Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 22:57:11 -0500 (EST)
From: Joshua LaBare <joshbear-AT-acpub.duke.edu>
Subject: Re: On symbols and simulacra ( in pluriel )


Nikos (and Julian and Mark, eventually)--

	"Symbols are made to interpret the world but the problem is who 
is their real constructor" -- is this really the problem?  I don't think 
so... it is pretty clear that we are, in a way, their constructors: this 
is why these are social symbols (thus "social knowledge") -- I'm no 
devotee of Durkheim and his followers over the years (all the way to 
Victor Turner) but I will at least cede the point that symbols are 
socially constructed and that our understanding of the world (and of our 
bodies, cf Mary Douglas) is most probably derived from social 
categories.  Ooops, I'm probably going in over my head here, puisque je 
ne suis ni philosophe ni sociologue, but that's just my immediate 
reaction to your remarks.  Looking for a real constructor just seems a 
little too... Marxian for me.  Who produces ideology, symbols, culture, 
etc?  The answer seems clear: we do.  How can one individual affect it 
(and how have individuals affected it in the past?)?  That remains a 
different question, provided that we cede that an individual can affect 
it at all (if, in a framework where the identity is totally 
socially-constructed, we can talk about "individuals" at all).

	As for introducing the other, I might say, without the obvious 
example of Lacanian theory hovering over my shoulder, that we should deal 
with the self (identity) before we deal with the other.  But, with said 
theory hovering, it might be best not to advance that idea and leap on 
in, saying that we should bring the other into our discussion.  Strange 
to say, though, Nikos, that the other has been ignored recently, 
especially when Baudrillard's most recent works (La transparence du mal 
and, with Marc Guillaume, Figures d'alterite) have dealt with "the other" 
and alterity (especially radical alterity) in such direct ways!


Just a beginning...


Joshua