File spoon-archives/baudrillard.archive/baudrillard_1998/baudrillard.9802, message 78


Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:00:20 -0800 (PST)
From: oconnell-AT-oz.net (Mark O'Connell)
Subject: Re: Seduction over simulation


>The following from Brian Singer's (the translator of Seduction)
>"Baudrillard's Seduction":
>
>We have already noted that, accroding to B., we live in a world of
>appearances, but these appearances are of a radically changed
>character.  They no longer sit astride some invisible and underlying
>reality; they are becoming reality for us- which is to say that our
>sense of reality is now modelled on appearances, that ours is a
>simulated reality made to appear real.

OK, so comments about reality are referring to human interaction? The ways
in which we communicate?  The reality being referred to is a social or
cultural reality? (why didn't somebody just say so!?!?)

Why is it that appearances "no longer sit astride some invisible and underlying
reality;" ?   The NO LONGER is the part I'm wondering about. It seems to me
that a good portion of our reality has always (ie historically) been
ficticious.  So why all the fuss?  Is the fuss about information
technologies? Media?  If it is is it really justified?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
from Evan

>There is no question that you are correct. In fact, even sexually active
>theorists (most of whom are not that well off I might add) operate in their
>daily lives for the most part on the basis of the same categories as the
>rest of society (speaking of the West here). But I invite you to sit down
>with an Aborigine and hold forth to him or her on the varacity of your
>ubiquitous real world. You will find this person does not share your
>conviction and, indeed, has a completely different conception of what we
>call reality.

Your Aborigine would probably have his own theoretical constructs, but on
the most basic human level we'd probably have quite a bit in common, for
instance the need to breathe. The point was that there is a concrete that
your statements seem to categorically deny (they were rather broad and
vague). The particular way in which the idea of "reality" is to be taken is
being cleared up as the discussion continues. (I hope-)

>The challenge is to make an evaluation that
>doesn't come round and bite its own tail by applying the same evaluative
>structure as that is already installed in the system being evaluated. This
>is where Baudrillard operates.

That's great!  But this is hardly a new or radical idea.

> To be blunt, your
>statement above epitomizes the  "obviousness" of the way we see things. It
>is rhetorical and oozes reification. Doing theory is about getting past
>that and challenging our deeper assumptions. Failing this task seals our
>current trajectory.

OUCH!!!   (I love it when you talk dirty!)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------

from Glen

>I don't think he's neccessarily talking only about "real" art. I think
>he's talking about the "real" as truth, as beauty, as denotative reality.

Right, that's what I was asking.

>> >I don't want to regress to a real object . . . I know that object does not
>> >exist, no more than truth does, but I maintain the desire for
>> >it through a way of looking which is a kind of absolute, a divine
>> >judgement, and which reveals the insignificance of all other objects.

But I'm not sure I understand you. It reads to me like the subject is
"real" art, but that he's distiguishing between the art and the object that
conveys it, holds it, whatever.  The art isn't the canvas with the paint on
it but the ideas it evokes. Is this too simplistic?

>I know that object does not
> >exist, no more than truth does

Truth doesn't qualify as real in this case either, unless something can be
real and not exist. (That's kind of hard to imagine)  Is he talking about
art and truth as an ephemeral? An elusive quality that's occaissionally
glimpsed? If so the desire he refers to would be a kind of plaintive desire
for a lost certainty?  His experience of the "art" would be the result of a
partcular combination of materials colliding with his point of view, this
collision resulting in a comprehension that's inherently unstable?


thanks

Mark

Mark O'Connell
oconnell-AT-oz.net

"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes,
so you've got to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream."
-zappa



   

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