From: "Soren Pedersen" <speder-AT-post2.tele.dk>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 21:01:09 +0000
Subject: Re: existentialism


> I wonder who here has read SEDUCTION and if
> so, would like to talk about it. Here's a start: if seduction is way out
> of simulation (i.e. opposes simulation), is it just another dialectical
> assult on "Truth", or does it surpass dialectics? Does seduction exist, or
> just "the sedcutive"? -- can seduction exist beyond the world of subjects
> and objects as we know them? Can we utilise the fatal in our daily lives,
> and if so, how can it be a concious stratagy? Wouldn't that again be part
> of the dread dialectic?

Why would you want to counterpose simulation with seduction? In my 
reading, seduction is not the way out of simulation. Seduction is so 
to speak the strategy of simulation. Simulation seduces (whereas 
truth produces).
Production reaches a point of overdetermination when truth 
extrapolates beyond referential value (as in pornography). This 
initiates a qualitative change of strategy - seduction substitutes 
for production. The simulacrum cannot thrive inside the paradigm of 
production because production "means to render visible, to cause to 
appear, and be made to appear" (Forget F, p. 21) and the vitality of 
the simulacrum hinges on the possibility of withdrawing "something 
from the visible order". What seduction withdraws is obviously 
truth's non-existence.
The simulacrum seduces but not according to the traditional 
conception of seduction. People are seduced, not because their 
imagination is stirred by hidden (or absent) meanings (nothing is 
hidden in pornography), but because they are overwhelmed by the 
perfection of the simulacrum. There is nothing undecidable about a 
simulacrum, which induces people to speculate, interpret, or 
participate. Watching a simulacra is like watching a spectacular 
scenery. People retreat in apathetic silence.

-S