Nothing Added, Nothing Subtracted

“You do too much!” “Where do you find the time to write so much?” Such are the frequent refrains of my family and friends. So is it paradoxical to willingly agree to contribute a text on overload, being myself so much overloaded? An expert on the subject, admittedly. Perhaps analyzing this syndrome will help me to exorcise it, and thereby to distance it, simply by having summoned it before me. Having looked at it in the light of day, I will free myself, superstitiously, from its shadow.

There is an element of all this underlying this text, and thus also in its beginning. To think about overload is to elude one’s own condition in order to do even more; it’s to shrug one’s shoulders—a rich expression—in order to better assume, to better shoulder the load, in fact. In other words, when overloaded, aim nevertheless at overload. I will stop there, since Georges Bataille (La Part Maudite) has commented on this interesting notion of over-expenditure. But let’s keep in mind that overload invokes prodigality.