Unproductive wear and tear, energy, sacredness, lost intimacy in today's world: Philippe Joron guides us through key notions proposed by Georges Bataille and the influential College of Sociology to account for a liminal movement of existence, both individual and collective, that persists even beneath the folds of modernity and its ideals of perfectibility. The author addresses crucial themes such as fascism, authority, transgression, and sacrifice. Through lucid reflection, he explores the tensions between literature, existential unease, and charismatic power, while questioning the limits of a sociology trapped in industrial academic production. Joron highlights heterology as the discipline of foreign and heterogeneous bodies, emphasizing the vital importance of social energy and its role in collective passions. It is the science of waste, of that which we condemn yet continue to produce, without diminishing the importance of the social bond in our societies, both past and present.

This book is an invitation to rediscover the transformative potential of the human sciences and to reflect on the power of ideas to understand our present and future.