File spoon-archives/baudrillard.archive/baudrillard_1999/baudrillard.9912, message 79


Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1999 20:39:47 +0000
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com>
Subject: Re: Virilio and Baudrillard (charity and the symbolic)


Erik, John whoever...

We all suffer from bad faith, it comes with the intellectual and social territory
and the only judgment we cannot escape is our own...

Do you feel (think) that with the loss of meaning of symbolic exchange, (the death
of the symbolic - unless it is constituted in the frame of consumptive society)
that acts of charity have lost there meaning? The symbolic act of charity has
after all been re-constituted as a primary act of consumption (I live in the UK
and from my interaction with people and friends in the US it is the same there) as
important as purchasing a car, books, food and so on... At various times
Baudrillard writes of the relationship between consumption and symbolic exchange,
to some extent he writes as if he regrets the passing of symbolic exchange as
something entirely separate from use, exchange and consumption. I suspect that
what he exposes is the subsuming of the symbolic act into an act of consumption.
The meaning of the act of charity is a statement of power based on the 'christian
humanist ideology of the gift. The gift is the source and the essence of power'.
According to Baudrillard only the counter-gift, the reversibility of symbolic
exchange abolishes power. Hence incidentally the importance of the 'Big Issue' and
'Fair trade products' - the rejection of the gift and charity through the symbolic
act of consumption and exchange of money... Whereas with 'netaid' nothing but bad
music and the recognition of economic and symbolic superiority. It is not clear to
me that Baudrillard has successfully negotiated his way through the Hegalian
master-slave dialectic in his theorisation of the 'gift', but nor am I sure that
the rest of us have either...

This does not mean that one should not participate in the act of charity, I have a
little sympathy with Peter Singer's  charitable act of donating a percentage of
his salary to charitable causes, it follows from what I take to be his
reactionary  and incoherant philosophy. But feel little or no guilt about not
following his example. Perhaps I am complicating the issue by following
Baudrillard's differentiation of the gift from symbolic exchange but I do not
believe so...

It follows from the above preamble that whilst Baudriallrd is incorrect in his
oft-stated belief that use/exchange value have caused the death of symbolic
exchange because it has been subsumed into the relationship (of course thois could
be typical Baudrillard hyperbole). He is absolutely correct in forcing an
intellectual understanding, diffentiation between symbolic exchange and the
gift... The former can lead to subversion and change the latter never.

"What is subversion?"
"Perhaps in the rose that you adore,the last obtrusive thorn" (Edmond Jabes)

regards and have a good and symbolic christmas, i certainly will be...

steve.devos

Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:

> I'm not very much convinced about your righteousness because of your
> tone. Why are you so angry? Do I smell some Sartrean bad faith? Do you
> want to be a saint in order to escape judgement?
> It's like you want to say that anyone who's not into charity should shut
> up.
> You should know that charity, like all other human activities is
> ambiguous, sometimes good sometimes bad. Sociological and
> anthropological research has shown that in a lot of cases help made poor
> people poorer.
> Of course when there's a disaster, there's nothing wrong with donating
> some money, I take this for granted. I only think that it would be
> stupid to want to go there yourself as long as you don't have any
> pracical skills. A writer could do something else though, (s)he could FI
> try to point out why the poor always suffer more from a disaster than
> the rich.
>
> cheers
>
> erik
>
> John Armitage wrote:
>
> > Well nice to read of your new hobby, charity right? A very cherished
> > middle class passtime and very helpfull for the esthablishment,
> > especially if it keeps philosophers from thinking and criticism!
> >
> > [More political pornography. You should be ashamed to write such rubbish.
> > For example, as I write this email, the radio is telling me that some 20,000
> > people may have been killed in the Venezuelan floods and resulting health
> > catastrophes. What are you trying to tell me? That the doctors, search and
> > rescue operatives, relief workers, and all the rest of it do all this for a
> > hobby? Because they have nothing better to do 3-4 days before Xmas? There is
> > plenty wrong with the charity industry but until you have a better
> > alternative to organisations such as the Red Cross or Amnesty International
> > (AI) etc. then I will take my middle class passtime anyday over your  -
> > what? Silence? I am all for criticising the establishment but in most of the
> > charity cases I have mentioned - such as AI  - it is not the establishment
> > who are dying or who are being tortured in jails around the world  - it is
> > people who have been thinking and people who have made critiques just like
> > the ones you seem to support. However, when the chips are down, or when
> > critical thoughts are locked up with their originators from Afghanistan to
> > Zaire, all you can manage is a sneer. I just hope that, if one day the
> > establishment comes for you and you require the same sort of help as those
> > that require it today, you do not have to rely on people like yourself for
> > it. For if you do, you are as good as dead already].
> >
>
>  erik


   

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