[1] Reported in Malaclypse the Younger, Principia Discordia (San Francisco: Rip-Off Press, 1970) 38.
[2] Esp. Bataille's theory of expenditure and symbolic exchange; see esp. "The Notion of Expenditure," trans. and ed., Allan Stoekl, Georges Bataille: Visions of Excess - Selected Writings, 1927-1939 (Minneapolis: U Minn, 1989) 116-129, wherein is developed, through a reading of Mauss, a theory of symbolic expenditure that is quite similar to Baudrillard's in CPES. Baudrillard parts company with Bataille on the notion of needs as rationalized rather than rational; for Baudrillard, expenditure does not serve a utilitarian function but is claimed to serve such a function only after the fact. Whereas in Bataille, expenditure serves a utilitarian function of loss -- we simply do not recognize it as a utilitarian function because it does not occur to us "that a human society can have ... an interest in considerable losses, in catastrophes that, while conforming to well-defined needs, provoke tumultuous depressions, crises of dread, and, in the final analysis, a certain orgiastic state," 117. Thus for Bataille needs are material elements of the system whereas in Baudrillard they are metaphysical elements which serve ideological functions. In Bataille, expenditure is characterized by a loss that serves a symbolic function; the loss "must be as great as possible in order for that activity to take on its true meaning," 118. In this sense, Bataille is squarely within Baudrillard's third domain of symbolic exchange (see below; CPES 66) whereas Baudrillard argues that consumer society has moved on to the fourth domain of sign exchange.
[3] The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies trans. Ian Cunnison (NY: WW Norton, 1967). Mauss' theory of the gift (potlach) forms the basis both for Bataille's principle of loss and Baudrillard's notion of sign exchange value. For Mauss, the gift always implies debt to be repaid and hence translates into power. Baudrillard argues that Bataille misreads Mauss, but both of their readings seem similar to me; the difference is in how Mauss' argument is applied to political economy.
[4] Whose theory of the quotidian, or everyday life (1946), argues that the dull everyday routines are the only discursive space from which to theorize a revolutionary practice: "culture is not useless, a mere exuberance, but a specific activity inherent in a mode of existence; ... class interests cannot ensure the totality of a society's operative existence unaided. Everyday life emerges as the sociological point of feed-back; this crucial yet much disparaged point has a dual character; it is the residuum (of all the possible specific and specialized activities outside social experience) and the product of society in general; it is the point of delicate balance and that where imbalance threatens. A revolution takes place when and only when, in such a society, people can no longer lead their everyday lives; so long as they can live their ordinary lives relations are constantly re-established," Everyday Life in the Modern World trans. Sacha Rabinovich (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1984) 32. This theory had a profound influence on the situationists as well as on the events of May 1968, and it clearly forms the basis for Baudrillard's manifest assumption throughout his work that consumerism is the locus of power and ideology in modern society. Lefebvre was expelled from the Communist Party in 1956.
[5] Especially Guy Debord, whose Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black & Red, 1967,1983), Baudrillard insists, provides a useful but inadequate mode of conceptualizing the influence of mass media.
[6] Whose "the medium is the message," for Baudrillard, "is the first great formula of this new age," (SIM 54); see McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage (NY: Bantam, 1967).
[7] Trans. and cited by Kellner, JBMB,11, from p. 217 of the French edition. Much of Baudrillard's later work will seem particularly utopian absent the implications of this argument; his contentions in America and "2000" that humanity is "totally liberated" should, I feel, be read in light of this earlier remark. Of course, this doesn't excuse him from the sheer stupidity of comments like "There are no cops in New York."
[8] See Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics trans. Mark Polizzotti (NY: Semiotext(e), 1977, 1986).
[9] "Television, then, is goo. Virulent, invasive, infectious, chilly goo," Morris, 101, (193).