File spoon-archives/baudrillard.archive/baudrillard_1998/baudrillard.9803, message 14


Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 13:45:59 -0800
From: evan-AT-steammedia.com (Evan Leeson)
Subject: Re: A possible "sellout"?



>
>> This is fun. I don't think Baud. argues there were various types of
>> codes and now we have a new one. I think The Code is a new variant
>> on western metaphysics of meaning and reality. As I was trying to
>> argue before, it is a situation of the emergence of ecstatic forms.
>> The rave environment is one of ecstasy (both the drug and the
>> psychological experience you describe). Same goes for the production
>> and consumption of signs under the code. Wheras previously we dealt
>> with a variety of forms of alienation (signifier alientated from
>> signified because of a variety of problems of representation)
>> hyperreality introduces a new form where signs break free from any
>> necessary referent and merely assume a position in the Code. One
>> year Arnold mean "tough guy" and the next Van Damme is the Sign, but
>> both simply occuppy a position in a operationalized simulation of
>> the spectrum of human character. Ecstatic experience and sign
>> production is when there is no question of "slippage", no question
>> of the appropriateness of signifiers relation to signified. The Code
>> rules and the change in the position of signs doesn't evoke any
>> response. Ecstasy. _In effect_, there is no signified.
>>
>> The Code is a single configuration of deeper Western Philosophical
>> categories which have been operative since Plato. The best
>> intoduction to an understanding of these issues I have found is the
>> work of Nietzsche.
>>
>
>The code rules. But has it ruled since Plato? I kind of thought that
>the code was born with hyperreality. The way I see it, the code took
>over the function of nourishing the sign (formerly managed by the
>thought-to-be-referent). The sedimented categories of Western
>philosophy are not a code, but a "referent". They have now been
>abolished with hyperreality. The code is much more effective
>than "referents". Perhaps the code is the transcendental signified we
>have always been longing for!

No, no! That's not what I said. I said the code is a single configuration
of deeper Western Philosophical categories that have been operative since
Plato. The fact that we discuss the Code in the terms you use (trancedental
signified for example) shows these assumptions are still operative. I
suggested Baudrillard's category "ecstatic" captures the phenomena.
Ecstatic presumes it's precursor: alienation. The vast and diverse forms of
alienation present in philosophy are also manifestations. You can't have
ecstasy without the preceding separation. What's interesting is that the
ecstasy is empty, which shows the emptiness of the concept of alienation as
well. Hyperreality is getting to the top of Everest only to find a Coke
machine and a Gap store.

evan


-------------------------------------------
Evan A. Leeson
Xfind Systems, Inc.
Victoria, British Columbia
Voice: (250) 216-0043
-------------------------------------------
 



   

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