File spoon-archives/baudrillard.archive/baudrillard_1998/baudrillard.9803, message 97


Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 10:58:55 -0500
From: Trent Smith <think-AT-sprint.ca>
Subject: Re: Marxism, etc.



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Mark O'Connell wrote:

> from Soren "Reality is a Female Dog in Heat" Pedersen:
>
> >There's an excellent essay by Walter Benjamin called "art in the age
> >of mechanical reproduction" from 1936 which contains an interesting
> >discussion of the difference between an original and a reproduction
> >(sorry, can't quote - only got it in Danish). But I have another one
> >here which I suspect is inspired by Benjamin: "To equate a replica
> >with the genuine artifact is the height of sophistry; it cheapens and
> >renders meaningsless its true age and provenance. To imply equal
> >value is to deny the act of creation within its own time frame, to
> >cancel out the generative forces of its cultural context. What is
> >missing is the original mind, hand, material, and eye" (Ada Louise
> >Huxtable: The Unreal America - from NYTIMES).
>
> Right, I know the Benjamin thing. What I was looking for was what you,
> entangled in Baudrillard's seductive embrace as you are, would define as a
> "real original."   The above quote seems almost laughably stodgy,
> conservative. Mechanical reproduction is old news.  What's a real original
> and how is it significant for hyperrealists?
>
> Mark "Gotta Love That Whipped Cream" O'Connell

  One real original, is TV as our collective consciousness.  Or for that
matter, through the movies, whether those made by Hollywood, or the other end
of the military-entertainment complex.  Just as The Gulf War did not take
place, American politics does not take place except in "Primary Colors" and
"Wag the Dog".

The State no longer exists because the social does not exist.  The
nullification of the collective.  A social of signs, a representative social.
The production of images without attempts to ground them in reality, but also
attempts to manufacture what is absent, in this case a recombinant
sovereignty.

ciao, Trent


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Mark O'Connell wrote:

from Soren "Reality is a Female Dog in Heat" Pedersen:

>There's an excellent essay by Walter Benjamin called "art in the age
>of mechanical reproduction" from 1936 which contains an interesting
>discussion of the difference between an original and a reproduction
>(sorry, can't quote - only got it in Danish). But I have another one
>here which I suspect is inspired by Benjamin: "To equate a replica
>with the genuine artifact is the height of sophistry; it cheapens and
>renders meaningsless its true age and provenance. To imply equal
>value is to deny the act of creation within its own time frame, to
>cancel out the generative forces of its cultural context. What is
>missing is the original mind, hand, material, and eye" (Ada Louise
>Huxtable: The Unreal America - from NYTIMES).

Right, I know the Benjamin thing. What I was looking for was what you,
entangled in Baudrillard's seductive embrace as you are, would define as a
"real original."   The above quote seems almost laughably stodgy,
conservative. Mechanical reproduction is old news.  What's a real original
and how is it significant for hyperrealists?

Mark "Gotta Love That Whipped Cream" O'Connell

  One real original, is TV as our collective consciousness.  Or for that matter, through the movies, whether those made by Hollywood, or the other end of the military-entertainment complex.  Just as The Gulf War did not take place, American politics does not take place except in "Primary Colors" and "Wag the Dog".

The State no longer exists because the social does not exist.  The nullification of the collective.  A social of signs, a representative social.  The production of images without attempts to ground them in reality, but also attempts to manufacture what is absent, in this case a recombinant sovereignty.

ciao, Trent
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