Date: Thu, 09 Oct 1997 00:40:11 -0700
From: Gary Yuen <gyuen-AT-best.com>
Subject: Re: Interview Request


Hi,

This is an old thread but I was re-reading things and have recently been
thinking about Baudrillard. 

It seems that Baudrillard has a profound neglect of certain aspects of
history, or even most of them--as if he doesn't see the sign as being a
certain organic being, one that is subject to a historical dialectic of
power/knowledge or creations of Foucauldian "technologies of the self."
Media (and other forms of seemingly self-referential discourses of
knowledge) may play a huge part in constructing reality, and signs may be
merely simulacrums, yet they do not exist outside of history, outside of
context.  Their topological location, proximity to other signs are not
completely arbitrary or even independent, yet they do have a sense of
randomness that Baudrillard seems to have exclusively focused on.

I may be very wrong since I have only read bits and pieces of Baudrillard
(and only 10 pages of _S&S_).  Plus I am still an undergrad student.  Maybe
50 years from now when I'm an acomplished philosopher I may think
differently but that's what I perceive Baudrillard to be.

But I must admit part of my interpretation of Baudrillard comes from
Kellner's _Media Culture_.  I sense a certain interpretation of Baudrillard
throughout the text, one that I completely reject (because of the above).  

So my question is, what's up with Baudrillard?

Gary

At 11:18 AM 9/12/97 -0400, RCWilk-AT-aol.com wrote:

>    But of course, the Baudrillian point, as I understand it, is not that
>repesentation is something new, just that there is no longer anyone getting
>stoned for transgressions, no consequences for the individual who lies and
>creates alternative realites because we live in a non-concrete world - or our
> values are now shifting in that direction anyway.  Little Marie-Annonittes
>(sp) prancing around letting those who don't get it to just eat it.
>
>
----------
Gary Yuen
gyuen-AT-best.com

"What threatens us, as well as what serves us, is less reason than the
various forms of rationality."

- Maurice Blanchot