File spoon-archives/baudrillard.archive/baudrillard_1995/baudrillard.09-95, message 17


From: Mark   Nunes <mnunes-AT-dekalb.dc.peachnet.edu>
Subject: Some opening thoughts
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 15:24:15 -0400 (EDT)


Here are some of my opening thoughts from the first 12 or so pages:
-----

Space, dimensions, metaphysics:

Baudrillard opens with his oft-quoted reference to Borges, the map, and 
the territory. What I was noticing on this reread is the metaphoricity of 
insides, arounds, outsides, etc.
	[The real] is no longer anything but operational. In fact, it is 	
	no longer really the real, because no imaginary *envelops* it 
	anymore. It is a hyperreal, produced from a *radiating* synthesis
	of combinatory models in hyperspace without atmosphere.
I find this envelops v. radiates interesting, particularly in the context 
of the reference earlier on the page to the end of metaphysics: "This 
imaginary of representation. . .disappears in the simulation whose 
operation is nuclear and genetic, no longer at all specular or 
discursive. It is all of metaphysics that is lost." With simulation, the 
above, beyond, and transcendent of metaphysics disappears in a hyperreal 
world of implosive origins, a "a radiating synthesis" that never escapes 
beyond its own surface. But not a depth, either (another transcendence: 
inside/behind, the hidden); rather, a superficial abyss.

If we think of space as 3D, it is not too uncommon to think of a 4th 
dimension as permeating/enveloping space: a transcendent dimension. The 
"omnipresent fourth dimension" of simulacra is of a different order: not 
a hidden dimension, but a dimensionless dimension, the implosive 
origins of the nuclear, the genetic, and the digital. In how many 
dimensions does a quark "exist"? In what dimension do we archive this list?
-----

Descartes. La carte.

An interesting start, by the way: from maps and the real to discussion of 
Cartesian dualism. From the map/real we move to imaginary/real of the 
psychosomatic, who implodes the mind/body dualism. "Even military 
psychology draws back from Cartesian certainties and hesitates to make 
the distinction between true and false, between the "produced" and the 
authentic symptom." Remember Descartes by his furnace, asking "How do I 
know "the real" is real?" All else depends upon this assumption. The 
hyperreal is, then, specifically post-Cartesian (postmodern) in that it 
shorts out the basic assumptions of the "real"/false dualism.
------

Disneyland:

Has Baudrillard ever written on the failure of Eurodisney?


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