From: Philip Jenkins <P.Jenkins-AT-btinternet.com>
Subject: Radical Alterity
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 97 13:58:34 GMT


Hello to everyone on the list!

Although I've been on the list for a couple of months  I haven't yet participated in any of the
debates ... and I thought that now is a good a time as any to have a go! So, the question
that I would like to pose - one that I am finding some quite considerable difficulty in
answering ... - is what happens to the concept of Radical Alterity in the simulacra?

As far as I can understand, Baudrillard seems to be talking in one form or another in almost
all of his texts about the notion of infinite or radical Alterity ... even if he doesn't use these
exact terms all that often. For example, in his text De La Séduction,  radical Alterity is the
infinite space beyond the ambivalent boundry of the productivist political economy, of the
discourse of the phallus. It is the space of symbolic non-determinacy, of Baudrillard's
feminin ... a feminin that in this respect is that of Derrida's chora, a concept defining the
space of radical non-definition that Irigary is also perhaps driving at. This concept of radical
Alterity is also the xs, La Part Maudite that Bataille refers to and it is what deconstructs the
grounding binaries of the political economy (L'=C9change symbolique et La Mort etc.) ... as far
as I can see, so far so good.

The problem is how the notion of Radical Alterity is felt in the simulacra, how does the
always xs deconstruct the simulacra? Is the simulacre beyond deconstruction in that it no
longer posits grounding binaries in order to substantiate itself? Is the simulacra a sort of
"beyond the dialectic of the real "( and thus grounding in general) in which alterity takes on
terroristic or viral or metastatic incarnations? ... alterity entered into events? The simulacre
can never be beyond the deconstructive threat of alterity, there will always be xs - it is not a
totalising system (this is an aporia) - so how is it felt? Is the revenge of the object the
revenge of Radical Alterity?

These are some of the major questions that I've recently come across in my reading and
would be really grateful for any comments that you have on these. Thanks a lot for your
imput.

Yours phil