Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 15:13:32 -0700
From: "Evan A. Leeson" <evan-AT-xfind.com>
Subject: Re: existentialism


At 06:58 PM 4/27/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Ah, discussion. I love it!
>Esp. the idea the Baudrillard is
>	A: deadly serious(ly) 
>	B: ironic
>				in his writing. Of course, Baudrillard the
>man should be bracketed off in any discussion, don't you think? Who cares
>what his intentions are. It's all there in the texts. How you read B. says
>more about the reader than the author.
>
>That said, I think it is important not to take Baudrillard's simulation
>side too literally. Anyway, the discussion is fruitless and pointless.
>There is simulation. The end. 
>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?

The dialectic supposedly brings forth the Idea or some such name for what
essentially boils down to Plato's Ideal. Plato didn't think we could get to
it, but the Germans wanted to prove him wrong and thus went a little wacky
with the truth-producing metaphysics. I understand seduction to be a
"state" - to be "in seduction" where potentiality resists production. Our
impulse is to bring forth the real - make "it" real - "actualize the
Ethical Idea" - create the "Identical Subject/Object of History" out of the
previously unfinished project that is "Man" (Hegel was one crazy bastard,
huh?). Seduction presents a metaphysics of suspension instead of
actualization. Just say no to Mark's impulse to see everything as Real -
self-evident and transparently the thing-in-itself-for-us. 

Realize only when necesary. This would mainly be a micro-political strategy.

evan [the reductionist]