Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 14:58:36 -0500 (EST) From: Joshua LaBare <joshbear-AT-acpub.duke.edu> Subject: Re: Radical Alterity, Simulacra Phil, Hi, I'll add my comments on Radical alterity in here (since it has been perhaps the most fascinating thing in Baudrillard for me also) although I'm pretty sure they won't really be of much help to you: because I am not interested in theory "en soi", my use of Baudrillard tends to emphasize the kind of poetry of ideas he generates and focuses less on any inherent consistencies or inconsistencies in his theories. I've used Baudrillard's concept of radical alterity in my own work on science fiction and the fantastique because I think it is central to the projects of these genres. B's distinction between radical alterity and normal alterity is very important (I'm thinking esp. of La Transparence du Mal): as he says, difference (normal difference) is a utopia, in its dream of dividing things from one another and its ulterior dream of reuniting them (in some kind of system). Radical difference is, however (I propose) a "heterotopia", in Foucault's sense: whereas the utopia opens up an easy land of cities with wide boulevards etc etc, the heterotopia (represented by Borges, say, or Delany esp. in Dhalgren) shatters syntax, makes it impossible to name this and that, destroys any means of easy differentiation. I think it's really important to understand this normal difference and the radical alterity in the context of cartesian and non (or "post) cartesian epistemologies. The subatomic "object" embodies this radical alterity and radical difference because it refuses all easy differentiation, from subject or from other objects. "The Other is what allows me to not repeat myself infinitely", concludes Baudrillard, and this is the normal other, normal difference: radical alterity is not so clean, never so neat. The radical alterity of the object is linked to the fact that the object _cannot_ be distinguished from the subject, that the two interpenetrate: it creates a heterotopia of indifferentiation, and that's why it is the epicenter of terror. Being clearly divided from the other (or from the object) is great, it's a utopia because it proves that we can have a system that divides and makes sense, that calculates and measures. SF is in general not really a literature of terror because, at least in its earliest incarnations, it allows for this differentiation: we have the system that can kill the other, our science will find a way and we will remain happily divided from it, watch it squirm and die (cf the exploding heads of the Martians in MARS ATTACKS!). The fantastique (19th century literary genre whose immediate inheritor is horror but whose prodigy include, in my opinion, postmodern fiction and esp. postmodern science fiction (if these latter can even be distinguished >from one another, ha ha!)) is a literature of radical alterity, a literature of terror: the other cannot be destroyed! Or rather: destroy it and you destroy yourself. Don't know how much this has to do with B's ideas (although I think it is there in his "hell of the same") but think: radical alterity is paradoxically radical because it is all mixed up in the self! Monadic conception o fhte self gives way to complete interpenetration with otherness, producing absolute terror. Like William S. Burroughs in Naked Lunch we look in the mirror and see that the Crime of Separate Action has occured: too late to dial POLICE. When you can point out the criminal and have them dragged away, all is utopic. When every finger you point points right at yourself, too, you have heterotopia and you have terror. Until you learn to live with that condition... Please excuse my ranting, I hope it has been at least marginally helpful, bye, Joshua
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