Date: Wed, 20 Sep 95 16:57:09 PDT
Subject: Re: The Shadow of the Shadow of the SILENT Majorities
On Wed, 20 Sep 1995 15:06:09 -0500 (CDT) you wrote:
>I am here, in my simulated cyber-form.
>
>I know nothing of the last reading, but am currently reading Sim/Sim for
>a graduate seminar and would like or would be willing to start things off
>on that track.
>
>Anyone else interested?
I really enjoyed that book. Here, you might appreciate this, although I don't
know if it's any good, it's excerpted from a larger paper.
In Baudrillard's essay entitled Simulations, he presents the idea that
"simulation" follows on the heals of two previous orders of appearance, evolving
since the time of the Renasissance. The first order, "parallel to the mutations of the
law of value" was the Counterfeit. This was the "dominant scheme of the
"classical" period from the renaissance to the industrial revolution." Following this
era was the era of Production which dated the industrial period. And now we have
moved into the culminating period with the present scheme of Simulation which is
"controlled by the code."(24) Simulation is marked by the "liquidation of all
referentials -- worse: by their artificial resurrection in a system of signs...[the]
substitution [of] signs of the real for the real itself, that is, an operation to deter
every real process by its operational double."(25)
The simulation, in its opposition to representation, befogs the distinction
"between `true' and `false', between `real' and `imaginary.'"(26) Representation
takes the sign and the real to be equivalent, and it views simulation as false
representation. Simulation, instead, immures representation within itself, taking
representation to be "itself a simulacrum."(27) The representation to the simulacrum
flows then through the phases of reflecting then masking and perverting reality.
This then emerges as the masking of the absence of reality; finally the
representation becomes something with no relation to reality; "it is its own pure
simulacrum."(28) This then precludes the ability to separate the true from the false;
"the real from its artifical resurrection."(29)
We need this artificial resurrection because we need to have a past, visible in
its continuum, providing a beginning, "a visible myth of origin to reassure us as to
our ends."(30) But within this false risorgimento of beginning and ending, there is an
appropriation of the disinterred past; offering claims of connectedness which justify
the present. In other words, the present is not built upon the bones of the past, but
rather, the past is constructed on the withering all-but-dead corpse of the present.
By seeing the past; by cumulating the apparition of the past, we ensure continuance
of the linearity and additory nature of the culture.(31)
But the cleanliness of this false resurrection is not always the case. When
contradictions between the present and past arrise, as they inevitably must do, there
arise two solutions. First, exterminate the past so that the evidence of the
contradiction between reality and a universal law are obliterated, or, secondly, to
convert the past until it becomes an implication of the present, which in effect offers
the same result as the first solution.(32)
Thereby, we see in the relationship between the present and a past, an
unclean and unconscionable relation of force. This relation, however, is hidden
behind a moral superstructure which guarantees not only the continual resuscitation
of the relations of force, but also the constant regeneration of public morality in
support of the resuscitation.(33) Yet, the most potent force within this interaction is
the principle of public morality. Even indignations and denunciations of the
relations of force, themselves revive moral order, and represent the "indifferent and
shifting configuration [of relations of force] in the moral and political
consciousness of men."(34) Thus, relations of force--rationality and morality--as
Baudrillard conceives, is nothing but a scandal which openly and actively promotes
and allows itself to be combatted, provided that the scandal is both received and
combatted in the name of rationality and morality. Therefore, because the solution
to the scandal is the scandal itself, the task today is conceal the fact that no scandal
exists.(35) Again, we can say that "the defense of the criterion imposed invokes the
criterion again or it appeals to another criterion itself in need of grounding."(36)
And more scandalous, power--every form of power--denies itself. It speaks
of its own dolor and the menace it faces. Through these protestations to its
imperilled existence, it is able to "rediscover a glimmer of existence and
legitimacy." Even more glorious are those occurances when the `mannequins of
power' are in reality murdered, for then the simulacrum of the menace to a fragile
and threatened power truly becomes more real than real.(37) Indeed, power always
displays and represents the menace to its existence as real, even if this isn't the
case. This is because "transgression and violence are serious, for they contest the
distribution of the real.
Simulation is infinetely more dangerous, however, since it always suggests,
over and above its object, that law and order themselves might really be nothing
more than a simulation."(38) Therefore, simulations must always be taken to be real
in order to protect the distribution of power. However, through this process the real
becomes a sign--a simulation--as "they are inscribed in advance in the decoding and
orchestration rituals of the media, anticipated in their mode of presentation and
possible consequences. In brief, they function as a set of signs dedicated
exclusively to their recurrence as signs, and no longer to their `real' goal at all."(39)
Thus, power lives by the simulation of its simulation. Power provides a map
without territory.(40) Power "injects realness and referentiality everywhere, in order
to convince us of the reality of the social, of the gravity of the economy, of the
finalities of production."(41) Power illustrates to us what threatens its existence, and
then, like it does with history, it produces that which it references. Today power is
thus threatened by the simulations it has created; it is threatened by the prospect of
itself "vanishing in the play of signs," and so it risks everything. "It gambles on
remanufacturing artificial, social, economic [and] political stakes,"(42) for it will
surely die without these threats. Thus, "in the end the game of power comes down
to nothing more than the critical obsession with power--an obsession with its death,
an obsession with its survival, the greater the more it disappears."(43)
This process--this obsession--is, as it were, controlled by "a sort of genetic
code, which controls the mutation of the real into the hyperreal." This controlling
code is that which we call the `media.'(44) It is through this `absolute manipulation'
the the political, social, psychological domains loose their distinction between
reality and simulation. The media, then, "only exist to maintian the illusion of
actuality--of the reality of the stakes, of the objectivity of the facts."(45) However,
more than simply presenting lies as facts and facts as lies, this manipulation by
power transfers itself from the representation of meaning to the `programming' of
perceptions and knowledges about reality.(46)
While power creates law and creates order, with the purpose of maturating
"planned infalibility, of maximal security and deterrence," it cannot rely upon these
exclusively because of the "aura of transgression" arising from law, and the "aura
of violence" arising from order. Therefore, through the programming of
perceptions, power creates social and individual norms, which casts opposition to
power into a state of induced sleep, confusion and dumbfoundedness.(47) And
through the creation of these norms, power is capable of erasing its beginning, its
origin. By geneticising its existence through norms, it more thoroughly encodes its
own removal from time and space, and therefore of the obligations it made as well
as putting an end to the myth of its own end.(48)
Thus, from the point of successfully encoding the norms in the genetics of
individuals and society, the media ends its programming for the ends of power and
begins to test the observer in order to assure the successful existence of power.
Opinion poles, those great servants of the public, create the opinions they are
searching for--individuals luckily are freed from the laborious task of producing
opinions on their own.(49) Rather than conscious thought, we only need to reproduce
the opinions which we were told we had. Then, through the mechanisms of order
and law, but also through the norms themselves, those who have been insufficiently
or incorrectly programmed are weeded out by the institutions and individuals who
can easily spot deviations.(50) However, through the process of providing a voice to
everyone--by granting universal suffrage--power is capable of giving the illusion of
responsiveness, even though it has created the terms in which it will respond.
Moreover, giving everyone a voice, either in their reproduction of prescribed
opinions through poles, or through the ballot of inadequate choices, neutralizes the
political field "if only by the consensus on the rules of the game."
Thus, power creates its own legitimacy, creates the rules which ensures its
legitimacy, creates the programming of norms which ensures its legitimacy, creates
the definition of what opposes it, and then persecutes that which opposes its
legitimacy, and proves that it offered everyone the option of participating in the
creation of its legitimacy by parading those who refused play by its prescribed
rules. Therefore, power is real not only because it can be reproduced, but because it
is "always already reproduced."(51)
(24) Simulations. Pg. 83.
(25) Ibid. Pg. 4.
(26) Ibid. Pg. 5.
(27) Ibid. Pg. 11
(28) Ibid. Pg. 11.
(29) Ibid. Pg. 12.
(30) Ibid. Pg. 19.
(31) Ibid. Pg. 19.
(32) Ibid. Pg. 20.
(33) Ibid. Pg. 27.
(34) Ibid. Pg. 28.
(35) Ibid. Pg. 28.
(36) William Connolly. in Language and Politics (Shapiro, ed.) Pg. 151-152.
(37) Baudrillard, Simulations. Pg. 37.
(38) Ibid. Pg. 38.
(39) Ibid. Pg. 41.
(40) Personal conversation with Anne Norton.
(41) Simulations. Pg. 42.
(42) Ibid. Pg. 44.
(43) Ibid. Pg. 45.
(44) Ibid. Pg. 55.
(45) Ibid. Pg. 71.
(46) Ibid. Pg. 57.
(47) Ibid. Pg. 63-64.
(48) Ibid. Pg. 112.
(49) Comments by Professor David Easton during a variety of colloquia in response to
practitioners of the statistical manipulation of survey opinion data.
(50) Simulations. Pg. 120.
Peace,
Gyan
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Scott Penrose-Kafka
<spenrose-AT-uci.edu>
Program in Political Psychology
Department of Politics and Society
University of California, Irvine
(For PGP Public Key: See end of quotes below)
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Destroying Knowledge
"The time has come, it seems, to face the facts:
revolution is movement, but movement is not
revolution. Politics is only a gear-shift and
revolution only its overdrive"
Virilio.
"Fear is the cruelest of assassins: It never
kills but keeps you from living."
An old saying.
"Under the Republicans, Man exploits Man.
Under the Democrats, it's the other way around."
A not-so-old saying.
"Empiricism is the matrix of all faults menacing a discourse
which continues...to consider itself scientific."
Derrida
"There is a jubilation proper to spectacular nullity, and the last
form it takes is that of *statistical contemplation*"
Baudrillard
"The obligation to talk with those one would reject imposes an
obligatory community where none may be desired, giving the lie
to consent and the tollerance of difference. Coerced participation
in dialogue, coerced speech, is presented as an invitation to
self-expression and equality, yet those who are brought into
these against their will have already been denied one aspect of
their self-determination. They enter subordinate."
Anne Norton
"Narrated reality constantly tells us what must be believed and
what must be done. What can you oppose to the facts? You
can only give in, and obey what they "signify," like an oracle,
like the oracle of Delphi. The fabrication of simulacra thus
provides the means of producing believers and hence people
practicing their faiths."
de Certeau
"The person who follows others has no trust in himself: that's
why he follows others. The man who has trust in himself
learns from others but does not follow. He follows his own
insight. Whatsoever the risk he never compromises."
OSHO
"Because modernity is excessively conscious of time, it
somehow removes joy from human existence."
P.M. Rosenau
"[The] arithmetic element of the State found its specific
power in the treatment of all kinds of matter: Primary
matters (raw materials), the secondary matter of
worked objects, or the ultimate matter constituted by
the human population. Thus the number has always
served to gain mastery over matter, to control its
varitations and movements, in other words to submit
them to the spatio-temporal framework of the State"
Deleuze & Guattari
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PGP key for Scott Penrose-Kafka
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