From: Jon Rubin <j_rubin-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: art/capital
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1999 07:26:12 PDT


I would question if one can "understand" simulation in this way : a 'copy 
without an original' is a contradition in terms.
The only reason for caling Baudrillard's examples "copies" is to create 
semiotic confusion.

edwin coleman


Actually its more "semiotic shorthand" than semitotic confusion. Deleuze 
spells out in _Difference and Repetition_ and _Logic of Sense_ what he takes 
Plato's concept (and by extension, everybody who falls under the Image of 
Thought) of the simulacrum to be doing. A copy must have an internal 
relationship to the original; whilst simulacra may appear to be a copy, they 
lack this internal relationship - and are therefore inherently deceptive 
(which if you are Nietzsche-Deleuze celebrating the higher power of the 
false is a Good Thing, not a bad). Simulacra have only external relations to 
things (other simulacra).
>From memory - isn't this exactly why Plato banishes artists from his 
Republic, that they, or art, can produce only simulacra never copies (and 
are therefore morally suspect)? The question remains however - though 
anybody still labouring under the Image of Thought has a theoretically 
valied reason to fear / despise art, if you believe that everything is 
already simulacra, what makes art so special. In other words, though John 
Appleby was right to cite examples of art being oppressed or supported 
because it was believed to be inherently revolutionary, wasn't this simply a 
mistake? Art having no more *and no less* a revolutionary potential than any 
other material practice?
For every revolutionary artist there will be State artists (Goethe, Wagner, 
Elliot) - and why should it be any other way?

Regards,

Jon.



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