File spoon-archives/baudrillard.archive/baudrillard_1998/baudrillard.9802, message 65


Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:46:12 -0800
From: evan-AT-steammedia.com (Evan Leeson)
Subject: Re: A possible "sellout"?



>> Is a fence something to be leaned on? Or is a fence primarily a symbol. I
>> think this hits the essence of what Baudrillard is telling us. The fence is
>> part of the Code. The Code broke down but not because reality re-asserted
>> itself. It is an instance of what Baudrillard would call Objective Revenge.
>> The object oustripping our containment of it within the Code. You are the
>> one who, post facto, ascribe some other "reality" to the fake fence. You
>> put in place some other codification to replace the one that has broken
>> down. It happens so quickly and unconsciously and we all participate. I
>> don't think you will find Baudrillard discussing the real "real" vs the
>> fake "real".
>
>It could be interesting to discuss the metaphysics of a fence, but I'm sure an
>Australian farmer struggling to keep rabbits from his fields would be
>better equipped
>for such a discussion that we are. But you might be right - somewhere
>along the way, the
>true fence disappeared. It became an object of desire and subsequently
>loaded with
>meaning to the point where its original purpose vanished into thin air.
>THEN the fence
>decided to strike back. You claim that this instance of objective revenge
>has nothing to
>do with reality re-asserting itself. I'm not so sure about that. It is not
>reality per
>se, but it is certainly evidence of reality. It is evidence that a crime
>took place -
>Reality was stolen from us. Whether it was killed or is still alive
>somewhere is the big
>question (and who is the perpetrator?).

The perfect crime has no victim.

Herein lies the crux: you and I could go on debating what the "real"
essence of the fence is and where it night be found. We could establish a
whole range of criteria and tests. But is it not the case that the concept
is absurd to start with? Plato said there are ideal forms and then the
objects we come into contact with. The real existed in the idea. The idea
could be achieved in your head. This was "the true" and "the real". Varying
forms of this existed up until the day a someone said that the opposite was
true - that the real and the true were out there and the lie was in your
head. In your head you could only be sure that you existed. Everything else
was suspect without proper method to discover it's "reality". All discourse
hitherto has proceded with the epistemological weapon of "faulty
perception" at hand. Then came the idea that we might never actually get to
the real because it's always tainted by perception and the involvement of a
subject (solipsism, the Heisenberg Principle, etc.). There is in fact, no
such thing-for-us as an independent reality. Yet all around us we continue
to pretend that there is, just as we continue to pretend that space and
time are actual, static measuring tools. Our rhetoric, politics, science,
etc. still operates as if we were referring to a real and acting on the
basis of it. A frantic clinging to and accelleration of the "production of
the real" to shore up our shattered foundation and blind our already blind
eye. We await (or not) the revaluation that will replace these fundamental
terms and concepts with a new episteme.

Baudrillard describes this situation as "ecstatic". This is becasue we have
been reunited with our alienated selves. We alienated ourselves from the
world with Plato and we alienated the world from ourselves with Descartes.
In today's world we have erased the signified (that from which we were
alienated) and are living only with signifiers. We are reunited. We are
whole. We are ectstatic. here's a snippet from a footnote in my thesis on
baudrillard which I hope to expand one day...

-----------
 A further key to understanding Baudrillard's account of the third order of
simulation rests on the etymology of the term ecstasis, which forms the
root of the later term alienation.  A complete etymology is not necessary
here, but rather a distinction between the older philosophical notion of
ecstasy and the modern notion of alienation will suffice.  Both imply a
loss of self.  In medieval philosophy, ecstasy was a state where the
thinker became lost in contemplation:  allowed the divine will to overtake
the movement of thought.  It was a positive state.  Alienation implies, in
=46euerbach's work, an understanding and acceptance of the contemplative
meaning of ecstasis (by this time transformed into alienation [Ent=E4u=DFerung]
via the latin rendering [alienatio mentis] of the original greek), but also
a critique of such ecstasy as a fictional projection of the human into the
transcendent realm.  Feuerbach's assertion is one of the impossibility of
going beyond the human realm, and maintains that alienation is
self-alienation which simply discovers (in an attempt to lose oneself in
the object [God]) the subject as object.
Baudrillard's rendering of ecstasis and ecstasy is similar to Feuerbach's
alienation:  it implies a loss of subjectivity in an object (the
"radio-active screen of information") which is actually the subject.  This
differs from alienation in the Hegelian and Marxian sense precisely in that
a religious reunification of man with his essence has taken place.  The
Hegelian Idea has been realized, communism achieved, and our society is in
a state of inertia where the machinery developed with such a realization as
an aim continues to mutate and reproduce itself.  Neo-capitalism has become
an ecstatic project of re-production as opposed to an alienated process of
production of the real.  Hegel's Idea is read by Baudrillard as alienation
in Feuerbach's terms, but labelled ecstasis or ecstasy. cf. Nathan
Rotenstreich, "On the Ecstatic Sources of the Concept of Alienation."  In
Review of Metaphysics, March 1963
--------------------------------

If reality was killed

>
>When Baudrillard discusses Disneyland vs. America, he does in fact
>distinguish between a
>real "real" and a fake "real":
>
>"Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real" country, all of
>"real" America
>that is Disneyland." (Sim & Sim, p. 12).
>
>America is Disneyland and Disneyland is America. This claim is not
>entirely consistent
>with his approach. He should have said that Disneyland is America and
>America is absent,
>but I suppose he couldn't resist the (admittedly strong) temptation of
>stepping inside
>the order of representation and claim that America is Disneyland.

Both "reals" are supended by the quotation marks. Niether are real.

>
>
>> What do I get out of Baudrillard? I get a sensitization and a
>> destabilization that I think is necessary to think critically. He points to
>> things (or the absence of things) that I may not have noticed on my own. He
>> exposes the deepest of assumptions in their operationalized environments.
>> In short, there are few thinkers today who see as deeply as Baudrillard
>> does the inner mechanics of our collective consciousness. There are few
>> thinkers who have attempted to think so thoroughly outside that
>> consciousness as well.
>
>I'm in complete agreement with you, but I also think that life would have
>been much
>easier had I never read him in the first place. It would be nice to be
>able to surf
>smoothly along the shallow surface of hyperreality without the constant
>sense of
>alienation.

I know what you mean. Reading and really getting into Baud. can make you a
complete alien. People view you as insane. He's tough. Tougher than most.
Many people you respect will dismiss him and condemn you for thinking
there's something there worthwhile. That's because they haven't done the
work. I think the key is to not _want_ there to be anything worthwhile. Be
indifferent. It is then that you will be able to sift the wheat from the
chaff.

evan



   

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