From: Tristan Riley <triley-AT-weber.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: Resistance (another old thread)
To: baudrillard-AT-world.std.com
Date: Sun, 22 May 94 19:58:51 PDT


Another piece of an old thread which I've just rediscovered in my
received mail box.

Malgosia wrote:
>Tristan wrote:
>
>> "Strategies", a 
>> word having to do with the plans for action formulated by military 
>> commanders in combat situations, implying enemies and allies--how is 
>> this appropriate for a theory which speaks of the impossibility of 
>> locating the 'enemy', even of locating power itself? 
>
>I agree with what you say about "strategy".  I am curious what you and
>others think about "resistance".  Is the notion of "resistance"
>appropriate in the context of Baudrillard?  It seems to me that
>"resistance" does not presuppose that one can locate the 'enemy'.
>But does it presuppose _anything_ that is questioned by the
>Baudrillardian theory?  Does "resistance" mean radically different
>things within different theoretical frameworks?
>

Good questions.  "Resistance" too has its military
connotations--perhaps evoking less the battlefield and a meeting of
equal foes (ala "strategies") than activity engaged in by an
occupied power to subvert the designs of an invader.  So I think an
"enemy" or at least some such force 'from above' is entailed--one
needs *something* to resist if one is to engage in resistance.  I
think, in fact, that what I suggest in the bit above might be opened
to challenge from what MADELEY says about seduction--B. *does* speak
of seduction as something of a strategy, and in fact I think this
notion might fit better than "resistance", at least if the
connotation I draw out above holds at all for this latter term.  I
am though fairly confident that the "emancipation" MADELEY writes of
(pending elaboration) is something of which B. would be skeptical.

Tristan