Signed into the world. Baudrillard and Heidegger in Conversation
by Dr. Shing-Shang Lin
Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Tunghai University

Abstract

Being-in-the-world, a central concept in early Heidegger’s philosophy, begins with everydayness and existential activities. Baudrillard mentions Heidegger’s theory of hermeneutics, the hermeneutical relationship. He uses phenomenology as a method, asserting that everydayness is concealed. However, Baudrillard opposes Heidegger’s phenomenological goal, namely, being itself. For Baudrillard, the world is a simulacrum, a participatory alibi. Despite their differences, Baudrillard and Heidegger share a potential “conversation” based on their respective views of the world, everydayness, things, and objects.

Keywords: object, signification, human being, everydayness, world

Today we are living in a world where the center is not logos or human being, but objects. In early Heidegger’s philosophy, the world, even the living world, is not ready made or present-at-hand (vorhanden). In the 1950s, Heidegger’s late perspective shifts to seeing thing as the center of the world which is constructed by interactive en-owning (Ereignen) of each one of the Fourfold (Geviert), namely sky, earth, human being and gods. He mentions the danger posed by modern technic and its essence, but, inspired by Hölderlin, he believes that “where there is danger, there also grows the salvation”^[1]. Baudrillard is not so optimistic. What he tried to explore in the 1970s is how “real” is and what is “real” in the society we live in. He doesn’t refer to the concept “world”, especially in its ontological sense, but to society or the political-economical system. Primarily, he defines consumption “as a system of communication and exchange, as a code of signs continually being sent, received and reinvented — as language”.^[2] His concept of the object has double meanings. The first one is primarily linguistic, and the second one is symbolic, i. e. all things and beings in the consumer society become objects through coding. Because of the homogeneity of the code, the consumers as codes in the symbolic exchange are connected to the others, yet simultaneously obstructed and blocked from them, and harassed and manipulated by objects.

But for Baudrillard, this dialectical power does not exist in the consumer society because this closed symbolic-exchange world itself is even full of contradictions and paradoxes, neither objects nor human being are negative. What happens in the consumer society is not dialectical fighting between subject and object, nor is it about truth of being. Because “the object (the soul, the shadow, the product of our labour become object) takes its revenge”^[3]. Hence in the signification of symbolic exchange, everything and every consumer become signed or coded object. In this way, the consumer society is also a field full of paradox where the contradictory opponents coexist. A paradox is that the through signed object becoming consumer is anyhow “respected” as so-called subject or “powerful consumer” in order to enhance its consumer power and content itself with consuming, not to attempt to exercise it on the social stage. Actually, we, as human beings, “encounter the troubling atmosphere of this inversion of subject and object, this sorcery of the otherness of the same, in the most everyday expressions”.^[4] The position of human being as subject is today obviously replaced by object. And in this uneasiness of the inversion of subject and object, is it possible that “human being” still relies on a certain “surplus” of himself to maintain or recover his status as subject or to reconstruct his subjectivities? What is the state of human being in his living world which is signed and signifying daily?

Baudrillard manifests the “dead” or coded of person: “forged by the whole of the Western tradition as the organizing myth of the Subject — the person with its passions, its will, its character (or banality) — is absent, dead, swept out of our functional universe”.^[5] He concerns himself with the problem of deconstruction and reconstruction of human being, and mentions the possibility of humans living outside the manipulation of the political-economical system. His works imply a profound concern for human existence in the technical and consumer era. His analysis of objects focuses more on the processes through which humans relate to things, as well as to the resulting human behavior and interpersonal relationships, rather than on the functions of the things themselves or on the classifications used for analysis. But what is the situation of human existence today? And what or who is the human being in the consumer society, especially in a new one dominated by AI?

1. Daily life as the world for being, living and signifying

In “Being and Time” (1927), Heidegger ontologically and existentially (existenzial) quests the human subjectivity which is regarded as an eternal or a self-evident concept by traditional subject-philosophy. In daily life, the so-called “subject” is closed and concealed (verborgen). He points out that the “who” in everyday life is precisely not me or myself, and the “subject” of everydayness is called the “they” (das Man, the Man) who has no specific reference and is always curious. With the “they”, he describes the non-authentic (uneigentlich) existence state of human beings in their daily lives which are banal, average, one-dimensional, undifferentiated, evasive and not independent.^[6]

Daily life is for Baudrillard also the dimension of banality and repetition. He seems to have been inspired by Heidegger, and his observation and description of consumer society in “The Consumer Society” (1970) lies in the “everydayness as closure, as Verborgenheit (concealing)”^[7], a concept he borrows from Heidegger. For the latter, the concept “Verborgenheit” is, after disclosed or unconcealed, related to ontological truth. But for the former, it is related to the real appearance of human fatal and paradox destiny in the modern. Further difference is that, as the consumption location, daily life for Baudrillard is full of images and signs. Thus, his exploration of consumer society is orientated toward the hyper-reality of the symbolic exchange world.

Heidegger’s early philosophy, in the 1920s, focuses on the correlation, which is seen as a path to sense of being (Seinssinn) in order to proceed to being itself, of beings and the whole state of human existence in the living world and daily life, in order, through involvement (Bewandtnis) and significance (Bedeutsamkeit), to get the structure of being of Dasein (Being-there) or Being-in-the-World for furthermore disclosing the sense of being. The whole structure of understanding of world contains ontologically three dimensions, namely the ontical, pre-ontological and fundamental-ontological, and, according to the way of human existence, the whole structure contains two dimensions, namely non-authentic existentiell and authentic existential.

Heidegger’s thinking and method influence Baudrillard whose theory is also a kind of holism, but merely in the ontical layer, like his concept of “object system” and his concern of the correlation and the power of the system. Even the signification of symbolic exchange is mentioned to the consumer’s relation to object, namely “to a set of objects in its total signification”.^[8] Therefore human relation to object is “bewitched and manipulatory”.^[9]

Baudrillard mentions also the self-constitution of relational objects, and finds that it only “repeats the idea of ​​a relation, and this relation is not for people to live.” And “what these objects express is a relational idea in which it ’consumes itself’ and the relationship of actual experience is thus dissolved”. In this way, he gives the second definition of consumption, namely “a complete and systematic idealistic practice (pratique idéaliste, ideal praxis) that goes beyond objects and interpersonal relationships”.^[10] But what is really being consumed is merely the “idea”. For him, “the field of consumption is a structured social field”^[11] and full of different kinds, different types of structures. But for both of them, Heidegger and Baudrillard, the most important meaning does not rest on object, nor on structure of phenomenon, yet the relationship. The fundamental structure is the structure of symbolic exchange. Based on it, there are two main kinds of construct in consumer society, one is consumer activity itself according to un- and/or consciousness, the other is the relationship between consumer and the society according to new classification and the top-down rule of symbolic signs.

Baudrillard’s understanding about relationship is not only influenced by Heidegger, but also draws from Marx, Roland Barthes, Saussure, Marcel Mauss and Levi-Strauss. He is influenced by Heidegger’s “formal indication (formale Anzeige)”, with which he finds out the logic of object itself and its self-signification, namely the object links to the others. By this way, the object takes shape of its order and networks, then its logic:

“They are always arranged to mark out directive paths, to orientate the purchasing impulse towards networks of objects in order to captivate that impulse and bring it, in keeping with its own logic, to the highest degree of commitment, to the limits of its economic potential, … establish inertial constraints in the consumer.”^[12]

And hence he expands from Marx’s social relations to the hermeneutic relationship of consumption activities though his investigation of social relations is still focused on social classification and status as well as its dynamic and sliding. Marx discusses the material objects and products, and Baudrillard focuses on the non-material sign and code. He finds the symbolic exchange value more important than use and exchange solely. In this way, he is different from Marx, yet similar to Heidegger’s structure of being, his social structure not being static. The social classification is up to the code. The classification contains the difference and identity: “to differentiate oneself is precisely to affiliate to a model”^[13]. And it seems arbitrary, hence can be changed. In fact, the social classes stay as they are. Its change is not caused by obtaining the high level code, but achieved by becoming the new politic or economic system. The high level of code always is monopolized by the upper echelons of society, because it is within the upper echelons of society that “innovation takes place, in order to restore social distance”^[14].

Baudrillard is also under the influence of Barthes’ “mythology” whose characteristic is “to transform a meaning into form”.^[15] As second system, the mythical system is more important than the first system where the causality is natural, exactly because the causality there is artificial and false.^[16] For Baudrillard, the social structure, as a system of language, is not a system of natural causality of linguistics, but, like the mythical one, it is artificial and transforms the signified into the signifier, and hence the signifying has duality.

Unlike with Heidegger and Barthes, one of Baudrillard’s main purposes is to point out the differences between contemporary and past consumption activities. With him, the structure of consumer behavior has two layers: the second (symbolic-metaphorical) one is more important than the first (natural phenomenal) one, because “the truth of consumption is that it is not a function of enjoyment, but a function of production”^[17] which produces the symbolic exchange value. In the first layer, a consumer takes things/objects and enjoyment as axis and orientation of his consumption. In the second one, consumer behavior is “that of the metaphorical or displaced expression of desire, that of production, through differential signs, of a social code of values”.^[18] They are thus, “in spite of themselves”, will be involved and enter into “a” generalized system of exchange and production of coded values.

The consumers as signs or codes are integrated, and a “self” is produced by mass communication and signification system. Because of deconstruction and abstraction of sign, being and its meaning of all consumers are lost. That is “forgetfulness of being”, the main kind of sheltering-concealing (Verborgenheit) of being, according to Heidegger, and the coded reconstructed “self” is then the unauthentic one. For Heidegger, the structure of being is not an “empty” connection or relationship without content. He sees the “How-to-be” as the ontological existential content of ontological relationship built up by formal indication as well as involvement (Bewandtnis) and the significance (Bedeutsamkeit). But for Baudrillard, the consumer’s social structure is structured by sign and code that have no concrete content or meaning but signification. From this structure, he finds in commodity another kind of value beyond use and exchange, namely symbolic exchange value. And symbolic illusion, caused by codes and their signifying, is exactly the key marker of social relationship as well as of the contemporary consumer society.

Baudrillard points out that the relationship between consumers and the real living world, between politics, history and culture is a “relationship of curiosity”, and, as to Heidegger, this curiosity shows a “lack of understanding”.^[19] Thus daily life, according to Baudrillard, is not only the sum of daily behaviors. Its banality and repetitive aspect are the “hermeneutic system” of signs.^[20] On account of this system, Baudrillard considers the consumer society as a field where activities of interpretation happen, and daily life has become the most direct and common activity for people to interpret the others and themselves, too. The daily life becomes the field of signification. There, consumption itself has been arranged as “a speaking to oneself [un discours à soi-même]”. Similar like with Heidegger, the most usual and normal state of human being as consumer is that of a “Universal Man” who is made by the whole discourse on consumption. It aims to make him “the general, ideal and definitive embodiment of the Human Race and to turn consumption into the beginnings of a `human liberation’”. This “Man” or “Universal Man” is the “Public Opinion”. It tends to play itself out ”with its satisfactions and disappointments, in this minimal exchange”.^[21] Human consumption behavior itself is the sign and symbolic exchange of sign. Only, in this signification consumer’s intentions no longer indicate his desire for an “ego” but alienation from “ego” through the self-signification of consumption.

As a system of signification, the operation of consumer society today is according to the law of symbolic-exchange value. From the phenomena of consumption in the 1960s, Baudrillard finds out that human consumption activities are not solely driven by the function of objects, nor the object merely a reflection of an individual or a group’s reputation. More fundamental definition of the consumption by Baudrillard is a system of message transmission and exchange, a code of symbols that is continuously sent, received and re-created. And it is also the basis of symbolic exchange. Douglas Kellner sees Baudrillard different from other sociologists in that he uses semiotics to explore daily life, but his most significant feature is his “descriptive and hermeneutic analysis” of symbols and consumption systems in consumer society.^[22] In order to enter the consumer society, human being has to be signed and coded, and hence he is the signifier and simultaneously the signified. He points out that based on the decomposition and abstraction of signs, the meaning of existence and being are lost. “Human being” as a sign can be freely exchanged after homogenization due to the characteristics of the symbol, and is arbitrary and uncertain.

Baudrillard’s description of phenomena in consumer society, as well as his attention to systematic structure in the analysis of symbols and consumption phenomena is, to some extent, influenced by Heidegger’s phenomenology and hermeneutics as methods. But he extremely avoids Heidegger’s phenomenology and hermeneutics because they are nothing different from ontology. Yet he also avoids retrospecting some characteristics or social types from the simplified tableaux or pictures of objects. Moreover, although he uses symbols and codes to reconstruct human beings and objects, he reminds that we should avoid to create our “self” merely by “reconstructing the codes of objects in form” and the codes of human being, because the code itself hides “rigorous social logic” of object.^[23] He uses the game rules to illustrate how people use the code “in their own way”: “To play with it, break its rules and to speak it in the language of your own class.”^[24] That means that there is something creative in the symbolic “game” insofar the humans even as consumer can “play”. Some kind of freedom is hidden in it, or some kind of free space exists under the manipulation and constraint.

Regardless if the original “self” is subjectivity of consumer or not, it cannot be involved in the symbolic exchange system because, according to Baudrillard, it has been objectificated through coding. But the question is still there: Where is the original “self”? On one hand, “human being” as consumer is arbitrary and uncertain due to the characteristics of the sign and symbolic exchange and can therefore be freely exchanged after homogenization. On the other hand, symbolic exchange of signs become the daily activities due to consumption, thus signification is is replaced by a new signification in this exchange.

Although everything is or will be a code, Baudrillard does not ignore the following fact: codes are created by human being and can also be changed according to human understanding and actions by setting or resetting the rules or cancel the rules, and it is left to everyone to speak up for his or her situation. According to Heidegger, even the human being is as a thrownness (ein Geworfenes) which is thrown in a world factically (faktisch) after he was born. Human as Dasein, in Heidegger’s sense, does not need to enter the world, but needs to understand the ontological meaning of world in order to grasp his own Being-how and furthermore his own Being-in-the-world, and hence to resolve (erschliessen) the ontological meaning of the world as well as of the whole of Being-in-the-world. In this way, human being as Dasein gets the possibility of freedom limited, because of the facticity of thrownness. According to Baudrillard, consumer society is however not the whole world. It is merely a part of the world without the rational people who do not consume, merely buy the necessities of life and are hence eliminated from the consumer society.

In consumption activities, not only object is symbolized, signed and coded through the logic of significations^[25]. As consumer, the human is also symbolized and hence becomes banal and indifferent from objects and the others. In this way, human being is identified with objects because of the homogeneity of sign and code which is empty and therefore can signify and be signified at the same time. However, Baudrillard never denies the use value of objects or their exchange value as commodities. But today they are not key to deciding whether to consume. From a factual perspective, i. e. commodities flood all aspects of daily life in contemporary society, he finds that symbolic value controls cultural development. In this way, it is dominated by consumer culture which in the modern life belongs to subculture.^[26] The deciding factors for consumption are the symbolic value and symbolic exchange value of objects. Yet Baudrillard proposes and emphasizes both values. Use value of objects or their exchange value are aspects unique to modernity. Since what in things is identified are merely function, use value and exchange value,the traditional theories about things and consumption are based on needs and satisfaction which belong to the consciousness. According to Baudrillard’s notion, that needs and satisfaction are not as correct and veritable enough as the theoretical basis of social feedback (la prestation sociale) and its signification today, and, at an abstract level, the discourse of things “belongs mostly to the unconscious society”.^[27]

2. Key problem: Collective Forgetfulness, collective Unconsciousness

Unconsciousness plays the important role in Baudrillard’s theory of consumer society, when Heidegger declares that traditional metaphysics has forgotten being and misplaced beings into beings. Because of forgetfulness of being (Seinsvergessenheit), Being of Being-in-the-world and my own being are closed, hence the human being exists in the closed everydayness.^[28] Of course, no traditional philosopher would admit that he had forgotten being and misplaced it. They would consciously defend their understanding of being and fight against the accusation of forgetfulness of being.

Similar in the consumer society, according to Baudrillard, the human being exists with collective ideology which is constructed by consciousness and unconsciousness in two psycho-layers, and the consciousness is dominated by “unconscious social constraint”^[29] which is manipulated by political and economic systems. But none can mention that. One reason of this is that manipulation is carried out through abstract and neutral yet powerful codes. This power constraints and pushes the consumer to consume, but against nothing, also recognizing nothing. It comes from exchange. In order to establish the controlling and imperative of consumer behavior, the signification is closely integrated with the mass media and communication system:

“This technological process of mass communications delivers a certain kind of very imperative message: a message-consumption message, a message of segmentation and spectacularization, of misrecognition of the world and foregrounding of information as a commodity, of glorification of content as sign.”^[30]

Though the codes are controlled by the political and economic system, restricted by symbolic exchange “law”, yet codes are independent. Signifying is therefore arbitrary and free. The structure of consumer society is built of code and signifying of code, thus is dynamic. This dynamic comes from exchange, signifying and code itself. Every moment, it can be changed up to the wrestling between those systems, political and economic as well as the symbolic exchange. When the abstract code has no fixed connotation or meaning, it allows arbitrarily assigned significance during the process of signification.

The unconscious social discourse is even more fundamental, and functions as the basis of a conscious one. In this way, consciousness and unconsciousness coexist and function at the same time. The unconsciousness dominates the consumer activities, and semiotic laws decide the social function and value unconsciously. Therefore Baudrillard defines the consumption as “a powerful element of social control”, but “by that very fact it brings with it a need for ever greater bureaucratic constraint on the processes of consumption — which will as a consequence be exalted more and more energetically as the realm of freedom. There is no escaping from this circle”.^[31]

In the way of this paradox, the consumers “think” themselves that they are clever and smart during consuming, because they compare price, brand, quality etc. But actually these messages from mass media and communication are “implanted” unconsciously into the unconsciousness of consumer. Baudrillard regards consumer society from concrete and visible phenomena, but not phenomenologically, namely aims at being of beings or being as such. Those kinds of ontological meanings are already deleted in the consumer society. Baudrillard also criticizes the foundation of traditional consumption theory from both the phenomenon and abstract levels. As he mentions that the consumer behavior is collective, in this way, they relate to the others, namely the other consumers. But he seems looking over that not only all consumers but also all things and systems are integrated with all others, the other systems, such as different systems of ideological value, communication or exchange structure.^[32] The focus of Baudrillard’s thesis is to put forward the negative effects brought by the arbitrariness and uncertainty of symbols.

The creative freedom and possibility from arbitrariness and uncertainty of symbols can, to some extent, serve as the basis for the reconstruction of human beings in another direction. In spite of everything, Baudrillard keeps “nurturing a constant dream — in the hyperfunctionalism of consumed culture — of the universal, of myths capable of deciphering our age without themselves being mythological `spectaculars’, of an art which could decipher modernity without being abolished in it”^[33]. The decisive lies in whether the arbitrariness and uncertainty of signs are based on the openness of the signs themselves or on a self-referential sheltering-concealing system, that is, a system that is fully and absolutely manipulated by the political and economic system. But the sign itself is a product of human beings, even if we return to the symbol itself and give it independence. Because of human limitations and the use of signs in different time and space and the inserting of different contents, the understanding of sign not only has differences that vary from person to person but may also be misheard or misunderstood.

The use value and even exchange value are based on consciousness. They both function as the basis for the realization of symbolic exchange value, because most of the time consumers still purchase goods based on use value and exchange value, and thus take the brand into consideration, or unconsciously consume symbolic value and engage in symbolic exchange of social relationships. From these three values, we can understand the reason why Baudrillard uses social feedback and its signification as the basis of consumption theory.

Firstly, because needs can be stimulated or domesticated, and when satisfaction is based on scarcity (manque), i. e. the latter is more fundamental than satisfaction. And scarcity is the basis and also the reason that prompts people to consume. Today, consumption is almost irresistible linked to everyone, things and objects as well as the other human being, “precisely because it is a completely idealistic behavior … the ultimate reason is that it is based on scarcity”^[34]. The satisfaction after consumption is only recuperative satisfaction. It is merely illusion of replenishment which is based on the eternal lack of something to which the mass media and communication hint. As long as the feeling of scarcity persists, consumers will never and cannot be truly satisfied, and they will never be able to stop searching or restrain consumption.^[35]

Secondly, the symbolic value and symbolic exchange value of the object itself show themselves in the signification of social feedback, while the instrumental use value of the object is directly included in the symbolic value and symbolic exchange value. Things are exchangeable due to their usefulness but also demonstrate their usefulness due to exchange. Yet symbolic exchange value does not necessarily have instrumental useful value. However, it is endowed with some usefulness based on the symbolic meaning of the giving.

References
Barthes, Roland (1957/1972/1991): Mythologies. Translated in English by Anette Lavers. New York: The Noonday Press.Baudrillard, Jean (1968/2014): Le système des objets. Paris: Gallimard.
Baudrillard, Jean (1968/2007): Das System der Dinge. Über unser Verhältnis zu den alltäglichen Gegenständen. Aus dem Französischen von J. Garzulz. Mit einem aktuellen Nachwort von F. Rötzer. Frankfurt/N.Y.: Campus.
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Baudrillard, Jean (1972/1981):For a Critique of the Political Econom of the Sign. Translated and Introduction by Ch. Levin. St. Louis: Telos Press.
Baudrillard (1976/1991): Der symbolische Tausch und der Tod. Aus dem Französischen von G. Ricke, R. Voullié, G. Bergfleth. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.
Heidegger, Martin (1927/1993): Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Heidegger, Martin (1953/2000): Die Frage nach der Technik. In: Vorträge und Aufsätze. GA 7. Frankfurt a. M.Ö V. Klostermann.
Karl Marx (1890/2013): Das Kapital. Kritik der politischenÖkonomie. Erster Band.
Kellner, D. ed.(1994/1995): Baudrillard. A critical readier. Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1949/1969): The elementary structures of Kinship. Traslated from the Frensch by J. H. Bell and J. R. von Strumer. R. Needham (ed.). Boston: Beacon Press.
Gottdiener, Mark (1994/1995), The Commoditizing in The System of Object and Everydayness, In: Baudrillard. A critical readier. D. Kellner ed. Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell
McLuhan, Marshall (1964/2002): Understanding Media. The extensions of man. London and NY: Routledge.
Saussure, F. de (1959): Course in General Linguistics. Ed. by Ch. Bally and A. Sechehaye. Translated with an introduction and note by W. Baskin. N.Y.: The Philosophical Library.

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^[1] Hölderlin’s poetry. Cited in Martin Heidegger’s“Die Frage nach der Technik”, in GA 7, S. 29.
^[2] Jean Baudrillard (1970): The Consumer Society. Myths and structures. (referred as “CS”). Sage: London, 1998. P. 93.
^[3] CS 189.
^[4] CS189f.
^[5] CS 86, 88.
^[6] Heidegger (1927/1993): Sein und Zeit (referred as „SZ“), S. 127, 128.
^[7] CS 35.
^[8] CS 27.
^[9] CS 114.
^[10] Baudrillard:Le système des objets, p. 273, 280, 282, 283.Das System der Dinge, S. 243, 247, 248, 249.
^[11] CS 62.
^[12] CS 27.
^[13] CS 88.
^[14] CS 63.
^[15] Roland Barthes (1957/1972/1991): Mythologies. Translated in English by Anette Lavers. New York: The Noonday Press. P. 131.
^[16] Barthes: Mythologies, p. 130.
^[17] CS 78.
^[18] CS 78.
^[19] CS 34f. Ref. SZ § 36.
^[20] CS 35.
^[21] CS 85, 86.
^[22] Douglas Kellner (1995): Baudrillard: A Critical Reader. Cambridge USA: Blackwell. P. 4.
^[23] Baudrillard: Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe, p. 20. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, p. 38.
^[24] Baudrillard: Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe, p. 19. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, p.37.
^[25] Baudrillard: Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe, p. 60ff. For a Critique of the Political Econom of the Sign, p. 63ff.
^[26] Mark Gottdiener (1994/1995): The Commoditizing in The System of Object and Everydayness. In: Baudrillard. A critical readier. D. Kellner ed. Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell, p. 37.
^[27] CS 78. Ref. Baudrillard: Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe, p.8. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, p. 29f.
^[28] Ref. SZ 2, 21, 219, 339.
^[29] CS 78.
^[30] CS 123.
^[31] CS 84.
^[32] Baudrillard (1976/1991): Der symbolische Tausch und der Tod, S. 10, 21.
^[33] CS 109.
^[34] Baudrillard: Le système des objets, p. 273, 280, 282, 283. Das System der Dinge, S. 243, 247, 248, 249.
^[35] Ref. Baudrillard: Le système des objets, p. 283. Das System der Dinge, S. 249.