Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 14:34:34 +0200 From: Nikos Gousgounis <ngousg-AT-itel.gr> Subject: about Baudrillard Gia sou xenitemeno Kypriotaki ! Nikos from Athens writes to Nicos Nicolis from Nicosia ( by the way why LEYKOSIA is transcripted to Nicosia in English ? ) Panta agapoume kai voithame touw Kyprious adelphous mas So, if you want to learn more about B for your Monday presentation I am sending you right now all the long private correspondence that I had with a member of this list during last November. He was an Arab student called Omar studying Philo as you in Toronto Canada who sent a message to the list under the title SOS. Then started a fruitful dialogue with questions and answers. I am sending you some posts that had been sent to the list in the beggining and a post of mine in the list too. Then Omar appeared and a private communication started that you cannot find in thelist's archives. So, please focus on that. I hope that all your questions (? or most of them ) are treated there. If you have comments or apories please ask me. I will be on-line even during week-end so hurry up to read this stuff right now to have time to put me further questions. Here it comes ( in two parts ): Many regards from sunny Athens to Florida ( must be sunny too) Nikos ====================================================================Garry -- As for Baudrillard readings, I guess I'd suggest just diving in. But that probably has more to do with my personal style than anything else: I enjoy reading Baudrillard (for example, Fatal Strategies) so I see no point in reading people who write about Baudrillard instead of the real thing. I've enjoyed, however, reading introductions -- like the intro to Douglas Kellner's (our co-list member) book on Baudrillard, or others. That's at least useful to get yourself situated. It's probably also important to note that, while Baudrillard may be, in fact, a philosopher, he is also (and started out as) a "sociologue", not really what we usually mean by a sociologist in English but close enough. I usually feel that he is in direct dialogue with people who write more cultural anthropology and cultural theory than philosophy per se... continuing, perhaps, a trend of critical thought and philosophy started by Nietzsche. Thus: Bataille, Marcel Mauss, Foucault. etc. But then again, that view might just be the cause of my own particular view on things: others might find that he is in dialogue with more "philosophical" texts. Probably not much use, but... Ciao, Joshua 25/11 ===================================44/==============================Julian AND ALL OTHERS >>I think this is the crux of our discussion, as well as B's comments on >>simulacra. *All* artists use signs and symbols ( a symbolic language ), just >>as all novelists use words. The way a society uses symbolic representations >>is at the heart of how it constructs the concepts it calls 'reality'.>>Perhaps if you could give me your thoughts on this, I could comment more >>fully on 'simulacra'. Well, I am a new member in this list dedicated to my old prof. in Nanterre Uni.Paris Jean Baudrillard during the heroic years 1976-1983. (It seems a long time since then) I had been interested in Joshua's initial quest parting from Bataille and leading to Baudrillard. But the turning the discussion has got is also quite close to my actual interests concerning simulation and identity formation under post modern conditions. Two remarks : 1/ The pluralisation of notions such as policy (politiques). ,identities and cultures is not recent in French cultural studies but dates from the seventies having nothing to do with postmodernism. I remember an article that I wrote myself in 1979 on ''politiques culturelles. This pluralisation of terms is typical in French languages and incomrehensible to non French speaking countries. BUT recently, I notice an analogous fashion in English and I guess that ''il s'agit'' of an influence from French that leads to the imitation of grammatical forms in order to seize the meaning. Now what the meaning of that is in French it's difficult to explain in English. Once Baudri asked in the amphi why he uses the term simulacra instead of simulacrum, he said that it sounds better in his ears to use the pluriel even in Latin. 2/Concerning symbols, there are many definitions on their meanings as connected with culture, but I think that one proposed once by B. was ''representative cultural models that interprete the World''. Of course that was much moire sufficient in my eyes that all the structuralist staff (Levi-Strauss and Co). Eliasian theory on symbols was not yet published and Turner's theory from early seventies was too much ethnological.Today, I see that B. was prophetically right : Symbols are made to interprete the World but the problem is who is their real constructor. TWO PROPOSALS 1/ To examine the role of Social Knowledge to that process of simulative modern symbols. Today in the era of the end of Ideologies, S.K. seems as the more solid construction made throught culture and possible to interprete the World the same as symbols. If it fails all our interpretations are phenomenal since we cannot decode information and we take them as given. But if S.K. works it serves to the direction of decoding and evaluating info so that some meanings can be produced. Symbols were rather the analogues of info and we needed also S.K. to interprete or evaluate them. But Culture under dominant ideological models had the quality at older times to'' serve ''symbols as given values and whole populations had no other choice than to ''adore''them. 2/ My second proposal to make this discussion richer is to introduce the notion of otherness that was very popular in French ethnological Thought in the seventies but forgotten since then ( discours sur l'autrui ). Today with all the extravagant mass transports, touristical gaze and leisure time increase, the border crossing has been turned to an everyday experience and the conception that we have for the stranger and the ''different'' is much ...different from the time of Simmel. Even Elias is out of date in this matter. I think that old Baudrillard is the most worthy to be read by the Anglosaxon scholars and his thought is rerally crossing borders establishing new spaces of internationality. Hoping that by these means we could better approach the complex inner meaning of our identities as influenced by recent technological innovations ( even internet that deserves a serious sociological investigation and hermeneutics itself... ) Nikos Gousgounis 25/11 ============================================45/==================== Nikos (and Julian and Mark, eventually)-- "Symbols are made to interpret the world but the problem is who is their real constructor" -- is this really the problem? I don't think so... it is pretty clear that we are, in a way, their constructors: this is why these are social symbols (thus "social knowledge") -- I'm no devotee of Durkheim and his followers over the years (all the way to Victor Turner) but I will at least cede the point that symbols are socially constructed and that our understanding of the world (and of our bodies, cf Mary Douglas) is most probably derived from social categories. Ooops, I'm probably going in over my head here, puisque je ne suis ni philosophe ni sociologue, but that's just my immediate reaction to your remarks. Looking for a real constructor just seems a little too... Marxian for me. Who produces ideology, symbols, culture, etc? The answer seems clear: we do. How can one individual affect it (and how have individuals affected it in the past?)? That remains a different question, provided that we cede that an individual can affect it at all (if, in a framework where the identity is totally socially-constructed, we can talk about "individuals" at all). As for introducing the other, I might say, without the obvious example of Lacanian theory hovering over my shoulder, that we should deal with the self (identity) before we deal with the other. But, with said theory hovering, it might be best not to advance that idea and leap on in, saying that we should bring the other into our discussion. Strange to say, though, Nikos, that the other has been ignored recently, especially when Baudrillard's most recent works (La transparence du mal and, with Marc Guillaume, Figures d'alterite) have dealt with "the other" and alterity (especially radical alterity) in such direct ways! Just a beginning... Joshua 26/11 ==============================46/===================================>>The language of some art is. Do you really think all art and artists are >>concerned with this stuff? >> >> >I think this is the crux of our discussion, as well as B's comments on >simulacra. *All* artists use signs and symbols ( a symbolic language ), just >as all novellists use words. What about musicians, or visual artists working purely with color, or abstract shape, none of them intending to represent or symbolize anything? Will you assign a conceptual significance where it has no real business? All art is not literary, it's not all conceptually articulate or concerned with the world of ideas. Some art is experiential. >The way a society uses symbolic representations >is at the heart of how it constructs the concepts it calls 'reality'. I think that's probably right, or in the right direction anyhow. But at the same time it's only philosophy, and nobody doing phil up to this point has managed to get everything into one box, 'cept maybe the Bhuddists, but they used an un-box (ha ha). If you did get everything into one box B. would probably call it "the end of the world" or something. Anyway, what if you said that social reality, or official reality, was constructed in the way you describe, but that that isn't necessarily the only game in town? >Perhaps if you could give me your thoughts on this, I could comment more >fully on 'simulacra'. fire away-all the best, Mark O'Connell oconnell-AT-oz.net 25/11 ==============================47/====================================From: Omar Nasim <umnasimo-AT-cc.umanitoba.ca> To: baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu Cc: baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu Subject: HELP!!! Sender: owner-baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu Reply-To: baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu Greetings all, I am a confused post-modernist, Baudrillardian-philosophical-reader. I have attempted to read some of Mr. Baudrillard's books and have found them to contain many confusing and obscure ideas. I think that either I am a very stupid classial-anylitical-philosopher, or that Baudrillard, intentionally advocates ambiguity and is against the French idea of clear and distinct ideas. I am refering particularly to his ideas of simulation, simularca, hyperreality, and other real weird stuff. I understand that he attempts to show that reality does not exist, rather only simulations of reality exist. But how do you explain that? Practically speaking, everyday of my life I experience reality and real things. Althought, at times I do experience simulations, as in films, the internet, and television, and maybe Disneyland. But these events are very specific times of my day, that cannot be generalized into the realm of my everyday life. So what I am asking is for someone, who is kind enough, to elaborate, in laymans terms, what Baudrillard means by these dense terms, and how he justifies their use. Yours, Despondent, Omar Nasim Dept. Philosophy. 27/11 ====================================48/=============================Dear Omar I got your SOS message but there is no need to overdramatise upon a living modern philosopher who is not difficult at all and disposes (in the contrary of others) a lot of good will. I am glad for your message that gives me the chance to develop some of my ideas as an old student of Baudrillard in the mid-seventies in Paris. Well, to start from his most basic idea of simulation I think that in general terms he has right to underline the artificial character of our urban lives because we are really distanciated from the Nature and our children are born in a World with no more seasonal circles and natural periodical phenomena. With the modern media we are constantly wandering if all this stuff of info is real or faulse and constructed by some commercants for profit. We consume more spectacle than real objects and the spectacular representation of the reality substitutes this very reality by many other minor sub-realities. We cannot really profit from the astonishing sum of info bombarding us even via internet ( if we are cambled ) and we cannot produce USEFUL KNOWLEDGE and specifically social knowledge that means applicable to our actual various social needs). We are living rather as somnibules in a changing global World and we feel that the early film of Ridley Scott ''Blade Runners''( 1979) with all its famous replicas of humans , is closer to us now than in 1979. That means that our life-style is continouously moving to that direction. There are some resistance sites of course but the general mentality -since we cannot anymore speak about serious ideologies- is to live in a easy way without targets , aims values or motivation. It is really very difficult to inspire motivation to the Youth and interests for an Art or Science. It seems that profits sibstituted interests. My own proposal is to return back to the classics and re read them under new prisma.Today's philosophers have not other hope than that. Real social knowledge of the OTHERNESS of all the important others that surround us, is difficult to be established. Sentiments are declining in an artificial world of spots and video-clip technics and our rhythms take the dimensions of MTV channel. There is much more truth in the sayings of the Ancients than to the spots of our actualities.Your co-named Omar Kayam circulates much more important thoughts in his rubayats even when drunk, than all the spots of T.V. during a month ! I am not trying to reconstitute traditional forms and meanings but I mean by that, that Baudrillard has tried to prove -and he suceeded in the best way- how human race can make artificial the real natural World. In these terms, he is a kind of ecologist even if not proposing naive re- turns to the Nature a la Rousseau. Is Baudrilard pessimist ? I think he is but not melancholic as Deleuze who commited suicide recently.When he exag- gerates by the declaration that the war of Gulf was never done, he is par- tially right in the same way that Bourdieu has also declared some years ago that the so called ''public opinion'' simply is not existing at all while it is manipulated and pre-fabricated by special groups of interests. It was a virtual war transmitted by CNN and we cannot believe casualties from any side the same as we will never believe again the damage of the nature presented by National Geographic and the spot with the cormoran cove- red with oil of the Gulf ( it was a fake film from another tanker accident as we were informed afterwards -when the war spectacle was over). Now, in this moment T.V. is showning the commercial film ''top-gun'' with Tom Cruz and I cannot see the difference of such a film with CNN style of transmitting the Gulf-war. I think really like Baudry that this war never happened in the reality, it was a virtual war like the virtual communities made up by the recent internet networks. Another phenomenon of our era is the weak collective memory. Facts that are buleversing the Universe today are easily and totally forgotten till tomor- row and this is due to the televisual style and technics of transmiting news So, the crisis of our World is the crisis of liability and also credibility. If we cannot trust and believe our neighbor ( some years ago the villagers of MY COUNTRY USED TO SLEEP AT NIGHT WITH DOORS OPEN ! )we cannot trust the stranger and we become hysterical while in eternal panic as the medium American who consider everyone as a potential killer or abuser of children etc. In this insecurity we are called to re examine the old values of friendship, intimacy and love. IT IS DIFFICULT BUT IT WORTHS OUR ATTENTION BECAUSE OF THIS VERY DIFFICULTY. I have the impression or intuition that if something is difficult today in a world of ''easy-ness'' then it is worthy of a survalue. Excuse me if I am a little afar from Baudrillard's writings , but you ... have to .. believe me ( and trust me ) that his real intention are to de- monstrate all these reflections grosso-modo. I don't know if my message happened to help you in something , but this was a general outline addressed to a philosopher and since I am a sociologist maybe I will be able now to respond to more specified questions if you want to formulate them. Best regards from sunny Athens 27/11 ===========================49/==================================From: Bob hitching <hitching-AT-citizen.infi.net> Organization: InfiNet To: baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Subject: Re: HELP!!! References: <Pine.SOL.3.91.961127104849.396A-100000-AT-toliman.cc.umanitoba.ca> Sender: owner-baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Reply-To: baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Omar Nasim wrote: > > Greetings all, > I am a confused post-modernist, Baudrillardian-philosophical-reader. I > have attempted to read some of Mr.Baudrillard's books and have found > them to contain many confusing and obscure ideas. I think that either I > am a very stupid classical-analytical-philosopher,or that Baudrillard, > intentionally advocates ambiguity and is against the French idea of clear > and distinct ideas. Since when have the French ever been accused having clear and distinct ideas? I would suggest that ambiguity, from a non French perspective, is in actuali ty the motif of Baudrillard and Lyotard. I have struggled enormously to unra vel their writings but I wonder if it is not in fact that the nuance of what they are saying get's lost in the translation. Those who read it in the French may see it differently.It is like when I read Baudrillard that I think this man really does have something and I can feel instinctively that it is authentic and not metaphysical flatulence, but then I stumble into a mine field of concepts that seem quazi dada. What to do? Bob Bob and Nancy Hitching Gaudium et specs, luctus et angor hominum huius temporis 27/11 ======================50/==========================================From: "bb130-AT-lafn.org" <bb130-AT-lafn.org> To: "'baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU'" <baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU> Subject: RE: HEL!!! Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 12:28:07 -0000 Sender: owner-baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Reply-To: baudrillard-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU It's not that only representations of reality exist, but that inquiry of a discursive character can only refer in a real way with such representations... Michael Herrin FBK Berkeley '77 Attachment Converted: C:\INTERNET\EUDORA\REHEL!!! 27/11 ==========================51/=======================================nicos, couldn't get the movie to work. Mark O'Connell oconnell-AT-oz.net 28/11 =====================================52/===========================Mark >> could't get the movie to work I really don't catch the meaning of that negation Nikos 28/11 ====================================53/=============================>From bb130-AT-lafn.org Thu Nov 28 22:38:28 1996 From: "bb130-AT-lafn.org" <bb130-AT-lafn.org> To: "'ngousg-AT-itel.gr'" <ngousg-AT-itel.gr> Subject: Postmodern Civics Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 11:33:07 -0000 Yes, the writings of the ancients bespeak an awareness of self lacking in the Spectacle. I'm a student of pedagogy-- what's up w/PIA? M 28/11 =====================54/=========================================From: "J. Cruz" <jcruz-AT-blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> I received this message but the attachment that came with it was not readable in any format. Wouldyou please resend it. Thanks. 27/11 ==========================55/=================================== Before I begin, I would like to thankyou very much for your response to my desperate plea for knowledge of Baudrillard. I am thrilled that I've got a Student of Baudrillard actually e-mailing me, so if you don't mind I would love to keep this comunication active. Below I go through your letter to me and try to ask you and myself, certain questions of a philosopical and maybe sociological nature. 1/ This may seem very stupid, but why is it a urban phenonmena, or am i just misunderstanding what you've stated. Are our lives actually artificial, if so, how would Baudrillard (B) justify this claim. I see you attempt to do this, but from a philosophical perspective, rather than a socio-geolographical one. > With the modern media we are constantly > wandering if all this stuff of info is real or faulse and constructed by > some commercants for profit. We consume more spectacle than real objects > and the spectacular representation of the reality substitutes this very > reality by many other minor sub-realities. 2/ How are sub-realities defined in B's terms, and what role do they play, if any, in B's system. It also seems as if B is creating a criticism of capitalism, is this because he may have Marxist tendencies? Are simulations and "hypereality" capitalist phenonmena??? And by the way, what is "hyperreality", is just mixed-up and obscured reality? plz explain....this will give you a chance to sharpen your skills!! :) > We cannot really profit from > the astonishing sum of info bombarding us even via internet ( if we are > cambled ) and we cannot produce USEFUL KNOWLEDGE and specifically social > knowledge that means applicable to our actual various social needs). > We are living rather as somnibules in a changing global World and we feel > that the early film of Ridley Scott ''Blade Runners''( 1979) with all its > famous replicas of humans , is closer to us now than in 1979. That means > that our life-style is continuasly moving to that direction. > 3/ Interesting, I will have to watch this movie!!.... >There are some resistance sites of course but the general mentality -since >we cannot anymore speak about serious ideologies- is to live in a easy way >without targets , aims, values or motivation. It is really very difficult >to inspire motivation to the Youth and interests for an Art or Science. 4/ Why is it easy to live with out "targets" and "motivations". I don't understand this...And why is it not possible to "speak about serious ideologies"...is it b/c postmodernism allows for all to be "true"?? >It seems that profits sibstituted interests. My own proposal is to return >back to the classics and re read them under new prisma.Today's philosophers >have not other hope than that. 5/ IS this not subjectifing OUR view of the "postmodern reality" upon the classics?? And how can they help us when Grand-Narratives are NOT possible?? Would the classics not become a grand-narrative if this was done.... > > Real social knowledge of the OTHERNESS of all the important others that > surround us, is difficult to be established. Sentiments are declining in a artificial world of spots and video-clip technics and our rhythms take the > dimensions of MTV channel. 6/ "Otherness"...are these not important to the understand of OUR world, of our reality?? the REAL reality?? Do we not define ourselves by the OTHER??....OR is our defination of ourselves created by MTV and sports? > > There is much more truth in the sayings of the Ancients than to the spots >of our actualities. Your co-named Omar Kayam circulates much more important >thoughts in his rubayats even when drunk, than all the spots of T.V. during >a month ! I am not trying to reconstitute traditional forms and meanings >but I mean by that , that Baudrillard has tried to prove -and he suceeded >in the best way- how human race can make artificial the real natural World. >In these terms, he is a kind of ecologist even if not proposing naive re- >turns to the Nature a la Rousseau. 7/ What does he say about all this...Is it Good or Bad?? Or, does he even have a theory of ethics and morality?? If he is not proposing a return to the Nature, then what he is proposing?? Proposing something, usually presupposes ethics and morality?? If he does not have them (ethics and morality) then he seems to have a problem?? Or am i just totaly misunderstanding this whole thing. And yes i have to agree with you, Omar Khayam is very enlightening....But then again, even Homer Simpson is very enlightening compared to all the rest of the gones on tv. >Is Baudrilard pessimist ? I think he is >but not melancholic as Deleuze who commited suicide recently.When he exag- >gerates by the declaration that the wear of Gulf was never done, he is par- >tially right in the same way that Bourdieu has also declared some years ago >that the so called ''public opinion'' simply is not existing at all while >it is manipulated and pro-fabricated by special groups of interests. >It was a virtual war transmitted by CNN and we cannot believe casualties >from any side the same as we will never believe again the damage of the >nature presented by National Geographic and the spot with the cormoran cove- >red with oil of the Gulf ( it was a fake film from another tanker accident >as we were informed afterwords -when the war spectacle was over). >Now, in this moment T.V. is showning the commercial film ''top-gun'' >with Tom Cruz and I cannot see the difference of such a film with CNN style >oftransmitting the Gulf-war. I think really like Baudry that this war never >happened in the reality, it was a virtual war like the virtual communities >made up by the recent internet networks. 8/ IS this not scary?? Or am I just a whimp? If all these events are not real, then what is? The Gulf-war, if it was not real, then what sorts of help may I provide them, for their "apparent" suffering? If i don't believe its real, and it is, then I am allowing for tyranny to rule the earth, and I, just sit around and say, "ah, its not real"....This seems as if humanity, or B, has given up on the goodness of the human race. And, if we do not realize that some of the things in the world ARE REAl, then no one will actually try to rectify the situation. It seems as if Grand-Laziness has sort of set in upon the "Modern" Man....I guess we are only, and truly are, a One-Dimensional Man....Virtual Communities...I understand...but what do they have to do with Real Communities... > Another phenomenon of our era is the weak collective memory. Facts that are buleversing the Universe today are easily and totally forgotten till tomor- row and this is due to the televisual style and technics of transmiting news > 9/ Yes very true...I agree...How does this fit into B's theories... >So, the crisis of our World is the crisis of liability and also credibility. >If we cannot trust and believe our neighbor ( some years ago the villagers >of MY COUNTRY USED TO SLEEP AT NIGHT WITH DOORS OPEN ! )we cannot trust the >stranger and we become hysterical while in eternal panic as the medium Ame- >rican who consider everyone as a potential killer or abuser of children etc. >In this insecurity we are called to re examine the old value of friendship, >intimacy and love. IT IS DIFFICULT BUT IT WORTHS OUR ATTENTION BECAUSE OF >THIS VERY DIFFICULTY. I have the impression or intuition that if something >is difficult today in a world of ''easy-ness'' then it is worthy of a >sur-value. > 10/ I agree...Life has become a great big panic thing...And I understand that there are sociological implications of this, but what are the philosophical implications?? Is there, or can there be something like a panic-philosophy, does B suggest anything of this sort? Love, intimacy, friendship sort of have a common thread; aesthetics..what role does Aesthetics play in B's little discourse, if any? Is aesthetics even possible in such a "panic" world...is aesthetics possible when reality is ultered?? Is our very act of simulation, an aesthetic act? Or is B's philosophy anti-aesthetic, as I have heard some suggest....? > Excuse me if I am a little afar from Baudrillard's writings , but you ... > have to .. believe me ( and trust me ) that his real intention are to de- > monstrate all these reflections grosso-modo. > > I don't know if my message happened to help you in something ,but this was > a general outline addressed to a philosopher and since I am a sociologist > maybe I will be able now to respond to more specified questions if you > want to formulate them. Again, I would like to thankyou for your time, and your help.... Yours, Omar Nasim Dept. Philosophy UofM 29/11 TO BE CONTINUED
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