formulated is argued to be absent in current work looking at pleasure in addiction, and a valuable addition to the growing repertoire of the types of pleasure available to addiction research.