File spoon-archives/baudrillard.archive/baudrillard_1997/97-04-26.234, message 48


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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