File spoon-archives/baudrillard.archive/baudrillard_1998/baudrillard.9802, message 40


Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 11:13:49 +0000
Subject: Re: few readers?
From: 03643518060-0001-AT-t-online.de (christopher brown)


Sadeq Rahimi wrote:


> > It does make sense, we all participate in the simulation.
> > It is only a sell out if you look at it from a marxist
> > ideology, but for him if there is nothing real, then was he
> > "really" in the comercial? I can see were one could make
> > a break.
 
> Christopher;
> 
> Obviously it's once again  my naivite speaking, but just what does it
> mean exactly, when we ask "was he 'really' in the commercial"; and 
> what kind of "break" is one to make?
> 
> --Sadeq.

Baudrillard approaches our day to day as one great simulation of the
real, which in my opinion is also synonymous with Heidegger's Sein (and
Al-Haqq for that matter in Arabic). Simulation is to pretend that you
have something which you don't really have. In this case to pretend that
we exist in the way our forefathers existed, and that is with values.
(This statement has greater implications...) This would then say that we
have values with which we are able to evaluate. Baudrillard is trying to
point out that something has gone wrong and because we see the
simulation of what we once had (valuation), we still believe, through
the simulation, that we have, that which we've lost. Wow! :-) This all
presuppose a reading of the history of European Nihilism via Nietzsche.
In which Nietzsche describes Nihilism as that "unheimlichster Gast"
which has been translated as uncanniest Guest, but does not quite hit
the mark, due to the nature of unheimlich which has more to with "being
at home" or at ease in a place. Which Nietz. quite clearly points out by
using this word unheimlich, that nihilism is not in its place. And
finally that it is a phase that needs to be overcome. Baudrillard, among
other continental thinkers, has taken up this task.

Now with this for  a background Baudrillard could do a commercial
without fearing a "sell out" due to the fact that anyone who calls it a
"sell out" has not really understood the disapearance of the real. This
more simply put means that a valuation of B.'s commercial is not at all
possible because we all take part in the simmulation. The only people
who might be considered free of the simulation would be those who have
absolutely no part of the simulation at all, for example the savages
which Baudrillard talks about in the Philipines. We are continuously
selling out as long as we don't understand the difference between the
real and its counterpart.

The Break would be with the idea of valuation, namely that we evaluate
his making the commercial as a "sell out", For him this would not hold
true because everything has been "sold out" in realation to the real. 

I hope I'm clearing this up and not confounding the matter more. 

Best regards
Chritopher


   

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