New Technologies’ Promise to the Self and the Becoming of the Sacred: Insights from Georges Bataille’s Concept of Transgression

This article draws on Georges Bataille’s concept of transgression, a key element in Bataille’s theory of the sacred, to highlight structural implications of the way the self-empowerment ethos of new technologies suffuses the digital tracking culture. Pointing to the original conceptual stance of transgression, worked out against prohibition, I first argue that, beyond a critique of new technologies’ promise of self-empowerment as coming at the expense of an acknowledgement of the ultimate taboo—death—is the problem of the sanitizing of the tension between the crossing of the line of the symbolic taboo and prohibition; this undermines a “libidinal investment” towards the sacred, which is central in Bataille’s theory. Second, focussing on “eroticism”, since this embodies the emancipative potential of the Bataillean sacred, I argue that while a fear of eroticism marks out the digital technological realm, this is covered up by the blurring of boundaries between pleasure, fun and sex(iness) that currently governs our experience with technological devices

Manipulated yeast diets and dried algae as a partial substitute for live algae in the juvenile rearing of the Manila clam <i>Tapes philippinarum</i> and the Pacific oyster <i>Crassostrea gigas</i>

The development of a cost-effective artificial diet would greatly reduce the operating costs and improve the efficiency of bivalve seed production. The present study documents the use of a manipulated yeast diet and dried algae (Tetraselmis suecica, Cyclotella cryptica) as an 80% substitute for live algae under the conditions of a commercial bivalve hatchery. Juveniles of the Manila clam T. philippinarum and of the Pacific oyster C. gigas were grown in a 28l recirculating system for three weeks. In addition, a preliminary flow-through culture test was performed with C. gigas. Supplementing manipulated yeasts improved the growth rate of juvenile clams and oysters fed 20% of the algal ration from 30-40% to 70-80% of that observed for the algae-fed controls over a period of 3 weeks. The yeast diet supported similar clam growth as the dried T. suecica and better oyster growth than the dried C. cryptica. Substituting 80% of the algal ration by either the yeast diet or dried T. suecica in the flow-through experiment with C. gigas resulted in a growth rate exceeding 90% of that observed for the algae-fed controls during the first week of the experiment. During the second week of the test this relative growth rate was only maintained by oysters fed the 20/80% algae/dried T. suecica diet. Further research is needed to define the optimal food levels of the yeast diets in continuous flow cultures