File spoon-archives/baudrillard.archive/baudrillard_1998/baudrillard.9804, message 24


Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 02:53:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: oconnell-AT-oz.net (Mark O'Connell)
Subject: Re: existentialism


> It
>SP> is quite possible that this is what Baudrillard means by "being in
>SP> the real" - a kind of spinozean freedom of necessity. Yet, it is also
>SP> clear that this way of life (was it ever there?) has been eliminated
>SP> with hyperreality

This is absurd, rediculous, laughable. Hyperreality is a fixation with
media, and existence is certainly not bounded by media.

from Erik:

>I think for Camus the real was the absurd, the Myth of Sysiphus is interesting
>reading.

Sure, but the real independent of technology/media. Technology exacerbates
the absurdity, but it's certainly not a necessary condition for the
existence of absurdity. Your basic garden variety absurdity would be the
result of consciousness confronted with reality. The discrepancy between
what we can imagine and what is. This leads to conditions like despair.
Despair from the rift. Sartre claimed that life begins on the other side of
despair. You deal with the dilemma and go on. The part about going on
brings up the idea of existential integrity. Your integrity being
demonstrated by your continued action in the face of what amounts to
meaninglessness. Not only continued action, but most importantly, for
Sartre and Camus both, compassion. Compassion seems to be very much out of
fashion these days.  (aside from Clinton feeling your pain, and whatever
else he can get his hands on.....)

>The real hero is the burocrat Grand, who's trying to write a novel, but is
>unable to find the right >words for a perfect opening sentence. He's an
>example of the good will, which cannot be >disturbed by the real or the loss
>of it.

I took him to be an example of a moron. A variation on the character ("the
self educated man"???)
in Nausea who was reading all the books in the library in alphabetical
order.  A person who was hopelessly caught up in the order of things as
described by his masters.

Mark O'Connell MFA
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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