Date: 18 Nov 96 07:39:23 EST
From: Alan Shapiro <100143.1302-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: science fiction


I like Joshua's last posting a lot, and I agree with most of what he says. When
I said "Kellner doesn't understand Baudrillard" it was an off-hand comment in
the midst of a discussion about something else. I now realize that "understand"
was a poor choice of word. I only then went on to write a whole thing about what
I don't like in Mr. Kellner's 1989 book because Mr. Kellner himself "de-lurked"
into the group and asked me to elaborate on my off-the-cuff comment. I am still
calling him Mr. because he has not yet offered for me to call him by his first
name. Perhaps I have been living too long in Europe where we deal every day with
this "Du" and "Sie" problem. 

I certainly don't want this thing about "understanding" Baudrillard to be the
tone of our discussions, and I never intended that. I make no claim to
understand Baudrillard. I have been trying to understand him on and off for the
past 20 years, and with limited success. I am always coming back and re-reading
the texts and realizing that I previously mis-read them. I agree with Joshua
about "using" Baudrillard or "putting him into play" being a good thing. I agree
about Delany. I also enjoy reading Baudrillard next to Ballard and Philip K.
Dick -- of course it was Baudrillard's essays on Ballard and Dick which got me
reading them in the first place. By the way, Joshua, have you seen "Crash"?

I really want to get away from the "hermeneutics" debate, but I do want to say
that I think the comments of "quetzil" go too far. I think I did give a good
reason why I don't like Kellner's 1989 book. Kellner tries to argue that
Baudrillard is not a proper critical theorist (OK, I am stereotyping "critical
theory"). But Baudrillard spends a lot of effort criticizing critical theory,
saying he is not a critical theorist, and proposing an alternative called "fatal
theory". Analogy: if a neo-Darwinian criticizes an anti-Darwinian for not being
a proper Darwinian, I would say that the former is missing the point. If your
"deconstructionism", "quetzil", does not permit this kind of comment, then I
will say we might as well talk in data stream sequences based on a binary code
of 0s and 1s.

And this alternative called "fatal theory" is maybe just my awkward way of
saying what Joshua says - that we should put Baudrillard's sentences into play. 

To Mark O' Connell - "B.-industrialist" - since it is often said that there is a
"Baudrillard industry" or a "Foucault industry" in a given country, I thought
one could call the captains of these industries "industrialists."

The Baudrillard essay about Warhol that I have is called "Machinic Snobbery", so
I don't know if that is the same one you have. I would say that the use of
"subject" or, better "absence of subject" in this essay is typical of
Baudrillard. He is saying, in my poor paraphrase, that Warhol is radical because
he has annihilated the artist, the creative act, claims to celebrity, claims to
subjective interpretation of the world on the part of the artist, or of the work
of art on the part of the critic. He identifies with the machine, commits
suicide as a subject, and offers to us the pure illusion of technology.

To Douglas Kellner - I appreciate the olive branch. I never wanted this
"polemic". My "original" remark was off-the-cuff. I guess we are not really so
far apart. I still think that the 1989 book is "detracting" of Baudrillard, to
use Joshua's word. But I take your word for it and defer to you on all the other
points in your last posting. You are probably right that I have a "stereotyped
concept of a critical theorist". Your project of a "multiperspectival social
theory" is a very valuable one, and I apologize if I belittled it. I have been
following your work since a 1975 review in "Telos" of "On a raison de se
revolter". My perspective is different. New technologies (virtual reality)
changes everything for me. But may I respectfully decline your request to
elaborate at this time what I like about "fatal theory" in programmatic terms. I
am learning from this discussion that what I want to do is use the "ideas", not
elaborate them. But I guess I'm ambivalent...

Alan Shapiro
Frankfurt, Germany
e-mail 100143.1302-AT-compuserve.com