Date:     Fri, 2 Aug 1996 07:20 EST
From: MKENNE05-AT-UCIS.VILL.EDU
Subject:  Re: apocalyptic object



the trepidation with which many people seem to post to the list is re-assuring.
inviting, even.

regarding baudrillard and the feminine, i think he is not sexist.  i think he
wrote somewhere that in this mystical state of hypercapitalism and hyperreality
we are faced with the choice of seducing or being seduced, a distinction that i think can be replicated in the choice between producing or consuming (though
i'm not really sure how accurately...)  we are seduced by the commodity being 
presented to us and are paralysed by its power to satisfy us.  but we are 
convinced that we need more than satisfaction, we need ecstasy.  we don't want
the good, we want the best.  and as all the characteristics of a given commodityare revealed (ex. phones now answer themselves, and there are stylish models 
that are transparent and reveal all the inner workings of exactly how it can 
answer itself) it becomes _obscene_.  more visual than the visual.  if one is
to accept that women have become commodified, and that pornography produces the
obscene, the only strategy (if it can be called that) is to disappear (i think
b. also said somewhere that being dead is easy, the difficult thing is to 
disappear).  thus, instead of being seduced, being consumed by a consumer 
society, women instead can seduce as strategy.  seduction is to disappear as
production is to make appear.  i think the way that b. tries to bring across
this idea relies on his own recognition that he is, he should be, seduced by
women.   i think his discourse thus ushers in the long-awaited moment when men
must cease to partake in feminisms, must cease to produce feminisms.  foucault
spoke about the "insurrection of subjugated knowledges" as though they needed 
an invitation.  baudrillard is hoping they'll just partycrash, and in the 
process allow him and his white male western hegemonic discourse to implode
and disappear (see the styles of america and cool memories - this is not 
philosophy, b. is purposely discrediting himslef

m
mm
jj



lll
khjgf (ooops that's
"himself", sorry)

thus, i'm not sure that he is part of a certain philosophical current.  if its
postmodernism that comes to mind, he has long tried to reject that label (not
that anyone knows what that label entirely represents).

(this is all just a guess really)

michael