'The sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space'

Brn and I were standing outside the library in the freezing cold. I was trying to explain to him Derek Parfit's view of personal identity (which Parfit elaborated with some wild thought experiments). Our talk progressed as follows: I would say something about branching chains of psychological continuity, and he would ask me about rhizomes. I would attempt to explicate the difficulty I was having with memory on Parfit's schema, and he would reply with the bergsonist complaint that Parfit (and just about all other analytic philosophers) cannot really think time.
Fascinating stuff. Less fascinating for the fact that I was about to make a presentation on the topic.
Looming deadlines notwithstanding, our confabulation moved on to more fertile ground. Derrida and Bataille, and the notion of 'gift'. There were times reading the Accursed Share when I felt that Bataille wasn't being radical enough in his analysis. His interpretation of the function of potlatch in various societies remained (I thought) closely bound to capitalist conceptions of exchange value. Gifts are given in return for esteem. Brn held that this is very different from how things are today: that it was precisely the act of giving which symbolized power and wealth in times past. Perhaps this is close to what Deleuze means when he says that the will to power consists not in taking, but in creating and giving.

In any case, Brn went on to say that he thought my issue was similar to something Derrida wrote on the topic; that we cannot explain the gift except in terms of an economy. Now my knowledge of Derrida's work is negligible, so forgive me if I have misunderstood.
This problem of the gift reminds me of the puzzle of motivation, which is usually encountered when thinking about egoism. Every act is motivated, so surely, they say, all action is in some sense egoistical. No, I always think: but why not? Likewise for the gift - it is impossible for me to conceive of a gift which is not reciprocated. There must be exchange, or the hope of exchange, for, as a purely giving being, I cannot survive.
What I wanted from Bataille was an account of the gift which is never reciprocated, and whose reciprocation is not even hoped for. Only then will the structure of capitalist transaction be called into question. Of course, the difficult part is removing oneself from any and all systems of economy: on the plane of motivation, this is what Kant, amongst others, tried - and failed - to do with his categorical imperative.
In the short time we spent standing in the cold, we could only think of two ways to accomodate pure giving: to accept death as the outcome, or to embrace irrationality and madness.