File spoon-archives/baudrillard.archive/baudrillard_1998/baudrillard.9803, message 73


Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 10:32:31 -0500
From: nik <mabnb-AT-hunterlink.net.au>
Subject: Re: Why?



>I get the feeling that both of you are into the Derrida kind of
>deconstruction stuff with all this talk about poetics. You're 
>perfectly entitled to think that the world could be changed through 
>poetry, but in my view, this is an anachronistic political strategy.
>
actually, i think that Baud.s own work suggests poetics (semiotic
transgression) as a political strategy (in the shadow of the silent
majorities)...

>Meaning cannot be subverted since meaning is already total. 

i would have to disagree with this. I think Baud.s point on this is entirly
exagerated - something he does quite often to emphasis his point.
There are many things that have no meaning - more than have a meaning. this
is because there isn't just one code - language is not that simple. there
are multiple codes governing the use of language in western society, many
carrying common themes. but no matter how common the themes, or
interchangable the signs, there are (and will always be) gaps. that is,
there will always be spaces between codes (language being a local, rather
than universal, thing), and these spaces provide the opportunity for the
violent disruption of the code.


>> (p.s. Baudrillard is neither realist nor anti-realist, but 
>> >hyperrealist, and the world is a holodeck and the tree a simulacrum).
>
>Nik,
>
>> i would have thought he was a reluctant anti-realist, seeing as
>> anti-realisms only binding tenent is the world (as we know it) is not
>> independent of our conceptual schemes
>
>> realism vs anti-realism is about the chasm created by language. or,
>> more accuratly, the percieved chasm created by language. the idea of
>> the real has been lost - there are no real conditions of existence.
>> the word real is just another piece in the language game - just
>> another part of the code. 
>
>Gary,
>
>> >I just would like some to keep in mind that the Ideological is our
>> >IMAGINARY representations of THE real conditions of esixtence.  The
>> >chasm created by language, its power over us, obviously hasn't been
>> >considered thoroughly.  Hence, ridiculous stratements about realism
>> >vs. anti-realism.
>
>I wish you would acknowledge that Baudrillard is different from the 
>linguistic idealists referred to above. He's really not that 
>interested in language (relatively compared to, say, Derrida, 
>Barthes, Wittgenstein, Rorty, etc.).

you have to be kidding? the symbolic is his primary concern. - how is
derrida a linguistic idealist?


>The anti-realist position is in my opinion riddled with 
>inconsistencies (I assume both of you consider yourself 
>anti-realists). In a nutshell, they claim that the world exists, but 
>that it remains beyond the reach of language. 

actually, thats empiricism, a species of anti-realism, but far from the
most common kind. in general, anti-realist think that questions of truth,
and reality are misleading because the notions of truth and reality are
constructs of our language - anti-realists don't believe in the existence
of referents - they are the myths of certain code/language games.
>
>The simulacrum exists. No doubt about it. It just doesn't make sense 
>to conceptualize its existence in terms of traditional ontology 
>(simply because it's simulated and not true). 

but, like i said earlier, it isn't total. 
>
>This connects with my earlier argument. If knowledge is total it is 
>absent, and if knowledge is absent, meaning (including identity) 
>can only be based on simulation. If identities are not simulated, 
>what are they? real/true? structural? biological?

identities are definitly manufactured, but does this mean that they are
simulated? if we don't believe that there is a real that we are simulating
(or if the construction of identity doesn't worry itself with metaphysics
at all), then can identity be a simulation? can't it just be a symbolic
construction? is every word a simulation, or does simulation only exist in
the absense left by the reality principle?

nik


   

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