This parallel seems to place Bataille in the roll of the Cynic hero, reveling in the laughter that tears down the pretensions of the same "millionaires, governors and despots, now mean and insignificant" that Lucians Cynic Hero mocks.

Bataille says the highest levels of society can be cast by the bottom into "insignificance," a "wave of laughter" must "contest the sufficiency of being placed a lower level" ever reaching the "summit," invoking "the agony of God in black night" (IE)

Laughter for Bataille can perhaps be connected to Menippus laughing in Hades from Lucian's dialogues, which Bahktin links to "the underworld and to death, to the freedom of the spirit and to the freedom of speech"

“I am made happy, no matter what, by failure experienced. And I lose my seriousness by laughing." IE

“Laughter arises from differences in level, from depressions suddenly produced. If I pull the rug out from under . . . the sufficiency of a solemn figure is followed suddenly by the revelation of an ultimate insufficiency (one pulls the rug out from under pretentious beings).” Inner Experience

Will post some thoughts later