Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard and the critique of the traditional concept of economics

Abstract

This article seeks to present and analyze the criticisms of the traditional concept of economics elaborated by the authors Georges Bataille and Jean Baudrillard. For Bataille, the science of economics never sought to analyze the totality of human behavior, thus being a “restricted economy”, while he defended a “general economy” based on unproductive expenditure and excess. Baudrillard seeks to show how today's culture is the result of a constructed reality, hyperreality, and questions the domination imposed by sign systems, symbolic value, which replaces exchange and use value as the foundation of the economy and society. Such a sign structure of domination requires a technological system apparatus and information networks that substantially alters rationality, thinking and acting. This media “intoxication” resulted in the loss of identities as a reference, making them servants of a technological dictatorship whose sole purpose is the self-preservation of the System itself.

Key words: Bataille; Baudrillard; expenditure; hiperreality; symbolic value.