From: "Soren Pedersen" <speder-AT-post2.tele.dk>
Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 21:27:18 +0000
Subject: Re: Nietzsche vs. Baud


> What I am saying is that there is a materiality (the actual world) which
> is there but doesn't fall in the interest of B., he is occupied by
> questioning the different claims of this materiality, the social is one.

I assume that your post was an objection against my claim that 
Baudrillard transcends Nietzsche in his destruction of the 
actual (wirklichen) world.

Baud:

"That the silent majorities (or the masses) is an imaginary referent 
does not mean they don't exist. It means that their representation is 
no longer possible." (Silent, p. 20).

There is a materiality, sure ("today reality itself is hyperrealist" 
SED, p. 74 - got it, Norris?), but it is unwarranted to refer to this 
materiality as an "actual" world, at least in the nietzschean sense 
of the word (check out "'Reason' in Philosophy"). Nietzsche eagerly 
awaited the restoration of the "actual" world on the ruins of the 
metaphysical and apparent world. He never lived to see it though. In 
my opinion, the actual world existed somewhere between 1930 and 1950. 
Then it disappeared in thin air.
The present world is hyperreal and the reason why Baud is utterly 
disinterested in this world, this materiality, is precisely because 
its "representation is no longer possible". Surely, it's a structural 
change; a shift to the structural law of value with its aleatory play 
of signifiers. There is nothing substantial to uncover from beneath 
the "statistical crystal ball" of the masses.
A materiality, yeh, but not an actuality. Perhaps an actuality of 
non-actuality.

Sorry, this was confusing, hyperreal really.

-Soren