Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 03:15:46 +0000 From: Chris <christopher.mcmahon-AT-jcu.edu.au> Subject: Re: Weasel and Emily: that punk-o-lantern smile! This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------DE297B8D5DC5289C6EB7D687 Thanks Thomas, Maybe so. I don't know. All I was trying to say is that enlightenment humanism still seems pretty *dominant* in my neck of the woods, still saturates the 6 o'clock news, still operates as a moral and metapysical default. On another tack, I find Baudrillard's description of the phases of the sign towards nihilism sort of useful. [sic] 1. The sign is the expression of a profound mystery 2. The sign conceals a profound mystery 3. The sign conceals the fact that there is no profound mystery 4. The sign bears no relation to any mystery whatsoever. it is pure simulation God dies a slow and painful death? Funny thing is you can find all four "phases" mixed in together, usually do.Funny thing is you can be really haunted by this process towards "pure simulation" (is Derrida?), or sort of sceptical (like Lacan?), or pay not attention to it (does Foucault?), or treat it as an object of dispassionate study (Lyotard), or laugh (LOL Baudrillard?). Pm - if that's what its about - strikes me as a bit of a "boys' preoccupation"[?] One thing I would be interested to hear about, tho, is what do feminists think of postmodernity? About the movement of the sign away from *some profound mystery*, that perhaps it never did more than veil, conceal, produce as mystification, or never was, or still is, or might be, maybe becoming? Don't know whether to mourn or not. Know one thing though, the exploitation of cheap "Third World" labour is somehow tied up with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Wonder what Phase of the Sign that would be? Pure simulation, abstract global capital, money breeding with minimal respect to commodities, decoded flows? And then there is the recoding..... Christian Children's Fund, World Vision, Mother Theresa, "world leaders" - men of state - making speeches, UN Peacekeeping, Lady Di and the Landmines (good name for a pop group?), and then the heterogeneous bubbles, Snake Handers Speaking in Toungues to UFOs having Visions of the Virgin Mary who told me to Join the Patriotic Rifle Club and Defend My Constitutional Rights! Cognitive dissonance Page 1 (World Vision Advertisement)/Page 2 (Starvin Marvin from South Park). You know, I learned something today. What's that Chris? Always try to be yourself 'cos if you try to be somebody else you just end up looking foolish. gosh Chris, I never thought of it that way.....from now on I'm only going to be myself. Me too. Me too..... - Chris Thomas 2Less wrote: > Chris, > > What you so poignantly revealed is that we are living exactly in a > post-apocolyptic age, after the accident. It is now that we attach meaning > where there is none as it is lost amid the wreckage of ubiquitous signs > without referents. An age of interminable death we thought was past with > the explosion of flesh (the Cold War, MAD) but now death greets us from the > inside (nanotech, wired flesh and disconnected thoughts) and implodes. > > Oh well, gotta go and check out Oprah! > > Thomas --------------DE297B8D5DC5289C6EB7D687 Content-Description: Card for Chris McMahon begin: vcard fn: Chris McMahon n: McMahon;Chris email;internet: christopher.mcmahon-AT-jcu.edu.au title: Mr note: Check out my homepage at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/5598/ x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: FALSE version: 2.1 end: vcard --------------DE297B8D5DC5289C6EB7D687--
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