Jean Baudrillard (Routledge Critical Thinkers)

JEAN BAUDRILLARD

A controversial figure in th e realms of th eory and cultural studies, Jean Baudrillard is never without int er est. But how do we make sense of his wilder statem ents about th e postmodern world he claims we all inhabit ? How do we situate his writing in relation to Fren ch th ought? This book guide s th e read er through Baudrillard's work, from his first publication to his lat er postrnodcrn state me nts. Richard J. Lane offers an impressively clear introduction to key aspects of Baudrillard's thought, from his reworking of Marxism through to his th eories on technology, primitivism, simulation and th e hyp erreal , Am erica and th e postmodern. Throughout th e volume, ideas are considere d in relation to th e social and int ell ectual conte xts in which Baudrillard worked , and special atte ntion is paid to th e ongoing narratives of Fren ch and postmod ern th ought. An exte nsively ann otated bibliogr aphy of primary and sec ondar y texts prepar es th e stude nt read er for furth er encounte rs with Baudrillard's work. Tracing a sure path through oft en co mplex writings ,jean Baudrillard is th e perfect companion for those newly approa ching this key con te mporary thinker .

Ric hard J. Lane is senior lecturer in postcolonial th eory, dram a and lit erature at South Bank Univ ersity, London . He has published widely in th ese area s, with special emphasis upon Canadian lit erature. He is also co -director of Th e London N etwork for Modern Fiction Studi es.

ROUTLEDGE CRITICAL THINKERS essential guides for literary studies Series Edit or: Robert Eagleston e, Royal Holloway, Univers ity of London Rou tledge Critica l Tbinkers is a seri es of accessible introductions to key figur es in con te m porar y critical thought.

With a unique focus on historical and intellectual con tex ts, each volume exam ine s a key th eorist's: • • • •

significanc e motivation key ideas and th eir sources impact on othe r thinkers .

Concluding with exte nsively annotate d guide s to furth er reading, Routledge Cri tical Tbinkers are th e literat ure student's passport to today's

most exciting critical thought. Alr eady available: Fredri cJameson by Adam Rober ts J ean Baudri ll ard by Richard J. Lan e Sigmund Freud by Pamela Thurschwell Forthcoming: Paul de Man Edward Said M auri ce Blancbot [udith But ler Frantz Fanon

For fur th er details on this series, see www.literature.routledge.comlrct

JEAN BAUDRILLARD

Richard J. Lane

London and New York

First published 2000 by Rout ledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001 .

© 2000 Richard J. Lane All rights reserved. No part of th is book may be reprinted or reproduced or ut il ised in any form or by any electron ic, mechan ical, or other means, now known or hereafter invent ed, including photocopying and record ing, or in any inf ormati on storage or retrieval system, without perm ission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for th is book is available from the Brit ish Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lane, Richard J. Jean Baudrillard/R ichard J. Lane. p. em. - (Routledge cr it ical thinkers) Includes bibl iograph ical references and index. I. Baudr illard, Jean. I. Title . II. Ser ies. B2430.B33974 L36 2000 194--dc21 ISBN 0-415--21514--5 (hbk) ISB N 0-415--21515--3 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-13368 -4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17672-3 (Glassbook Format)

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CONTENTS

Series Editor's preface

vii

WHY BAUDRILLARD?

1

I<EYIDEAS

7

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Beginnings: French thought in the 1960s The technological system of objects Narratives of primitivism: the "last real book" Reworking Marxism Simulation and the hyperreal America and postmodernism Writing strategies: postmodern performance

9 27 45

65

83 103 121

AFTER BAUDRILLARD

133

FURTHER READING

139

Works cited Index

149 153

SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE

Th e books in thi s series offer introducti on s to m ajor critica l thinker s wh o have influ enced lit erar y stud ies and th e humanities. Th e Routledge Criti cal Think ers ser ies provides th e book s you can turn to fir st when a new nam e or conc ept appe ar s in your st udies . Each book will equip you t o approach a key thinker's or iginal texts by explaining her or hi s key ideas, putting th em int o context and, perhaps m ost importantly, showing you wh y thi s thinker is considered to be significant . Th e emphasis is on concise, clearly written guides whi ch do not presuppose a specialist kn owl edge. Alth ough th e focus is on particular figures, th e series st resses th at no critical thinker ever existe d in a vacuum but , in stead , eme rged from a broader int ellectual, cultural and social history. Finally, th ese b ook s will act as a bridge between you and th e thinker's original texts: not repl acing th em but rath er com plem enting what she or he wrote. Th ese bo oks are necessar y for a number of reason s. In his 1997 auto biog raphy, Not Entitled, th e lit erar y cr itic Frank Kermod e wrot e of a time in th e I 96 0s : On beautiful summe r lawns, young people lay together all night, recover ing fr om their daytime exertions and listening to a t roupe of Balinese musicians . Under their blankets or their sleeping bags, they would chat drowsily about the gurus of the t ime.. What they repeat ed was largely hearsay; hence my lunchtime suggestion , quit e impromptu , f or a series of short , very cheap books offering authoritative but intelligible introdu ctions to such f igures.

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SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE

Th er e is still a need for "authoritative and int elligible introductions" . But this seri es reflects a different world from the 1960s . N ew thinkers have eme rge d and th e reputations of others have ris en and fallen, as new r esearch has developed . N ew m ethodologies and chall enging ideas have spr ead through th e ar ts and humanities. Th e study of lit erature is no longer - if it ever was - simply th e study and evaluation of po ems, novels and plays . It is also th e study of th e id eas, issues, and difficulties which arise in any lit er ary text and in its int erpretation . Other arts and humanities subj ects have changed in analogous ways . With th ese changes, new problems have eme rged. Th e ideas and issues b ehind th ese radic al changes in th e humanities are oft en presented without referenc e to wider contexts or as th eories which you can simply "add on" to th e texts you read. Certainly, th er e's nothing wrong with picking out selected ideas or using what comes to hand - ind eed, some thinkers have argue d that this is, in fact, all we can do. However, it is sometimes forgott en that each new idea comes from th e pattern and development of som ebody's thought and it is important to study th e rang e and context of th eir ideas . Against th eories "floating in spac e", th e Routledae Critical Thinkers seri es plac es key thinkers and th eir ideas firmly back in th eir contexts . More than this, th ese books reflect th e need to go back to th e thinker's own texts and ideas . Every int erpretation of an idea, even th e most seemingly innocent on e, offers its own "spin", implicitly or explicitly. To read only books on a thinker, rather than texts by that thinker, is to deny yourself a chance of making up your own mind . Som etimes what makes a signific ant figur e's work hard to appro ach is not so much its styl e or content as th e feeling of not knowing wh er e to start. Th e purpose of th ese books is to give you a "way in" by offering an accessible overview of th ese thinkers' ideas and works and by guiding your further reading, starting with each thinker's own texts. To use a m etaphor from th e philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), th ese books ar e ladders, to be thrown away after you have climbed to th e next level. Not only, th en, do th ey equip you to approach new ideas, but also th ey empowe r you, by leading you back to a th eorist's own texts and encouraging you to d evelop your own informed opinions . Finally, th ese books ar e necessary becaus e, just as int ellectual needs have changed, th e education systems around th e world - th e contexts

in which introductory books ar e usually read - have changed radically, too . What was suitable for th e minority high er education system of th e 1960s is not suitable for th e larg er, wider, more divers e, high t ech nology education syst ems of th e twenty-first century. Th ese changes call not just for new, up -to -dat e, introductions but new m ethods of pr esentation . Th e presentational asp ects of Routledge Critical Thinkers have been developed with today's students in mind . Each book in th e seri es has a similar structure. Th ey begin with a section offering an overview of th e life and ideas of each thinker and explain why she or he is important . Th e central section of each book discuss es th e thinker's key ideas, th eir context, evolution and recep tion . Each book concludes with a survey of th e thinker's impact, outlining how th eir ideas have b een taken up and developed by others . In addition , th er e is a detail ed final section sugg esting and describing books for furth er reading. This is not a "tacked-on" section but an int egral part of each volume. In th e first part of this section you will find brief descriptions of th e thinker's key works : following this, informa tion on th e most useful critical works and, in some cases, on rel evant websites. This section will guide you in your reading , enabling you to follow your int er ests and develop your own proj ects . Throughout each book, refer enc es are given in what is known as th e Harvard syst em (th e author and th e dat e of works cit ed ar e given in th e t ext and you can look up th e full details in th e bibliography at th e back) . This offers a lot of information in very little space. Th e books also explain t ech nical terms and use boxes to describe events or ideas in more detail, away from th e main em phasis of th e discussion . Boxes are also used at times to highlight definitions of terms frequ ently used or coined by a thinker. In this way, th e boxes serve as a kind of glossary, easily identified wh en flicking through th e book. Th e thinkers in th e seri es are "critical" for three reasons. First, th ey are examined in th e light of subj ects which involv e criticism: principally lit erary studies or English and cultural studies, but also other disciplines which rely on th e criticism of books, ideas, th eories and unquestioned assumptions . Second , th ey are critical becaus e studying th eir work will provide you with a "tool kit" for your own informed critical reading and thought, which will make you critical. Third, th ese thinkers ar e critical becaus e th ey are crucially important: th ey deal with ideas and qu estions which can overturn conv entional understandings of th e world, of texts, of ever yth ing we take for granted, leaving S E R I ES

EDITOR' S PREFACE

ix

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SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE

us with a deep er understanding of what w e alre ady kn ew and with new id eas . No introduction can t ell you ever ything. However, by offering a w ay into critical thinking, this series hopes to b egin to engage you in an act ivity which is productive , constructive and potentially life-changing.

WHY BAUDRILLARD?

Jean Baudrillard is not only one of th e most famous writers on th e subject of po stmodcr nism , but he som ehow seems to embody postm od ernism itself. He is a writer and speaker whos e texts are performances, att racting huge readership s or audienc es. At th e sam e time, his work is highly cont entious , attracting a great deal of vitriolic cr iticism . H e has b een accused, for example , of being a cr itical terrorist, a nihili st (som eo ne who has no beliefs at all, or valu es nothing), and a critic wh ose ideas are shallow and inac curat e. And yet, even given all of th ese har sh comm ents, he also has a wide critical foll owing, with many bo oks and ar ticles bein g produced abo ut him or using his th eori es to this ver y day. Th rough out th e 1990 s m any of Baudrillard's early works , all of which wer e or iginally written in French, wer e translated and mad e available to th e English-speaking worl d . Thus we now have easy acc ess to virtually all of Baudrillard's m ost important books , and thi s is leading to som e reassessm ent of his worth as a m ore "ser ious" thinker and writer. Baudrillard was b orn in Reim s on th e 27 July 19 29 . He had a fairly conventional upbringin g and education. In 1956 he b egan teachin g Sociology in secondary education , whi ch he continued until 1966, th e year he defended his th esis on Le Systeme des objets ( The System if Objects) at th e Univ er sity of Pari s X-Nant erre. Baudrillard's initial work was mainly known in th e Fre nch-speaking world , especially his more

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WH Y BAUDRIL LARD ?

lit erary articles and reviews. But aft er 1968, with th e publication of his th esis, his writings began to become known to acad emics in th e English -sp eaking world who followed developments in French th eory. In 1975, Baudrillard b egan teaching abroad, at th e University of California (Levin, 1996 : xi) . Baudrillard's real fam e would ar ise not from his early fairly acad emic writings, but in th e 1970s and 1980s with th e publication of short, highly provocative critical books, published in English in th e N ew York Semiotext(e) "Foreign Agent Seri es". Probably th e most widely read were Simula tions (1981) and In th e Sbadow
INFLUENCES When Baudrillard was a teenager, he would have expe rienced with th e r est of th e country th e launch of th e Monnet Plan with th e slogan "modernization or downfall" (Ardagh, 1978 : 32) . This plan was th e French government's sch em e for nationwide modernization, conceived of by Jean Monnet, political econom ist and "fath er" of th e EU , and focus ed on th e r ebuilding of basic industries as a way of providing stability and th en growth in th e economy after World War 11 . Succ essive Plans incorporated agriculture (Second Plan, 1953-1957), and th en wider social structures such as welfar e, housing and regional develop m ent(TbirdPlan, 1958-1961 ; Fourtb Plan, 1962-1965) (Ardagh, 1978 : 46) . Th e Plans wer e design ed to map out futur e possibilities in th e country, rather than become enshr ine d in law ; in other words, busi nesses wer e encouraged rather than forced to base their for ecasting

and planning upon Monnet's policies. Once each plan was launched, it was up to "r eality" to fall into place. This division between official and indicativ e gover nm ent policy, or political and str uctural change, would have implications for Baudrillard's writing from his th esis onwards, as I will briefly refer to in rel ation to th eories of structuralism in Chapt er I. Baudrillard first started to publish work in Jean -Paul Sar tr c 's journal, Les Temps modern es. Sar tre ( 1905- 1980 ) was on e of th e most influ ential philosopher s of postwar France, coordinating th e mov em ent known as Existen tialism , essentially a philosophy thinking through th e implications of life governed by human choice rath er th an reli gious order or det erminism (that choices have alr eady been m ade for us) . While Sartrc was an important influ enc e upon a whole generation of French thinkers in general for his reading of Marxism (see p. 10) , Baudrillard was also personally int erest ed in, and teaching, German sociology and lit erature. Th e latter enabled Baudrillard to star t thinking of a re-r eading of Marxism th at would not be heavily influ enced by th e "authorized" Marxism of Sartre . In an int erview with critics Mik e Gane and Monique Arnaud , Baudrillard com m ents th at he knows German cult ure th oroughly (Gane, 199 3: 2 I) . He uses th e phrase "culture", rath er than b eing more specifi c with "lit erature" or "philosophy" , b ecaus e he want s to indicate his position as a th eorist on th e m argins of mainstream French int ellectu al thought; rath er th an having a traditional, systematic , phil osophi cal training (like on e of his key int ellectual rivals, Michel Foucault [1926- 1984]), Baudrillard t ook a far m ore cir cuitous route to success . No netheless, Baudrillard learnt German to read and translate som e of th e key texts, such as th e German romantics and th e philosophers Arthur Schop enh auer ( 178 8- 1860), Fri edrich Ni et zsche ( 1844- 1900) and Martin Heid egger ( 1889- 1976) (see Gane, 199 3: 21) . Baudrillard's m arginal institutional existe nce is paralleled by his later publi cations th at play at th e m argins of mainstream th ought. During th e 1960s, Baudrillard translated , am ong other things , works by th e playwrights Pet er Weiss ( 19 I 6- 198 2) and Bertolt Brecht ( 1898- 1956) . Th e influ en ce of Weiss is usu ally played down ; in fact , Baudrillard translated four important works : Poin te du Fuite (1964) , M arat l Sade ( 1965) , l.Instru ction (1966) and Di scours sur Ia qetiese et le derouletnen t de Ia tres lonque suerre de lib eration du Viet na m ( 1968) . Each of th ese texts combine cutting political statements with an under mining WHY BAUDRILLARD ?

3

4

WH Y BAUDRIL LARD ?

of stable points of view ; we can think of th em as precursors for Baudrillard's own approach to writing about th e world. Marat l5ade is a play constructed according to historical facts : th e murder of th e French r evolutionary lead er Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793) . Yet Weiss gives all this a complicated twist, because his play is about a performance of this murder in th e Asylum of Charenton, "direct ed" by th e Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) , who was onc e imprisoned in Charenton. Marat l5ade b ecomes a play located in th e historical r eal, but also on e th at dislo cat es history. Rob ert Cohen, critic and editor of Weiss' works in Th e German Library seri es , argues that such" ... a complex and disorienting structure tends to subvert attempts at assigning Marat l5ade a st able m eaning and gives it th e characteristics of a pr ecursor of a postmodern drama of playful arbitrariness and undecidability" (1998 : xiii-xiv). With Weiss' Marat l5ade, we have a new and int er esting form for th e exploration of political ideas, on e which strays far from th e typical Marxism that informed Weiss' thinking at th e time of th e play's development and production. Similarly, Baudrillard was exploring differ ent ways of performing Marxist analyses, and we can ti e in his work translating this play of "grotesque viol enc e and sexual excess" (Cohen, 1998 : xiv) with his int erest in th e French thinker Georges Bataille (1897-1962) . Georges Bataille during th e lat e 1920s and 1930s constructed a th eory of writing based upon th e "exc essive" what he called "het erogeneous m att er"- that is to say, wast e, excre ment , excess, th e illogical and th e unreasonable. In oth er words , he focus ed upon those ar eas of soci ety which grand philosophies ignore as part of th eir att empt to ris e abov e th e ever yday world. Initially Bataille's work was reject ed by th e dominant French thinkers of th e time, but he was "rediscovered" by a lat er wave of th eorists from th e 1960s onwards (Butler, 1999 : 4) . To understand Bataille, and th e new int er est in his work, is to understand th e way in which modern French thinkers react ed to th e constraints of H egel and Marx (see Chapters I and 4) ; in other words, we can situate a whole host of thinkers that include Baudrillard in on e stretch of narrative.

THIS BOOI< Th e Key Ideas section of this book will begin by exammmg Baudrillard's eme rgence from this stretch of narrative. Th e first

chapt er will exam ine th e way in which Bataill e's work was not only useful for Fre nch thinker s trying to escape from th e dominanc e of th e "grand" th eories and philosophi es in Franc e at th e time, but also how Baudrillard used th e ene rgies generated by th ese int ellectual debates to fuel his own ways of thinking. Th e following chapters exam ine th e ideas for which Baudrillard is b est kn own , placing th em overall in order of th eir development. Baudrillard's th esis text is examine d to m easure th e importance th at new technologies will have throughout his work; th en th e exte nsive referen ces to "primitive" soci eties ar e explore d , foll owed by a brief examination of th e role of Marxi sm in his early writing. Th ree chapte rs on postmodernism foll ow, exam ining conc epts such as th e hyp erreal , whi ch have becom e part of th e common currency of th e postmodern scene. While th e bo ok progr essively develops an under standing of Baudrillard's work, read er s may wish to jump st raight into a particular chapter t o help explain a particularly dem anding or problem ati c Baudrillardian text or idea. Th e Key Ideas section is followed by "After Baudrillard", a sho r t section examining th e importan ce and imp act of Baudrillard's work for contem po rary cr itical! cult ural th eori sts. Referenc e is made to th e ways in which Baudrillard and new techn ologies such as th e Int ernet are of int erest . Thi s b ook seeks not to repl ace Baudrillard's own work by "telling reader s wh at he says", but to pr ovid e a bridge to his ri ch and oft en challeng ing t exts. For this reason , th e b ook ends with a "Furth er Reading" section, whi ch begin s by listin g Baudrillard's works and providing som e information on each . A few helpful secondary texts are also listed , but th e em phasis is up on how useful th ese texts are in acco mpanying study of th e primar y works.

WHY BAUDR I LLARD?

5

KEY IDEAS

1 BEGINNINGS French thought In the 19608

In 1968 Jean Baudrillard published his fir st book with Editions Gallima rd , called Le Systeme des objets . Th e dat e of publicati on happ en s to be one of th e m ost infam ou s years in recent French history, with students and wo rkers ri sing up in polit ical prot est on a grand scale .Yet , it is no sur prise th at Baudrillard's book should coincide with such a date, because he is a thi nk er and w rit er who eme rges from , and forms part of, several significant stra nds in contempo rary French cult ure and th eor y. Thi s chapter will exam ine in som e detail th e com plicated network of phil osoph ical influ en ces up on Baudrillard's work, describing th e background of th e man wh o eme rges from an int ellectu ally and politically exciting (as well as dem anding) peri od .

INFLUENCE OF HEGEL Modern French phil osoph y, aside from th e do mi nanc e of Jean -Paul Sar tr c and Existentialism, spent much of it s int ellectual ene rgies with a rer eading of th e German phil osoph er Georg Wilhelm Friedric h Hegel ( 177 0- 183 1) . Hegel' s book The Phenomenology if Spirit had been translat ed int o Fren ch by Jean Hypp olit e from 1939 t o 1941. Two m assively influ ential books had foll owed : Hypp olit e' s own co mm entary, Genesis and Structure if Hegel 's Phenomenology if Spirit ( 1946) and Alexandre Kojevc's lecture series at th e Sorbonne (given 1933-1939), published

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K EY

IDEA S

as Introduction to th e Readina if Heqel ( 1947) . John Heckman , th e translator of th e English edition of Hyppolite's book, argues th at : ... although the postwar period is usually associated with the triumph of "existentialism " in the persons of Jean-Paul Sart re and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the moment of existentialism's triumph was also, in proper Hegelian form, the moment of its death. For the famous manifesto of the f irst number of Les temps modernes in Oct ober 1945, signaled a tu rn by Sart re and Merleau-Ponty away

fr om Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and t owards Hegel and Marx. (Hyppolite, 1974: xvi)

It could b e argue d th at Hyppolite, with his translation and comm en tar y, was on e of th e most influ ential teach er s of Hegel ; som e of th e most powerful po ststructuralists (see p. 16) - Gilles Deleuze, Jacques D errida and Mich el Foucault - studied under Hyppolite. So wh y was H egel so imp ortant? Thi s will prove crucial t o our under standing of Baudrillard , espe cially as it could be argue d th at his counter ing of Marx parallels Bataille' s earl ier count ering of Hegel. Without doubt , th e m ain reason for th e int er est in Hegel was th e fact th at his phil osophy, and espe cially th e noti on of th e dialectic, had heavily influen ced Marxism , whi ch was one of th e dominant political m ovem ent s in postwar Franc e .

DIALECTIC The Oxford Dictionary of Philo sophy defines dialectic as " ... a historical force, driv ing events onwards towards a progressive resolution of the contradictions that characterize each historical epoch " (Blackburn, 1996: 104).The word "dialectic" derives from Greek, and means " t o converse ", leading through philosophy to logical argumentation, where two oppos ing arguments or positions are "solved" by a third. This "third " argument or position becomes a new startin g point for a further logical argument, and so the dialect ic continues, ever driving forwards. Marxism comb ines Hegelian dialectics (or Hegel's dialectical insights int o the format ion of the human subject) with the insights of historical materialism. To put this another way, Hegel's theories of social structures are linked with economics, to

show

how societies evolve through class struggle.

According to Marxism, the end result of the dialectic is not Hegel's not ion of Absolute Spirit (or philosophy), but societies' attainment of communism.

MARXISM Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) published The

Communist Manife sto in 1848 with the openin g assertion that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Both men produced a number of key texts, but it was Marx's Das Kapital (first of three volumes published 1867) that became the mainstay for the political movement called Marxism. Marxism theorizes that economics is the determining factor in class struggle, and that Capitalism ultimately needs to be overthrown to liberate the working classes, who are maintained in a position of dependency to the industr ialized state.

It need s to be stressed th at , with Hegel' s dialecti c, politi cs and phil osophy inters ect . We can explore thi s in one of th e m ost famous passages of Hegel' s Phenomenology if Spirit - th e master/ slave section . Her e, Hegel is conc er ned with self-co nsciousness, and th e fact th at th e human subject can only be r ecogni zed as such th rough another human subject . Th e problem ar ises wh en "prim itive" human beings dem and recognition without return; th e stro ng individual want s t o be recognized as human , without realizing th at such a recognition is univ er sal (Taylo r, 1989 : 153) . For exam ple, we co uld have a per son wh o dem and s th at other s recogni ze his basic human right s; but th e per son th en fails to awa rd th e sam e human rights to those "others"! H egel argues th at at a primitive stage in th eir development thi s leads to a str uggle between two human subjects, whi ch ends for one of th em in death . But her e th e problem s begin: if th e st r uggle had not taken place, recogniti on would always have rem ain ed "outsid e" of th e human subject , in th e other human subj ect . But , with th e death of one of th e combatants , th er e is no activ e recognition from th at other subject, who no lon ger exists. What is th e solution t o thi s conundr um ? It would appear to be th e "giving in" of on e of th e combatants in th e str uggle to death , so, instead of losing th eir life, th ey lose freed om and become a

BEGI N NI NG S: FREN CH THOUGHT I N THE 19 605

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KE Y IDEAS

slave. Th e "master" now has a subj ect who reco gniz es his or her sup eri ority and th er efore identity. Charl es Taylor writes th at : "Th e full r elation of m aster and slave has to be understood with th e aid of a third t erm , material r eality" (1989 : 154) . In other words, th e mast er consumes his or her surroundings, th e mat eri al goods th at th e slave produces through hard struggle. As Taylor says: "Th e master's expe r ience is of th e lack of solid reality ... of things ; th e slave is th e on e who expe riences th eir ind ep endence and resistanc e as he works th em" (1989 : 154) . Ironically, thi s puts th e slave in a potentially superior position, becaus e th e master is reco gniz ed by a human being who has no oth er recognition th an through m aterial things . This b ecomes an indirect and "empty" reco gnition for th e m ast er, who want s to b e r eco gnized , crudely speaking , by som eone of th e sam e stat ure. Th e master has won and lost at th e sam e time. Th e slave exists through and for th e m aster, and thus has a kind of indirect recognition, but on e that is also structured by th e fear of death and th e discipline of un ending work ( 1989 : 154 ) .Taylor arg ues that : The short, three-page ... passage in whi ch Hegel deals with this is one of the most important in the Phenomenology of Spirit, for the themes are not only essential to Hegel's philosophy but have had a longer career in an altered f orm in Marxism. The underlying idea, tha t ser vitude prepares the ulti mate liber ation of the slaves, and indeed general liberation , is recognizably preserved in Marxism. But the Marxist notion of the role of wor k is also foreshadowe d here. (Taylor, 1989: 154-155)

Th e fear of death, for th e slave, makes him or her aware of hi s sit ua tion, whil e th e master becomes preoccupied with a passive consumption ; th e transformation of his m ateri al realit y through work makes th e slave aware th at he can chang e his world, in comparison with th e m ast er's passivity. Th ese two ti ed to geth er - th e fear of death and world-transformation through work - initi ate th e true selfconsciousness that will lead to th e slave 's ultimate liberation . As H egel argues, it is through work th at th e slave discov ers a mind of his or her own , and th at mind can be used to transform th e slave 's world in th e ways that he or she desires. Hegel' s dialectic is a vor acious thing : it is all-encompassing , allconsuming. Th e phil osoph er Martin Heid egger ( 1889- 1976) argued that th e m agnific enc e of th e dial ectic was becaus e it wasn't som ething

like a mill , into wh ich we pour our int ellectual pr oblems t o be solved by th e operation of th esis, an tithes is, synth esis (the ind ividual "mo m en ts" of th e dialectic). Rath er, our int ellectual probl em s are made apparent to us th rough , or b ecause of, th e workings of th e dialecti c (ano ther way of putting thi s is th at th e dialect ic m eans we can think in th e fir st place) (Heidegg er, 1988: 112) . Put thi s way, it has an un canny knack of pr eceding and answer ing all int ellectual m ovem ents and ideas. So, with th e m aster I slave narrative, th e dialecti c d oes not som ehow end or finish with th e abo ve outco m e . Instead , we m ove on to th e next stag e in human existe nce, where th e dialectic al pr ocess star ts all over again (we could say: th e dialecti c never rests) . Thi s is wh ere, for thinkers such as Bataille and Baudrillard, th e bigger problem s begin . H ow are we to think "outside" th e dialect ic? If it is a process th at never ends, you co uld say th at th ere is no outside . How are we to co unter such an imposing, all-consum ing phil osophi cal system ? Perhaps th e qu esti on mi ght be : If it is such a succ essful system, wh y might we want to counter it ? A qui ck answer would sugg est th at thinkers such as Bataille and Baudrillard ar e suspicio us of totalizing systems of th ought - th ey arg ue th at th er e are expe r iences in th e world th at canno t be subsum ed by th e dialectic, and som ehow operate at its limits, working (po ten tially) to fracture th e entire system, just as a sma ll crac k in a large bell can ultim ately destroy th e entire str ucture.

BATAILLE VS HEGEL In relati on to thi s readin g of Hegel , we can turn to th e essay "The No tion of Expenditur e", wh er e Bataill e tries to find a fracturing pr ocess. H e arg ues th at modern society is utilitari an , with two m ain strands of activity : th e produ cti on and conservation of goods, and th e reproducti on and conser vation of human life (Bataille, 1985: 116) . Consumption must be conserva tive, no t excessive, if it is to fit in with thi s ethos. H owever, Bataille recogni zes two catego ries of consump tion : th e mi nimum consum ption needed to con tin ue th e individual' s pr oductive life and th at of "unpro ductive expe nditures", of wh ich we are given som e exam ples: "luxury, m ourning, war, cults, th e constr uc tion of sum ptuary m onument s, gam es, specta cles, ar ts, perverse sexual activity ... ". Bataille arg ues th at all of th ese activities have "no end beyond th em selves" ( 1985 : 118) . A good exam ple is Pet er Weiss' play Marat l Sade, whi ch Baudrillard translated in 1965 . Cohen comm ents on BEGI N NI NG S: FRE N CH THOUGHT I N THE 19 60s

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"the play's turbulent sequ enc e of dance, pantomime, songs, and lita nies, performing acrobats, heroic tabl eaux, and by its displays of heat ed r evolutionary rh etoric disrupted by scen es of grotesque viol enc e and sexual excess" (Cohen , 1998 : xiv). Its scen es of viol enc e and excess ar e not arbitrary, rath er th ey ar e linked to th e Marquis de Sade's eight eenth-century anti -Enlightenment drive, replacing th e high est valu es of knowledge and reason with eroticism . So what we have with expe nditure and "unproductive activity" is a notion that might b e resistant to totalizing syst ems such as th e dial ectic, because wast eful activity is difficult to bring back "within" rigid syst ems of thought and behaviour. At th e very least, expenditure brings us to th e limits of th e dial ectic. Bataille's most famous example of th e notion of expe nditure is that of th e Canadian northwest coast nativ e process called th e potlatch. Th e potlatch is a cer emony th at usually takes plac e at transitional moments such as puberty, weddings and fun erals. Th e fundamental process involv es th e giving of excessive gifts to th e attendees, gifts that have considerable value. Bataille notes that : Potlatch excludes all bargaining and, in general, is const it ut ed by a considerable gift of riches, offe red openly and with the goal of humili ating , defying and obligating a rival. The exchange value of the gift results from the f act that the donee, in order to efface the humilia tion and respond to the challenge, must satisfy the obligation (incu rred by him at the time of acceptance) to respond later with a more valuable gift, in other words to return with interest. (1985: 121)

What int er ests Bataille is th e fact that giving is not th e only component in th e potlatch ; a more powerful act is that of th e destruction of wealth, which r eunites th e potlatch" .. . with religious sacrifice, sinc e what is destroyed is th eoretically offer ed to th e mythical ancestor s of th e donees" (1985 : 121) . Clearly, this is not a syst em which r each es th e ideal of non- exchange and thus anti -utilitarianism, or a kind of pure loss (which pr esumably would halt th e dial ectic in its tracks) . Inst ead , it is on e which operates at the limits of th e utilitarian, crossing back and forth between th e economic and th e un economic, th e rational and th e spiritual, th e productive and th e unproductive. Thus Bataille notes how wealth is not ultimately lost by th e potlatch, but actually inflated (it works like credit in this sens e) ; but such inflation of wealth is as it were a side

effect of th e instit ution of potl atch , and it is no t th e result wh en physical destructi on takes place because th ere is spiritu al, not materi al, gain : " .. . wealth appears as an acquisition to th e exte nt th at power is acquire d by a rich man , but it is entirely direct ed toward loss in th e sense th at thi s power is charac t erized as power to lose. It is only through loss th at glo ry and honor are linked to wealth " ( 1985 : 122). Baudrillard recognizes Bataille as a key thinker who can go beyond th e strictures of Hegel and Marx not in a sim plistic sense of "oppos ing" Hegel or Marx (because th en as an "antithesis" such oppos ition can be subsum ed by th e dialectic to reach a "higher" position which has conser ved th e or iginal values in th e process), bu t in th e m ore radical, cr eative sens e of working at th e limits of H egelian and / or Marxi st th ought. Lat er, we will see how Baud rill ard uses th e noti on of expe nditure or waste (depense) in his book Cons umer Society, and how th e potl atch r elates to th e no tion of "symbo lic exchange" (see Chapter 3) .

INFLUENCE OF MAY 1968 AND VIETNAM Th e int er est in Bataille amo ngst French thi nkers signalled a wi der int er est in anthro po logy. Behind Bataillc' s noti on of expe ndit ure or waste, we find a work of anthropology by Mar cel Mauss ( 1872- 1950) called The Gift . And with th e m ove of French th ou ght away from Sar trc because of a reacti on against autho rized m odes of polit ical th ought , we find th e str ucturalist anthropo log ist Claude Levi-Strauss ( 1908-) . In 1958, Levi -Str auss had publi shed a book whi ch many would claim as deeply influ enti al - th e book was called Anthropolocie structurale (Structural AntbropoloBY)' a m anifest o for a m ovem ent th at would gain rapid str eng th .

STRUCTURALISM An intellectual movement that paid particular attention to the theories of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), who made a number of key assertions in a lecture serie s delivered at the University of Geneva, publ ished posthumously as the Cours de Iinguistique generale (1915; published in English 1971). Saus sure argued that the sign was compo sed of a signifier ("sound-image") and signified ("concept"). His key point, however, was that signs do not stand in for th ings, or objects in the world, and that the

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connection between a sign, such as "cat", and the object in the world, such as a furry domestic animal, is arbitrary. What this means is that the sign functions, or works for us, because it is part of a system of signs. The system generates or "makes" meaning, and it does this through difference. In other words, the sign "cat" has a meaning because in the system we call "language", it is different from the sign "dog". Note that we do not have to discuss furry domestic animals to think about the generation of meaning here. Structuralists are interested in the way that sign-systems work. There are many sign-systems to explore, from advertising to culinary systems (different cultural approaches to food). However, structuralists usually go beyond the "semiotic" level of signs themselves, to think about the way such systems function in the world, in relation to other issues such as ideology or philosophy. Also, the structuralist approach can be taken to mean a general interest in systems, or a way of perceiving cultural artefacts, events and theories as systems. For example, the early works of the famous French theorist Michel Foucault (1926-1984) were widely regarded as structuralist, although he strenuously denied this.

POSTST RUCTU RAllS M If Saussure had identified some radical ways of thinking about language and signs (e.g. meaning is "arbitrary"), it was the poststructuralist thinkers Derrida, Foucault and Lacan who examined the impact or effect of this radicality upon the world . Derrida examined the philosophical attitudes to writing and issued his infamous statement that "there is nothing outside the text"; Foucault examined the histories of madness, incarceration and sexuality, to show the links between power and knowledge; and Lacan re-read Sigmund Freud (the inventor of psychoanalysis), theorizing the "mirror stage" and the importance of the symbolic. Followers of these and other continental theorists are loosely termed "poststructuralist"; their ideas came to the fore in the 1980swith the rise of "theory" in university humanities departments.

In a cartoon sketch by Maurice Henry published in La Qyin zaine l.itteraire in 1967, we see four central structuralist thinkers : Michel

Fouc ault, Jacques Lacan (190 I- 198 I) , Claude Levi-Strauss and Rol and Barthes (19 15-1980) . Th e last two were th e m en who would b e considered structuralist through and through ; th e first two were

heavily influenc ed by structuralist th eories, and ar e known as poststructurali sts becaus e of this influence and th e fact that th ey th en went beyond it . Foucault, in his early work, claim ed affiniti es which he would lat er deny, and Lacan , th e psychoanalytical thinker, used structuralism to produce his seminar seri es published as fcrits. Didi er Eribon notes that, sinc e th e beginning of th e 1960s in Franc e, every issue of every intellectual review not dedicated entirely to it had contained at least some mention of structuralism : structuralism and Marxism, structuralism against Marxism, structuralism and existentialism, structuralism against existentialism . Some promoted it; some opposed it; some were determined to come up with a synthesis . Everybody, in every area of intelle ctual life , took a position . Rarely had culture bubbled and seethed with more intensity. (1991: 160)

One of th e key issu es which culture "bubbled and seeth ed" about was that of th e "syst em" . Lacan had argued that th e unconscious was structured like a language, and it would gen erally b e agreed within structuralist circles that th e human subj ect is born into syst ems of m eaning. This is a reversal of what is known as th e liberal humanist position, wh er e th e human subj ect has "essential" qualities, and "genius" that can gen erate significant m eanings or works of art which proj ect such essentiality. Another way of thinking about this position is in rela tion to biographical criticism , which oft en argue s th at all th e "m eaning" in a seri es of novels or paintings , for exam ple , can be traced back to th e person who constructed th em . Th e structuralist position would argue that human beings ar e alr eady part of syst ems of thought that enable th em to construct various works, and so on . If th e syst em pr eced es th e subj ect, th en th e lib er al humanist genius or more gen eral conc eption of "man" is effaced , "lik e a face drawn in sand at th e edge of th e sea", as Foucault writes at th e clos e of The Order ?!Thinas in 1966 (published in English 1974) . Structuralism also rejects Hegelian teleology, or th e notion that th e signification of something is gen erated by its goal or end (a tel eological syst em must keep moving forwards) . Think about th e fact that Baudrillard lived through th e implem entation of th e Monnet Plans (see pp . 2-3) - th ey dem anded that people direct th eir working lives according to a syst em . Th e French subj ect would be defin ed through his or her rel ation to th e Plans, which in turn had m eaning b ecaus e of th eir goal (modernization and great er productivity) . BEGI N NI NG S: FRENCH THOUGHT I N THE 1 9 6 0 s

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It is worth considering th e fact that structuralist debates in th e classrooms and lecture th eatres had a direct relation to changes in soci ety, and that th eorists such as Baudrillard would have expe rienced th e knock-on effects of such changes in ever yday life . John Ardagh notes how th e publication of Michel Foucault's Les Mot s et les cboses (Tbe Order if Tbinas) sent minor shockwaves throughout French soci ety becaus e of its perc eived m essage replacing Ni etzsche's and Sartrc's ath eistic approaches (the now notorious notion of th e "d eath of God") with th e "d eath of man" (1977 : 549). Just as Sartre had attacked Levi -Strauss, now Foucault would attack Sartre, saying that Sartre.'s "La critique de la raison dial ectique is th e m agnific ent and pathetic effor t of a nin et eenth-century man to conceive of th e twentieth century" (Eribon, 1991 : 161) . Sartrc's readings of lit erature and lit erary figur es also cam e under attack, because he had int erpret ed fictional works in t erms of political engage me nt . Th e new appro ach to lit erary criticism and structuralist or poststructuralist philosophical enquir y, which would lat er be simply called "theory", r eject ed th e notion of "eng agem ent" in a simplistic sens e. Thus th e critics gather ed in th e journal Tel Qyel (1960-1983) would first mov e away from Sartre simply by focusing on lit erature, and th en arguing that "engag em ent" could be read at th e level of form (Ffr ench, 1995 : 35) . During this period , acad emic disputes gain ed notoriety and newspaper headlines . For example , th e dispute between Roland Barthes and Raymond Picard (a Sorbonne lecturer) was essentially about th e differ enc es b etween traditional lit er ary appro ache s and th e new th eory. However, "th eory" as such was not complet ely uniform and homogen eous : it, too, had its divisions, and th ey would become clear er as th e 1960s progressed . Th e "clash of cultures" would be rep eat ed from another perspective in 1968, with th e qu estion: ... as to whether the "spont aneous" and "act ive" uprising of May 1968 had, or had not, disp roved the whole dete rminist basis [that choices are made in advance because of a system] of structuralism. Anti-stru cturalists eagerly seized on the May explosion as a chance to refute a philosophy they hated . (Ard agh, 1977: 550)

Baudrillard was teaching at Nanterre at th e time of th e 1968 student uprising - exactly wh er e it started, putting him, to use Mik e Cane's phrase, "at th e centre of th e brewing storm" (Gane, 1993 : 2). At this

time Baudrillard was qu estioning Marxism from a structuralist perspective, th e latter being applied in his 1968 th esis publication The System if Objects. So which side of th e structuralist debat e do es Baudrillard argue from in May 1968 ? Can we analyse whether May 1968 refutes or confirms th e structuralist position, providing Baudrillard with a model to work from, or with, in lat er analyses and publications?

VIETNAM As noted , in 1968 Baudrillard published a Fre nch translation ofWeiss' play Discours sur la s enese et le deroulement de la tres lotique suerre de liberation du Vietnam , translated into English as th e slightly less unwieldy Discourse on Vietnam (translated by Geoffrey Skelton in 1970) . Weiss' play was a powerful, Marxist condemnation of th e war in Vietnam , directly implicating and att acking Am erican involv em ent. Unlike th e complex aesthetics of expe nditure found in Marat / Sade, in this play Weiss sugg ests th at th e capitalist syst em expe nds or "w ast es" economic surplus to defend its own imp eri alist regime. Th e play do es not just condemn Am erican aggre ssion in Vietnam, it also highlights th e fact that this was th e first real "television" war. Through th e m edia, th e propaganda machine was brought into conflict with th e dissemination of critical, anti-war perspectives . We will turn to Baudrillard's commentary on th e m edi a and May 1968 below (see pp . 21-24) . For th e moment, we can see how Weiss' play embodies th e position taken by activists and espe cially student activists across th e world as th e Vietnam War (1959-1973) became an int ernational issue. Som e commentators have argue d th at this int ernational sens e of student revolt and r ejection of authority emb odied by attitude s towards th e US led to more local or national unrest , such as we find in Franc e. Others have argu ed th at more mundane issues wer e primarily r esponsible for local activity. Maurice Larkin notes that an opinion poll of French students taken in Nov ember 1968 " . . . revealed th at 56 per cent beli eved that th e May upheavals essentially represented anxiety over future em ployme nt , 35 per cent felt that inad equate univ ersity facilities were primarily to blam e, whil e only 12 per cent saw it as an att empt to transform soci ety " (1991 : 318) . Perhaps anothe r way of formulating this opinion poll is in relation to th e way an idealizing, modernizing, forc e in French soci ety had come up against th e ar chaic BEGINNING S: FRENCH THOUGHT IN THE 19 60s

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structures of a pr evious age : nowher e was this more appare nt th an in th e education syst em .

EDUCATION AND REVOLUTION Belat ed educational reforms in lin e with th e modernizing society cam e most forc efully in 1965 , with th e work of th e Minister for Education, Christian Foucher . Th e m ain imp etus was in th e realm of th e baccalaureat , whi ch was th e highly academ ic passport to univ er sit y and later employment. Th e m ain criticism of th e baccal au teat was that it was too ri gid in t erms of subj ect m att er and left students who failed it without vocational training. Fouchet was largely responsible for updatin g th e baccalaureat; removing huge chunks of philosophical materi al and updatin g it with modern subjects such as econom ics and sociology (Ardagh , 1977: 469--470) . Th e baccalaureat system did , however, guar antee entrance to univ ersity if a student passed , unlike th e more selective procedures found in countr ies such as Brit ain , and this in turn led to exte nsive drop -out rat es amo ngst undergr adu ate students. Between 1967 and 1968 , for exam ple , France had increased its student number by 56, 000, to over 500, 000 , but th e failure rat e was over 50 per cent (Lar kin, 1991: 318-3 19). Th e student numbers may have expande d , but institutional resources, buildings , m ateri als and new t each er s wer e all laggin g b ehind . N ew univ er sities wer e const r uct ed, as well as an "overspill" campus for Pari s Univ er sit y, called Na nt er re, where Baudrillard taught from 1966. Th e environme nt at N ant crre has b een described as bl eak and inhuman , "a desert of glass and steel" (Ardagh, 1977: 50 1). It was th e politi cal activists studying th ere who r eally shoo k th e place up : Dani el Cohn- Bendit is th e nam e most frequently cit ed in relati on to th e unrest at Na nt er rc amongst th e Anar chist , Trotskyit e and Maoi st gro ups . With th e 1968 att empted assassination of th e German student radical lead er Rudi Dutschk e by right-wingers in Berlin , student unrest explode d . Na nter re militants mov ed th eir activities to th e Sorbonne afte r th e closure of Nan ter re on 2 May (Lar kin , 1991: 320) . Was student unr est th e sign of a bigger, possibly global, desire for political revolution ? Wo uld thi s put to rest str uc turalist notions of powerfully embe dded systems th at org anize society ? Most com m entato rs not e how th e mainly middle-class student uprising did int ers ect with working-class conc er ns to a cer tain exte nt . But thi s int er secti on was shor t-lived and never really anything more, as

Cohn-Bendit suggested, with his "revolutiona ry detonati on" th eor y (Larkin, 1991 : 32 1) . In other words, th e st udent uprising would "trigger" or initi ate a ser ies of bigger politi cal events, whi ch in itself suggests th at th e st udents and worker s wer e not as coordinat ed as television pictures of th e unrest might have m ade apparent . Thi s is not to say th at str ikes on a vast scale did not occur; as Larkin not es, " . . . by 20th Maya large segm ent of th e pr ivat e secto r was also in th e grip of a general str ike, and overall number s escalate d within a few days to a stagg er ing ten million" ( 199 1: 323) . Riot police engaged in aggressive tactics, and public unrest int en sified . By 24 May, ri ots and demo nstra tion s wer e occur r ing through out Franc e, not just th e capital. It would be accurate to say th at th e st udent uprising of 196 8 coincided with m ore general co ncer ns in th e coun try, such as th e 1967 recession and th e ri se in un employm ent number s; union action incr eased to th e boilin g point of 1968 . But th e workers wer e dem andi ng som ething quite different from th e radi cal student activists , who wer e arguing, cr udely speaking, for conditions th at th e worker s never really felt applied to th em : b etter educational conditions, and/ or widespread political revolution .Th e uni on s want ed ever yday conditions to improve for th eir m ember s, and th e politi cal backlash in June, with de Gaulle 's triumphant r eaffirmation of power, cam e aft er th e r et urn of m ost workers to th e fact or y floor (Lar kin, 1991 : 323 -3 27) . Baudrillard comm ents up on th e 1968 uprising in a chapt er called "Requiem for th e Medi a" in his bo ok For a Critiq ue if the Political Economy if the Sian ( 1972) . He calls th e transgr essive student action at Nanter re in May "symbo lic": ... at a given time in a given place , an act of radical rupture was invented - or ... a particular response was invented the re, where the institutions of administrative and pedagogical power were engaged in a pri vate aratoria and functioned precisely to interdi ct any answer. (1981: 174)

Baudrillard is suggesting her e th at th e uni ver sit y is a sit e of kn owl edge transmi ssion , with no inbuilt space for exchanges of view s or alter native positi on s. Indeed , in relati on t o thi s, one of th e key conce r ns with th e baccalaureat system leadin g up to univ ersity was th at it was so int en se, w ith such a large volume of m ateri al to be passed on to th e st udents, th at th e teacher primaril y becam e a one-way street of BEG I N N I N G S : F R EN e H THO UGH TI N THE 1 9 6 0 s

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information, with little or no di alogue in th e classroom or elsewh er e, e .g. soci al event s or spor t s. Baudrillard , however, is pointing to a wider conc eption of the id eol ogi cal problems involved in the univer sity syst em , which functions in the pre-1968 scenar io by a code th at d eni es r esponse or ex change at a fundam ental level (in other words, in st ead of b ein g th e r esult of a problem, like the baccal a ureat , the problem is "inbuilt") .The events at N anterre ar e "symbolic" b ecaus e th ey "rupture" thi s tran smis sion of th e cod e ; they not onl y di srupt th e econ omy of learning, but th ey att em pt t o install dialogu e in st ead of th e acade m ic monologues th ey r epl ace. Th e "symbolic" is a notion which fun ctions lik e Bataille's "was t e" or "exc ess" - th e notion of expenditure that att em pts t o fracture th e H egelian dial ecti c. The ex cessive nature of th e stud ent unrest gen era t es a lar ge part of its effects: it is extrem ely sp ec t acul ar in its di sruption and "d est r u ct ion" of normal ever yday society. The "event" itself is sym b olic , n ot th e larger -scale ser ies of event s or "results", which th e m edi a and others th en try and control through their interpret ations. Baudrillard asks : What w as th e role of th e m edi a in th e 1968 uprising ? H e arg u es th at th e naive position is to con ceive of th e m edi a as eithe r oppr essive and in n eed of r eform (even t akin g over), or as h elping the p olitical unrest by spr eading or di sseminating the political m essage. Both of th ese positions ar e, according to him , sim ply incorr ect . H e stat es : May '68 will serve well enough as an example. Everything would lead us to believe in the subversive impact of the media during this period . Suburban radio stations and newspapers spread the student action everywhere. If the students were the detonators, the media were the resonators. Furthermore, the autho rities quite openly accused the media of "playing the revolut ionary game." ". I would say to the contrary that the media have never discharged their responsibilities with more efficiency, and that

in their f unct ion of

habitual social cont rol, they were r ight on top of the action . (1981: 173)

What is wrong with th e m edi a di sseminating kn owl edge of th e events? The answe r is th at what sh ould have a "n atura l" rh ythm - th e unfolding of a complex number of actions as p eople m ake th eir ow n deci sion t o join th e students - is vastly accelerat ed by the m edi a . Th e m edi a is int er est ed only in a sing ular im age of "r evolution " which can b e r epro -

duced endlessly; in accel eration and reproduction of th e singular, th e complexities of events on th e street are "short-circuited" and thus degraded. Further, th e typ e of communicative exchange that Baudrillard idealizes at Nanterre and on th e streets is apparently available via th e m edia: but this is an illusion, sinc e th e m edia" .. . are what always prevents response, making all processes of exchange impossible . . . except in th e various forms of response simulation, th ems elves int egrate d in th e transmission process . . ." (1981 : 170) . In other words, th e m edia its elf is a on e-w ay street, or its form is analogous to precisely thos e educational structures that th e students wer e r eacting against. In discussing th e power of such a on e-way street, Baudrillard refers in passing, without explaining further, to how in "primitive" soci eti es, power belongs to those who give but cannot be repaid; we will come back to this below (and clearly we can think about this int ers ection or economy of power/knowledg e in relation to th e work of Foucault) . Do es Baudrillard give an example of a m edia which escape s all of th ese problems ? In a passage which is regarded by many critics as naive, and perhaps slightly absurd (giv en his lat er work), Baudrillard do es make som e sugg estions: The real revolutionary media during May were the walls and their speech , the silk-screen posters and the hand-painted notices, the street where speech began and was exchanged - everything that was an immediate inscription , given and returned , spoken and answered , mobile in the same space and time, reciprocal and antagonistic. The street is, in this sense, the alternative and subversive form of the mass media, since it isn't, like the latter, an objecti fied support f or answerless messages, a transmission system at a distance. (1981: 176)

Thus, to try and tak e over (or revers e th e processes) of th e m edia is futil e, b ecaus e its form remains th e sam e, and that is precisely what Baudrillard is analysing here. Baudrillard, like Bataille, is int erest ed in th e marginal reaching of th e limits, wh er e institutionalized structures are shaken and possibly destroyed . In Baudrillard's lat er work on postmodernism, we will see this optimism fade, although limits are still discuss ed and explored . In using elem ents of structural analysis and anthropological knowledge to analyse th e role of th e m edia during May 1968, Baudrillard is suggesting th at th e structuralist vs Marxism oppositional qu estion is BEG INN I N G S:

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too simply put. Rejecting simplistic political models of "overturning", Baudrillard in th e process also critiques contemporary communication th eory. Many of th e issues that occur lat er in Baudrillard's work are alr eady pr esent her e, such as th e notion of simulation (see Chapter 5), where th e m edia ar e "simulating" audi ence or "participant" response (e.g. th e so-called "public refer endum"). We could argue that, whil e Baudrillard clearly valu es a communicative situation that ruptures simulation, with a return as such to symbolic exchange relating to premodern (or "primitive") soci ety, he is also aware of th e anachronistic nature of such a rupture . Th e modernizing of France, in larg e part via th e succ essive Monnet Plans, was by 1968 a virtually irreversible process. Th e Monnet Plans were th ems elves pr eprogrammed simulations of success: onc e launched into th e public domain, it was up to "r eality" to fall into lin e with th e indicative future. Looking at Baudrillard's System if Objects, we can see how th e new mat erials of modern France ar e those which would hardly have b een noticed by H egelians, existe ntialists and Marxists. As a thinker and writer working in th e int ers ecting int ellectual domains sketched out abov e, however, Baudrillard is able to locate th e areas of contemporary life that are in need of analysis. Thus we find him m editating on modular furnitur e and glass, antiques, gadg ets and robots, to pick just a few subj ects from his 1968 publication. Perhaps it is her e that we can trace an early int er est in Am erica; a technocratic France kn ew that it had much to learn from th e most modern nation in th e world, but th e French also fear ed th e possible damage to their own culture that could result from too clos e an involv em ent in th e US (Ardagh , 1977 : 704) .Th e following chapter exam ine s th e central role of technology in Baudrillard's thought.

SUMMARY We have seen in this chapter how the dominance of Hegel in postwar France led initially to the prevalence of Marxism and existent ialism. Hyppo lite, who translated Hegel, was also the teacher of some of the new thinkers, such as Derr ida and Foucault. They were int erest ed in different ways of int ersecti ng react ions to Hegel with stru cturalism. A key f igure for the new th inkers was Bataille, whose theories of " unproduct ive expenditure" and excess ive behaviour were aimed at countering the Hegelian dialectic. Baudrillard regarded the political unrest of May 1968, with student and worker upr isings, as something that tested the opposin g theor ies of Marx ism and structural ism. He suggested that the two theories needed to be brought together, in the process identifying new areas of int ellect ual analysis in modern France.

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2 THE TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF OBJECTS

One of th e keys to Baudrillard's work is th e analysis of technology explore d in his first published book, The System if Objects, which is th e focus her e. This chapt er first examine s Baudrillard's noti ons of speed , "fuzzy" logic and automatism , and th en goes on to exam ine th e "gizmo" and th e "gadget", thinking about th e ways in which th e technological object becom es design ed according to human fant asy and desire . Technology is th en related to som e early ver sion s of Baudrillard's notion of "th e symbolic", and the argum ent conclud es wi th a mapping out of th e new technological space of th e "hyper ma r ket".

TECH NOLOGY One of th e key components th at str uctures th e postmodern world (or psyche) is technology. From th e earliest science fiction nov el , tech nology has stood in for th e future, th e radically new or different , and th e obsession of all ultramodern societies. We defin e our societies by th e technologies used , b e th at defini tion "stone age" or "computer age", and generally fit such descr ipt ions into linear, progressive m od els of technological advancement . But we ar e also aware th at narratives of progr ession rar ely examine th e fuzzy edges of technology - th e built-in redundancy of consum er obj ects , th e ways in which outmode d m edi cines and m ilitar y technologies are offioaded to th e developing world ,

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the ways in which id eol ogical battles ar e suppo r t ed (or gen era te d) by t echnology r aces, from the Co ld War t o Star War s (50 1), and so on . While th er e is a di sjuncti on in th e W est b etween those who embr ace n ew t echnologies (e .g. th e cur r ent expan sion of gen etic engineer ing in cro ps) and those who r eject th em (e .g. th e ri se in th e eco-pro te ste r ) , suc h a m assive eithe r/ or binar y fr act uring rar ely go es b eyond th e gra nd narrativ es of t echnol ogy as r ed em ptive (saving th e world) or ap ocalyptic (destroyi ng th e world) . Som e th eorists have argue d th at p ostmod ernity itself splits into those who suppo r t "so ft" and "ha rd" t echnologies ; th e former m ay involve a r eturn t o prem od ern agricultural pract ices synth esized w ith the b est in cont em po ra ry kn owledge of cro p producti on , th e latter m ay involve a vision of a cyb er n etic future, wher e th e m er gin g of orga nic and ar tificial worlds is achieved through n ew com put er t echnol ogi es. All of th ese optio ns and conc epts of t echnol ogy have fascinat ed Baudrillard, espe cially th e w ays in which the subj ect expe r ien ces t echnol ogy as part of ever yday life in th e present . It go es without saying th at Baudrillard cr itiqu es the grand na r ra tives of t echnol ogical progression and apocalyps e, preferring inst ead t o m ap out in minute det ail th e im pac t of t echnol ogical objects . In Chapt er 4, w e will di scu ss th e shift in Baudrillard's w ork fr om no tions of producti on t o th ose of consum ption and th e w ay in which this lead s t o a cr itique of Marxism . In thi s chapt er w e will exam ine th e r ol e t echnologi cal objects have played in Baudrillard's w ork, espe cially in r elati on t o the tran siti on from m od ern to p ostm od ern so ciety.

MODERNISM An art istic movement that began at the turn of the twentieth century, and was heavily influenced by the events and experiences of World War I (1914-1918). In the art world there were many modernist movements, including Cubism, Futurism , Vorticism, Surrealism and Primitivism. All of these movements reflected the new ways that human beings existed in, and experienced, an industrialized, technological world. For example, Cubism fractures or shatters the human form, while Futurism celebrates the speed of the factory production line and the automobile. In literature, modernists were intensely interested in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis,

and explored the int erior subjectiv ity w ith new techn iques such as i nt erior monologue and stream of consc iousness. Key authors inc lude T.S. Eli ot (The Waste Land), James Joyce (Ulysses) and Virgin ia Woolf (Mrs Dalloway

and To the Lighthouse) .

EMERGENCE OF A CONSUMER SOCIETY One of Baudrillard's most sustained analyses of technological objects occurs in The System if Objects. But it would be a mi stake to read thi s analysis in terms of com m ents on postmod ernism. In The System if Objects Baudrillard is looking at th e eme rgence of consum er soci et y in th e newly modernized or "m oder n" Franc e . Am eri ca is a model for Franc e at thi s stag e, but it is still a fairl y distant on e, without th e immediacy of th e later texts. Fur ther, Baudrillard is still deeply con cerned with other m od els - those of production - and he has yet t o work out a more coherent th eory of consumption . In m any respect s it is as if he is mapping out th e consumer wo rld in advance of th e critique of Marxism , and it is in th e process of "m apping" th at th e tools for that cr itique will be found . Using a fairly traditional notion of th e shift towards autom atism , Baudrillard starts to th eori ze th e m od ern, m echanisti c obj ect . In looking at th e craz e for antiques, Baudrillard notes how what ever is lacking in th e human subj ect is invested in th e obj ect (1997 : 82) . For exam ple , som eo ne wh o desires social status might bu y a stately home, or, on a smaller scale, th e art obj ects th at would be found in a statel y home, such as "ancestral" portraits, which th e new owner passes off as belongin g to his or her own famil y. Th er e is a furth er complication , though : th e form of th e obj ect is not necessarily relat ed to its utilitarian function. In th e exam ple of th e huge Am erican cars of th e 1950s , with m assive "tail fins", th e fins th ems elves represent speed, but in actuality are counterproductive in terms of dr ag and th e real velocity attainable - th e fins are thus representativ e of a fant asy of aerodynami cs (e.g. based upon th e shape of aeroplanes) : Tail fins were a sign not of real speed but of a sublime, measureless speed. They suggested a miraculous automat ism, a sort of grace. It was the presence

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of these f ins that in our imagination propelled the car, which, thanks to them, seemed to f ly along of its own accord ... (1997 59)

Th e speed gen er ated by th ese fins is thus "absolute"; th at is, speed which can never degen erate into th e real because it belongs to th e abst ra cte d hyp erreal.

HYPER REAL Baudrillard argues that there are three levels of simulation, where the first level is an obvious copy of reality and the second level is a copy so good that it blurs the boundaries between reality and representation. The third level is one which produces a reality of its own without being based upon any particular bit of the real world. The best example is probably "virtual reality ", which is a world generated by computer languages or code. Virtual reality is thus a world generated by mathematical models which are abstract entities. It is this third level of simulation, where the model comes before the constructed world, that Baudrillard calls the hyperreal.

An example of "absolute" speed is th e contem porar y public-road "sports car" , which act ually goes slower th an , or at th e sam e speed as, a turbo -charged famil y salo on ; th e famil y saloon looks like th e slow er of th e two and would never be owned by som eone wh o wants to be iden tifi ed as "living in th e fast lane" . Th e latt er per son has bought int o th e "absolute" speed represented by th e for m of his or her vehicl e, not th e act ual performance on th e m ot orway or wh en stuc k in heavy traffic in th e city. Th e wider point th at Baudrillard is makin g is th at th e "mirac u lou s autom atism " represented by th e fun cti on ally useless tail fins is seriously cou nter pro ductive, yet becom es a necessity for th e consum er via th e m anufactu rer's promise th at her e is som ething pr ogressively "b etter" to own (these tail fins are bigger so thi s car is closer to fulfilling your dream s) . Auto ma tism is presented to th e consum er as t echn ological progr ession , wh ereas Baud rill ard immediately cr itiques it , with refer en ce to wh at now seems like an incredibly ar chaic example : th e shift from th e aut om obile star ting handl e t o batt er y-

op erated ignition . Baudrillard argues that this shift unnecessarily complicates th e autom obile as machine, making it dep endent upon a battery which is "external" to th e m echanical syst em, making it more prone to failure - e.g. a dead battery m eans that th e car cannot b e easily started - and simply more complicated . However, in t erms of th e grand narrative of technological progression, cars with starting handles now seem hilariously outmoded and outdated , belonging to dist ant m emories of Keystone Cops movi es and mus eum pieces, wh ereas electronic ignition is a marker of th e modern. Th e grand narrative, which touts aut oma tism as th e vector of progression, subordin at es "r eal" functionality to th e stereotype of functionality. What Baudrillard m eans by this is that th e ideal of abstra cte d automatism e.g. perfect ed distant ease of use and ideal speed - dictates how th e machine will be built , even if it m eans sacrificing som e other improvem ent or radical design differ enc e. As an example of this we can think about th e way in which manufacturers resist ed th e introduction of unl ead ed petrol in Britain, which belonged to anothe r forthcoming gr and narrative, that of enviro nme ntal and ecological protection .

"FUZZY" LOGIC Th e next shift in th e technological obj ect that Baudrillard discuss es is that of "indet erminacy", or th e fuzzy logic which allow s a machine to respond to random outside information (1997 : III) . Inst ead of th e clos ed syst ems that automatism gene rate s in th e example of th e abstract ed teleology of th e autom obile , ind et erminate machines are op en -ended syst ems . An exam ple of such an op en- ended syst em might be an environme ntally fri endly temper ature control syst em in an office building that responds automatically to changes in th e weath er rather than needing int ernal, human control. However, such a syst em is still dominated by th e abstract ideal of automatism (th e building works by itself), however op en to chang e it might b e, and it is this aspect of th e technological obj ect that Baudrillard argues gives th e subj ect th e most pleasure: "For th e user, automatism m eans a wondrous absence of activity, and th e enjoyme nt this procures is comparable to that derived, on another plane, from seeing without being seen : an esote r ic satisfac tion expe rienced at th e most ever yday level" (1997 : III) . Th e automated machine working away by itself and able to make basic deci sions of its own is inevit ably seen to be analogous to th e subj ect, which THE TEe H N 0 L O G I CAL S Y S T E M 0 FOB J E C T S

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b ecomes "a new anth ropom orphism" (like a human b eing) . Where earl ier m od ern technologies were conc er ned with th e utilitari an r eproduction of m ore efficient tool s and enclosing techn ologies, such as th e office and hom e environment , th e new anthro po mor phic tech nologies ar e con cerned with auto nomous conscio usness, abstra cte d power and identity. But, again, thi s may appe ar to be a radi cal step forwards in th e grand narrative of progr ession , whereas in realit y, for Baudrillard , thi s is ano ther m om ent of standing still . Aut om atism now has th e human subject as th e ideal to be striving t owards, and th e human subject becomes th e next barrier to th e devel opm ent of th e t echn olo gical object, because of th e "over signification" of th e human subject : Man, f or his part , by automating his objects and rendering them multi-functional instead of striving to structure his practices in a f luid and open-ended manner, reveals in a way what part he himself plays in a technical society: that of the most beautiful all-purpose object , that of an inst rumental object. (1997: 112)

In other words, th e subject not only bl ocks th e development of th e t echn olo gical obj ect but is revealed to be an object him self or herself within contem po rary society.

FUNCTIONALITY In th e m od ern age, how fun cti onal are th e techn ological objects th at sur ro und us? Have th ey pen etrated our ever yday practi ces to make a substan tive difference to th e way we lead our lives, or is thi s difference one of surface effect , or nam entation ? Baudrillard anno unc es in The System if Objects th at in many respects it is th e baroque th at is th e truly inauguratin g moment of th e modern age . In other words, th er e is no true development of th e techn ological object, ju st a kind of abstrac tion (objects becom e m ere lifestyle accessories), whi ch Baudrillard equate s with th e ar chite ctural style of ornam entation th at pr evailed in Euro pe from th e late sixteenth to early eighteenth cent ur ies . In th e cont em po rar y world , th e obj ect is now taken over by th e im agin ar y. Thus auto matism" ... opens th e door to a whole world of fun ctional delu sion, to th e entire range of manufactured objects in which a role is played by irrati onal com plexity, obsessive detail , ecc entric technicity

or gratuitous formalism" (1997 : 113). To say that technological obj ects exist as ornam entation at whatever level is not to say th at th ey don't have a function ; in fact, th e opposite is th e case. In th e baroque world of technology, an obj ect fulfils all th e criteria for its usefulness simply by functioning in th e abstract sens e. For example , a more powerful computer may be used for th e sam e simple word processing that was performed on an old er machine that cost a lot less money. Th e machine's "power" is abst ra ct in that it is not really test ed out or used in any m eaningful way. So we no longer have th e qu estion "What do es it do ?" but inst ead th e qu estion "Docs it work?"This latter is what can be called a "hyp erfunctionality", because other qu estions follow, such as "Does it work faster th an th e last model ?", even if speed of op eration has nothing to do with any r eal performance output or gain. In hyp er functionality, th e technological obj ect is not pr actical, but obs essional ; not utilitarian, but functional (always in an abstract sens e) : th e obj ect or gadg et no longer serves th e world, performing som e useful task - it serves us : our dreams and desir es of what obj ects can and should do (1997 : 114) . Baudrillard's word for this "empty functionalism" is th e French word machin ; m eaning "thingumajig", "thingumabob", "whatsit" or, as th e translator of The System if Objects more satisfactorily puts it, "gizmo" (1997 : 114) . Th e gizmo is an obj ect that is not of any real or genuine use to anyone and it also lacks a specifying nam e. Any number of different obj ects can be "gizmos" (such as th e plastic strips attached to th e back of cars popular in th e 1980s to "remove" static electricity), with no real scientific basis that th ey actually worked . This lack on behalf of language (or lag behind th e trend continually to produce new gizmos) is perhaps representative of a conceptual lack, where th e functioning of th e gizmo becomes myst erious. Th e gizmo is a myth-m aking device b ecaus e it op erates not through clear logical reason, but according to th e fragm ented personal mythologies of th e individual user - for example , th e person who beli eves that an aeroplane only really stays in th e sky during a flight du e to their own int ens e concen tration . In this fragm ented sens e of myst ery and mythology th e gizmo is "worse" than , say, a r eligious icon , which represents an ordered system of belief structured around an obj ect. But is th e gizmo th erefor e a degraded technological obj ect, inferior to th e machine? Th e answ er according to Baudrillard is that it is not, becaus e it is an obj ect that op er ates in th e im agin ary rath er than th e real. We can see her e a division between th e real and th e hyp erreal which has yet to be fully THE TECH NOLOGICAL S YS T E M OF OBJECT S

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theorized (see Chapter 5 for more detail). Th e gizmo is constructed according to the model of pure functioning, and a reality constructed via models only is a postmodern "hyp erreality" . Baudrillard sugg ests that th e gizmo represents th e belief in th e univ ersality of technological objects - this belief says that for every need there is a gizmo that will provide assistance, and thus nature itself becomes automated. What Baudrillard m eans by this can be thought through with th e example he gives of th e" . . . electr ical whatsit th at extra cts stones from fruit . . ." that some people may have as a kitchen gadg et . We have all bought such gadg ets, which purport to b e incredibly useful but usually end up crammed in a cupboard gathering dust or used once or twice a year b ecaus e we don't have spac e for th e gizmo and it takes more effor t to use th e gizmo than remove fruit stones with a knife! However, Baudrillard's th eoretical point is that th e belief in th e univ ersal use of gizmos m eans that nature (the fruit stone and beyond) becomes something that gizmos can always work upon to improve. Th e belief that t echnology will always improve nature implies that nature is itself constructed like a technological devic e. In th e process of automatism, th e human subj ect univ ersalizes itself as a functional being that can always find satisfaction through th e gizmo, wh er eas th e gizmo is bound up by that dream of functionality and thus reduced to th e " . . .irrationality of human det erminants" (1996 : I 16) . Th ere is a resistance to th e form er development, wh er e people reject th e int erpen etration of subj ect and technology, but th e latter, th e imposition of th e functional dream upon th e possibilities of th e t echnological obj ect or gizmo, is rarely, if ever, th eorized . Th e dream of a perfectly working function ality of th e world is transferred to th e ideal perfectly working body. While th e Freudian strand of The System if Objects remains undevel op ed, an int er esting parallel b etween Baudrillard's notion her e and th e ris e in popularity of "functionality drugs" such as Prozac and Viagra in th e I 990s, would sugg est a fairly prescient reading on his b ehalf. Th e t echnological obj ect, it becomes clear, do es not according to Baudrillard embody th e gr and narrativ es of progression - inst ead, th e t echnological obj ect is r estricted by its anthropomorphic fashioning, its int erpen etration with th e world of human fantasy and desir e. In this sens e, th e obj ect is dysfunctional, held back from "true" development, limited in its application and slotted into preprogrammed ideas. But this is not th e only way in which Baudrillard th eorizes th e obj ect as dysfunctional. With th e exam ple of th e scienc e fiction robot, which is

plac ed in th e "pure realm of th e gizmo" (1997 : 119), th ere is always a supplementary marker of difference, which foregrounds th e fact that th e robot is both th e technological obj ect perfect ed and a m echanical slave. A robot that reach ed its ideal would b e able to do ever ything th e human subj ect could, including reproduction of th e speci es and, furth er, it would naturally efface th e fact that it was a robot in th e first plac e, becaus e its mimetic capabilities would be that of second-order simulation . In other words, it would not be possible to distinguish between th e original and th e copy. Baudrillard notes that this attainm ent would lead to int ens e anxi ety ; such anxi ety would be of th e sort that Philip K. Dick so exper tly manipulates in his novel Do Androids Dream if Electric Sheep?, now known through its film adaptation Blade Runner. However, th e robot's supplem entary markers of differ enc e - a m etallic skin, gestures which are " ... discret e, jerky and unhuman", th e ability to process data at an abnormal speed, and so on - all lead to th e reassurance that th e robot is not th e human subj ect's double (1997 : 120) . Th e robot is a castrated slave, always seen as th e attainment of perfection in t erms of th e technological obj ect, but alw ays falling short of th e attainment of humanity and concret e subj ectivity. In terms of its evolution , th e robot is thus a dead end , and this is wh er e for Baudrillard all obj ects in our consumer world now ar r ive.

THE END OF THE SYMBOLIC Technology, for Baudrillard, is th e compensatory mode of being in a world which has been deprived of th e symbolic dimension . At times hovering clos e to nostalgia, but aware of th e problematic of this way of thinking, Baudrillard argues that th e relationship between th e human subj ect and processes of symbolic ritualized behaviour (including work) has b een divorced partly by th e transferenc e of gestural activity to technological obj ects. Inst ead of th e human subj ect being in th e world, it is now th e obj ect that is in th e world, while th e human subj ect has b ecome an idl e spectator. Worse still, th e complexity of th e world no longer occurs at th e moment of symbolic exchange , such as th e potlatch, but resid es inst ead in th e ever yday life of th e t echnological obj ect (the object is more complex than th e human subj ect and his or her social existe nce/str ucture s). But are technological obj ects, even with th eir idealiz ed functioning, completely divorced from th e symbolic? What about th e fetishism of objects? Surely that has a THE TECH NOLOGICAL S Y S T E M OF OBJECTS

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symbolic dimension? And, thinking of th e ways in which Baudrillard dep ends so essentially on ab solute expenditure and wast e from th e Eurocentr ic narrativ es of primitivism , sur ely on e of th e key markers of co nt emporary West ern soci ety is precisely wast eful expe nditure? How can Baudrillard keep asser ting th e end of th e symbolic in th ese instances?

PRIMITIVISM An art istic movement that forms a part of modernism, but also an "attitude" held towards other, non-Western cultures. Artists interested in Primitivism used cultural artefacts from non-Western cultures, such as Africa and the Native Americas, to feed into avant-garde aesthetics, such as the use of Native masks in Cubism. Native peoples are seen via Primitivism as somehow closer to nature, naive, " savage" , and untouched by the rules and regulations of Western society. So-called " primit ive" peoples were in reality often part of highly autonomous, complex societies, with their own forms of religion, politics and aesthetics (e.g. the First Nations of British Columbia, Canada).

Contem porary feti shism is analysed by Baudrillard in a number of places, alth ough th e most condens ed account is found in For a Criti que if the Political Economy if the Sian , wh er e th e Marxist noti on of comm odity feti shism com es in for som e cr iticism (although, at thi s stag e, for not saying enough about production) . Baudrillard's th esis is th at th e word "fetishism" has a life of its own : inst ead of describing a process wh ereby an obj ect is endowed with m agical properties (e.g. th e "primitive" feti sh) , th e people who use th e term are exposed in tu rn for using non-r eflectiv ely a "m agical thinking" ( 198 1: 90 ) . Commodity feti shism is on e of th e grand narratives that is b eing teased apar t her e, whereby th e shift from concrete production and exchange is repl aced by abstracted labour relati on s and subs equent alienation. Fundam en tally, however, th e t erm "fetishism" is reject ed because of th e m oral baggage it has carried since th e Enlighten m en t : " . . . th e wh ole r ep ertoir e of occidental Christian and humani st ideology, as orc hestrated by coloni sts, ethnologists and mi ssion ari es" ( 198 1: 88 ) .

THE ENLIGHTENMENT Enlightenment thinking replaces mystic ism with reason or the rational, and a passive acceptance of the way the world is socially structured is replaced with critical analysis and reappraisal. Beginning in the eighteenth century, with the rise of scientific approaches to issues that had previously belonged to religion, the Enlightenment became a movement that sought to liberate humanity from class , relig ious and other forms of oppression.

In

contemporary

times,

postmodernists

have rejected

Enlightenment think ing as leading to an overdependence upon sc ience and technology, or the " grand narratives", which argue that sc ience and technology wil l solve wor ld problems such as famine. However, thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas reject postmodernism as failing to provide anything but a reinforcement of Capitalism and a detachment from problems in the real world of social relations.

In other words , th e term "fetishism" has been used not sim ply to describe "prim itive" cult ures and pr actic es, but to condemn th em , espe cially for th e noti on of wor shipping "false idol s". While Baudrillard doesn't m ention th at th e rejecti on of feti shism is also an int ernal policing matt er for m on otheistic religion (the worship of one god th at could potentially be disseminated and destroyed by an abundanc e of concret e images wor shipped in His place) , he does pick up on th e way th at feti shism has becom e a Metaphor for th e analysis of "mag ical thinking", be it "pr im itive" or "con tem porary" ( 198 1: 88) . In anthro pological analysis, th er e is a reversal th at th e analysts are th em selves un aware of: "primitive" feti shism involves noti on s of ene rgy transfer, capture and ben eficial contro l by th e tribal gro up. Thi s process is called here a ''' rationa lization ' of th e world" ( 198 1: 89 ). Th e reversal com es abo ut by th e suggestion th at anthropo log ists are, in th e process of th eir pseudo-scientific work, doing much th e sam e thing with th eir subjects, cont ainin g th e critical ene rgy th at is found in th e so -called "primitive" society. Thi s criticism parallels th at found in Wittgenstein's "Rema rks on Fraser 's Golden Bouah", di scussed briefly in Chapter 3 . Th e rever sal can b e applied, furthermore, to "moder n industri al society" : What else is intended by the concept of "commodity f et ishism" if not the THE TEe H N 0 LOG I CAL S Y S T E M 0 FOB J E C T S

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notion of a f alse consciousness devoted to the worship of exchange value (or, more recently , the fetishism of gadgets or objects , in which individuals are supposed to worship artificial libidinal or prestige values incorporate d in the object)? (Baudrillard , 1981 : 89)

In other words, it is not a case of saying th at exchange -value is fetishistic and thus false, in turn revealing that use-valu e underli es such alienation ; rather, all fetishistic activity is based upon th e fascination of signs . Inst ead of perc eivin g th e contemporary fetish for consumer obj ects or th e body as som ething with symbolic valu e, th e whole process is her e perceived as em ptied of value : ... the subject is trapped in the f act it ious, differential , encoded, systematized aspect of the object. It is not the passion (whether of objects or subjects) for substances that speaks in fetishism , it is the passion for the code, which by governing both objects and subje cts , and by subordinating them to itself, delivers them up to abstract manipulation. This is the fundamental articulation of the ideological process : not in the projection of alienated consciousness into various superstructu res, but in the generalization at all levels of a st ructural code. (1981 92)

With th e current obsession for ever more powerful t echnological gizm os and gadg ets, with th eir alm ost instantly built-in obsolescenc e (such as personal computers th at are not powerful enough to run th e "lat est" softwar e) , a huge number of such obj ects are doomed not for act ual use but fairly rapid disposal : such obj ects ar e waste. Even as we go out to buy our lat est gizm o, or bo ast abo ut its "configuration" , we know th at th e gizm o is doomed : tomorrow brings th e next upgraded model . Our consumption is simultaneously destruction , however lon g we try to put off th e fateful m om ent. (We ar e also aware that a small, bizarre, gro up of people are infinitely putting off buying th eir gizm o pr ecisely b ecaus e th e next model will be more powerful and less expe nsive; as such th ese people step permanently outside of th e circuit of consump tion as wast e and wast e as consumption , living in a strangely ar chaic world .) It is not just at th e per sonal level that obj ects are "wa st ed": th e biggest wast e of all in West ern society comes via expe nditure on th e lat est military t echnology. Military obj ects have an analogous life span

of zero (th ey ar e inevitably outmoded th e moment th ey come off th e production lin e) , with th e add ed advantag e that th ey can be destroyed , exhauste d , worn out, and so on , on th e battlefield, or sold to th e Developing World . Th e hu ge disparity b etween Western and nonWest ern military technology do es cause problems (war becomes too easy, so to speak), and thi s leads to hyp erreal war s as discus sed in th e chapt ers on postmodernism (Chapter s 5, 6 and 7). But do es eithe r this personal or public expe nditure have any symbolic valu e? In The Consumer Society (I 988b), Baudrillard asser ts that not only do es th e West ern world need its obj ect s to construct an identity but, more fund am entally, it needs to destroy those obj ects. Thus th e shift in th e m edia from int erest in heroes of production to hero es of consump tion, or, as Baudrillard puts it, those "dinosaurs" whose excessively wast eful lives dominate popular culture. But th er e is also a more cautionar y, moralistic m essage that says th at excessive, wast eful consumption is "bad", dama gin g to th e environment (but not th e economy). Wast e in this latt er sens e is seen as th e excessive , insane action of subjects livin g for th e pr esent , dam agin g irreparably a finit e reserve of common resources. Clearly, in The Consumer Society , this m oralisti c analysis of wast e comes under suspici on and is reviewed with a "sociological" analysis, suggesting th at excessive consum ption is a univer sal. Referring to th e potlatch and th e wast eful expe nditure of th e aristocratic classes, th e suggestion is th at contemporar y utilitarianism needs to b e re-evaluated in terms of thi s univ ersal : waste, f ar fr om being an irrational residue, takes on a positive function , ta king over where rational ut ilit y leaves off to play its part in a higher social functionality - a social logic in which waste even appears ultimately as the essential f unc t ion, the ext ra degree of expenditure, supe rfluity, the ritual uselessness of "expend it ure f or nothing " becoming the site of production of values , diff erenc es and meanings on both the individual and the social level. (1998b 43)

Th e revers al her e indicates th at , rath er th an having a societ y which sees excessive consumption as morally bad, consumption as consum mation becomes "the good". To m ake sen se of thi s, Baudrillard first asks th e qu estion wh ether human soci et y is fund am entally about sur vival, or about th e generation of "m eaning" eithe r at th e individual or collective level. Second , he asks wh eth er human society is concerned primarily THE TECH NOLOGICAL S YS T E M O F OBJECT S

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with cons ervation or expe ndit ure . Th e first qu estion is aim ed at int er rog ating naive notions of "primitive" and "advanced" soci eti es as being fundam entally about survival (and th e accompanyin g grand narrativ e of progr ession from survival to "higher" things) ; th e second qu estion leads to th e radical , Ni etzschean rejection of cons ervation or "instincts of preservation", thus opposing th e economic prin ciple of cons ervation and accum ulation ( 1998b : 44) . Ni etzsche th eorizes th e will to power as having pr eservation as a m ere side effect; Baudrillard takes th e achi evem ent of th e "something more" in th e will to power and argu es that th e "essential elem ent" in life is precisely this "something more", beyond th e moralizing "n ecessiti es" of life. Two exam ples are expe nditure and appro priation, th e latt er b eing explaine d first with referenc e to th e Soviet dacha or cou ntry house. Th e Soviet worker or administrat or was provided with all his or her basic needs, including an apar tme nt near th e place of work, but th e dacha is still covet ed as som ething beyond ever yday necessity, something with prestige and symbolic valu e (1998b : 45). As an aside, Baudrillard m entions th at "auto m obiles" function in a similar way in th e West ; without realizing it , this example combines neatly expe nditure and appropr iation , sinc e an expe nsive top -of-the-range car has prestig e and symbolic valu e, but it is also a wasteful expe nditure given th e inst ant, massiv e d epreciation as soon as th e vehicl e is poss essed (this isn't quite th e same with "antique" or "classic" cars, which belong to th e realm of th e coll ectible obj ect as th eorized in The System if Objects) . By going beyond th e ever yday necessiti es to defin e th e social presti ge and symbolic valu e of a poss ession, Baudrillard also sets up th e structural model for afflu enc e and waste . Affiuence is not defin ed by th er e being "enough" of some obj ect, but by th ere being too much, beyond th e level of utility (1998b : 45). Waste, rath er th an b eing som e kind of usel ess or dangerous by-product of th e capit alist syst em, is seen inst ead as defining it : "It is that wastage which defies scarcity and , contradictorily, signifi es abundanc e. It is not utility, but th at wastage which, in its essence , lays down th e psychological, sociological and economic guideline s for affiu enc e" (1998b : 45) . Unlike th e symbolic valu e gene rate d by th e prestige enhancement of th e potlatch, West ern expe nditure is gea re d up primarily to stimulating mass consumption (1998b : 46) .

THE HYPERMARI<ET In his Crit ique if Everyday L!fe, Henri Lefebvre at tacks th e "m asses" for a lack of ima gin ation wh en it comes to thinking of th e future (and even , in th e first plac e, th e possibility of change), and he attacks "wr ite r s" for perc eivin g th e future in terms of elitist pl easures. Lefebvre asks how many of th ese writers have th eorized th e futur e in terms of scienc e and technology applied to th e mundane, th e ever yday? And what such a future would look like stripped of abst ra ct ideals in aesthe tics, knowledge and power ? He do es, however, provide a warning: But should we in turn wish to "look into the future" and f orm an image of what it will be, there is one childish error we must avoid: to base the man of the future on what we are now, simply granting him a greater quantity of mechanical means and appliances . (Lefebvre, 1991: 246)

Much of Baudrillard's work seems to b e predicting th e future, hovering on th e edge or divid e between th e pr esent and fant astic (and at times absurd) possibilities. But clos er analysis of Baudrillard's work shows that he is oft en simply mapping (and , of course, int erpreting) th e most contemporary manifestation of human behaviour in th e West : ultimately, he is an anthropologist working within his own society who is aware of th e need to examine th e qualitative changes rath er th an th e m er e qu antitativ e. Consequently, th e issue of wh er e and how we buy or consume our technological obj ects is as important as what those obj ects do (be th ey gadgets, gizm os or robots) : th e "hyp ermarket" (or "out-of-town" shopping centre) is a plac e that has gone beyond th e commodity, beyond th e traditional spac es of representation and consumption, even beyond th e sign . In th e hyp ermarket , th e techno logi cal and other obj ects b ecome hyp ercommodities. Baudrillard calls th e hyp ermarkets "triage centres" ( 1994a : 75) ; that is to say, plac es where people are test ed and sorted according to pr eprogrammed categories. Th e hyp ermarket m ay b e modelled on a traditional downtown or centre-of-town street market or shopping area , but this is just a surface effect or myth , a way of making people feel that th ey are getting some kind of authe ntic expe rience in a sani tiz ed , safer environme nt . Th e modern shopping ar ea was centralized, placed to use a cliched phrase in th e heart of th e urban community. Th e

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hyp ermarket is decentred, a satellite that creat es a gravitational pull on th e suburbs, constructing spatial and temporal distortions th at harden into new patterns of behaviour analogous to th e rhythms of commuting. It would be a mistake to situate th e hyp ermarket at th e end of a social and ar chitectural chain, an effect of new modes of living and consuming ; inst ead, and espe cially in th e US as Baudrillard notes, th e hyp ermarket is r esponsible for "th e m etro ar ea"; that is, a plac e which is neither country nor city, neith er purely rural or purely urban ized . Th e "m etro area" is its elf decentred, proj ect ed and anticipated by its model: th e hyp ermarket . In this sens e th e hyp ermarket isn't simply postmodern because of its decentred nature, but becaus e it is a model gen erating new geographical and expe r iential spac e (see Chapter 5) . And , if th e hyp ermarket is hyp erreal, th e m etaphor which describes it is based upon th e television scre en : consumers who pass through this spac e are "screen ed" or t est ed. Do th ey respond to th e preprogram ming as th ey are supposed to ? Th e obj ects in th e hyp ermarket ar e not th ere simply to b e consumed, or int erpret ed as signs of som ething else (say, "afflu enc e"), but inst ead th ey are described by Baudrillard as "t ests" . In other words , th e consumer comes to th e hyp ermarket with his or her anxi eti es and qu estions, and hop es to find th em answ er ed in th e obj ects . Th e delib erate vaguen ess her e is indicative of Baudrillard's th eoretical approach wh en it comes to mapping out contemporary human behaviour as an anthropologist, but what he is actually describing is th e hyp ermarket as a replac em ent for th e organized reli gion of West ern soci ety . Th e circularity of th e "scr eening" or "t esting" during this expe rience derives from th e way in which th ese concepts are based upon televisual feedback: th e audi enc e r esponses and m edia r efer enda that gen erate "answers" along th e lin es of pr eprogrammed "questions" . And th er e is an int erpen etration of th e screen m etaphor with th e notion of ever ything being on th e surfac e her e, including th e "fri endly" surveillance which simultaneously shows th e people under surveillance on television scr eens, which leads to a collapsing of perspectival spac e (th e removal of th e "gap" or distance both spatially and t emporally between th e view er and th e viewed) . Th e int erpen etra tion is total, including archite ctural and geographical spac e: "The hyp ermarket cannot be separated from th e highways that surround and feed it, from th e parking lots blanket ed in automobiles, from th e computer t erminal - furth er still in concentric circles - from th e whole town as a total functional scr een of activities" (I994a : 76) .

Unlike th e modernist factory, wher e the workers w er e isolated and fixed in on e spot as th e product they were working on w as brought to /past th em , h er e th e workers have b een set free ; th eir b ehaviour is now playful in th e sens e th at their time and motion app ears sp ent according to whim or other unknown factors . But th e model of th e hyp ermarket prevails : ever ything is neatly laid out for th e workers, just as ever ything th ey need to produce is availabl e to th em at all times (computer t erminals) . Th e model may have changed - modern factory and centred city to postmodern computer t erminal and d ec entred m etro are a - but th e appare nt fr eedoms ar e still "disciplines", which may have less choice involved than it first appe ar s. Th e city can no longer absorb this n ew space of b ein g - th e city as we have seen is transformed by th e sate llite into a m etropolitan area. Strictly functional urban zones, categor ized as commerce , work, knowledg e and leisure, are not only displaced and d et erritorialized , but th ey ar e also m ad e indet erminat e, with a blurring of "functional" boundari es . Baudrillard thus calls th e hyp ermarket and all its analogo u s manifestations "n egativ e sate llite s" (1994a: 78) . The indet erminat e functioning of satellitic space is analogous to the nuclear power station: a series of boxes which have no app ar ent function but still have an input / output, lik e a logic gate in a microprocessor.

SUMMARY On e of t he key compo nents of postmoder nism is t echnology. In th is chapter we have seen how Baudri ll ard was analysi ng t echnol ogy f rom his earliest publica t ion in 1968. However, The Syst em of Obj ects also prefig ures t he later post moder n wor k, explori ng th emes th at are embedded in his analyses of t he emerg ing consumer soc iety in France. Baudrill ard medit ates upon t he way that t echnology has rapidl y become non-fun ct ional, non-ut ilitar ian, and des igned accord ing t o f ant asy and des ire. Aut omat ism dominates th e t echnol ogical object, as we ll as new not ions of "f uzzy" log ic or indet ermin acy. O bj ect s beco me " gizmos" which repre sent f eti shi sm and f ash ion. Hypermarke ts beco me th e new experie nt ial spaces of t echnology and co nsumpt ion, t he spaces of everyday lif e.

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3 NARRATIVES OF PRIMITIVISM The "last real book"

In Baudrillard's early more political and "sociological" writings, th ere are numerous refer en ces to "pr im itive" societies and anthropological accounts of indi genous peopl es. One of Baudrillard's key conc epts th at of "symbolic exchange" - is drawn from th ese accounts of so-ca lled "pr im itive" peoples. But who exactly are th ese peoples th at Baudrillard refer s to? And how accurate is his use of anthropological terms such as th e "potlatc h"? Thi s chapter exam ine s Baudrillard's own warning th at "Alluding to primitive societies is undoubtedly dangerous . . ." in relation to th e fact th at such allusions permeate virtually all of Baudrillard's writings.

THE TASADAY Two narratives of "decay throu gh exposure " fascinat e Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulatio n ( 198 1; English edition I 994a): th e Tasaday and Ram ses II. In 1971 , th e Philippine governm ent r eturned to th e jungle th e indi gen ous "lo st tribe" of th e Tasaday peopl e, who wer e "disint egrating" upo n th eir recent contac t with th e contem po rary world. An analogy is th en constr ucted by Baud rill ard with th e decay of Ram ses (the mummified rem ain s of th e King of Egypt wh o died in 1225 Be ) , rotting in a Western museum afte r having survived th e previou s forty centuries. What Baudrillard do esn't make clear is th at th e Tasaday were

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probably part of an elaborate ho ax devised to manipulate genuine indi genous peoples and control land. Both th e Tasaday and Rams es decay upon coming into "visual contact" with West ern soci ety, although for Baudrillard, we are all now "living specimens" who come under th e "sp ectral light of ethn ology" (1994a: 8) . Bringing into view is necessary for our soci ety, on e which is bas ed upon production and continual gain; we must see th e past not only to believe in it but to compare and contrast our achievements with it (which m eans our sup erior distance from it) . Baudrillard th en sets up another analogy: with th e "R enaissanc e Christians" fascinated by th e "Am erican Indi ans" who had never been tau ght th e doctrines of Christianity : Thus, at the beginning of colonization, there was a moment of stupor and bewilderment before the very possibility of escaping the universal law of the Gospel. There were two possible responses: either admit that this Law was not universal , or exterminate the Indians to efface the evidence. (1994a : 10)

Discovery or conv ersion of th ese indi genous peoples is th e sam e thing as cultural exte r mination (although narrativ es of th e loss or decline of indi genous peoples are oft en highly susp ect in terms of th e romanticization and misinterpretation th at th ey represent) . Cultural exte r mination can result from "muscum ification'' (Baudr illard 's play on th e word "mumm ification") or "d emuseumification" (1994a: 10-11). In th e form er, th e indi genous subj ect / artefact is removed from its cultural context and destroyed by being put on display (e xposed to th e destructive light of contemporary culture) ; in th e latter, th e "re turn" of th e subj ect / artefact to its "original" context is an attempt to recov er authe nticity and reality through th e construction of a simulation . Th e Tasaday ar e not returned untouch ed to th eir "original" loc ale; inst ead th ey ar e plac ed in th e equivalent of a purified th em e park or "safari" park, wh er e no visitors m ay go. No matter how isolated from th e modern world, it is still an ar tificial space whi ch encloses and protects contemporary notions of th e primitive - what th e primitive should be, how it should exist , how it should function . And, as we will see from th e example of Disneyland , th e th em e park exists to hid e th e fact that th e "outside" world is of th e sam e order: thus we are all anthropological subj ects now. Th ese are som e of th e lessons th at Baudrillard wants us to learn

from this section of Simula cra and Simulation . But what seems lacking in this section is a self-r eflective aw are ne ss of th e role of the indi genous "primitive" subj ect/ society in Baudrillard's work as a whole, espe cially in r elation to th e sens e th at many r ead ers have that Baudrillard's work its elf functions as an ar tificial space protecting at times r elatively untheorized notions of "primitive" p eoples . Th e "primitive" soci eti es r epresented in this t ext all belong to differ ent historical p eriods and geographical locations ; all shar e th e sam e lack of contextualization by Baudrillard ; and all throw up a whole host of furth er complicated issu es concerning th eir r epresentation . Baudrillard may b e using each of th ese het erogen eous soci eties to stand in for West ern notions of "the primitive", but if w e plac e this us e in th e wider context of Baudrillard's writings w e must start qu estioning th e r eplication at times of th e processes criticized here. Another way of thinking ab out this us e of "primitive" p eoples is to exam ine Ludwig Wittgenstein's (1889-1951) "R emarks on Frazer's Golden Bouab" . Wittgenstcin asser ts that Fraz er's " . . .explanation s of primitive practices are much cruder than th e m eaning of th ese practices th emselves" (1993 : 13 I). Baudrillard argues a similar point when it comes to Marxism's view of "primitive" p eoples and, in th e ab ove extr act from Simula cra and Simulation, he suggests that ethn ologists ar e blind to the ultimate effect s of th eir otherwise "sensi tiv e" advic e. Wittgenstcin suggest ed that it was wrong to work from a position of perceived "error" in "primitive" rites and th en offer pseudo scientific explanation s of those er r or- r idde n ways; invariably, this leads to a notion of t emporal development or progression, "showing" (which r eally m eans "interpreting") a p eople coming to gradual enlighte nm ent. Inst ead, a "primitive" syst em should b e sketched out and left to function in its own right: The historical explanation , the explanation as an hypothesis of development, is only one way of assembling the data of their synopsis. It is just as possible to see the data in their relat ion to one anothe r and to embrace them in a general pictu re without putting it in the form of a hypothesis about temporal development. (Wittgenstein 1993: 131)

Following this almost to th e letter, Baudrillard opposes a "gen er al picture" of symbolic exchanqe to many facets of contemporary soci ety. But b efore analysing his notion of "primitive" p eoples, it is nec essary to sketch out this "gen eral picture" . N A R RAT I V E S 0 F P RIM I T I V ISM

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SYMBOLIC EXCHANGE Opposed to contemporary soci ety in virtually all of its manifestations , symbolic exchange is a process wh er eby th e status of th e individuals involv ed chan ges as much as th e st atus of th e obj ect. Baudrillard argue s that th e gift is th e example of symbolic exchange clos est to us as moderns /postmoderns : with th e act of giving, th e obj ect loses its "obj ectness" and b ecomes inst ead part of th e relations of exchange or, " . . .th e transfer entiaI pact th at it seals b etween two persons . . ." (1981 : 64) . Th e obj ect given do esn't partake of an economy of use-valu e (th e gift itself may b e utterly "usele ss") or exchange- value (the gift isn't a commodity or an abstra ct expre ssion of its mode of production and circulation - see Chapter 4) . Th e obj ect given do es , however, acquire symbolic exchange- value . From where do es Baudrillard draw this notion of symbolic exchange? On which "primitive" soci eti es do es he bas e his grand narrative? And what con cr et e examples do es he give us to understand his argume nt? Th e two main textual sources are particularly int erconnect ed : Marcel Mauss's The Gift (1925 ; English edition 1990) and Georges Bataill c's "Th e Notion of Exp enditure" (19 33 ; English edition) . Both of th ese texts draw, above all, on th e notion of th e "potlatch" in "primitive" societi es .

BATAILLE'S POTLATCH Bataill e takes a particular strand of "gift giving" from Mauss's book, and concentrat es on th e notion th at gift giving is opposed to crude West ern th eories of "barter" ; in other words , rath er than havin g som e fantasy narrative of "prim itives" working th eir way to civilization from bartering econo m ies through to early forms of money and cr edit, gift giving exists as a self-contained system outside of capitalism . Bataille notes th at : ...the archaic form of exchange has been identified by Mauss under the name potlatch , borrowed f rom the Nort hwest ern American Indians who provided

such a remarkable example of it. Institutions analogous to the Indian potlatch , or their traces, have been very widely f ound. (1985: 121)

This state me nt , which seems so innocent, contains a number of issu es that can help with th e analysis of Baudrillard's use of "primitive" peoples. For a start, th e actual nam e potla tch is claim ed to have b een "borrowed" temporarily by Mauss (he will presumably, at some stage, give it back) . Mauss is thus himself implicated in th e logic of th e potlatch structure from th e start - but this point will be returned to . Who has lent Mauss th e potlatch? Th e answe r is th e "Northwest ern Am erican Indians" . Who are th ese people? Bataill e lists Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian and Kwakiutl. Unlike Mauss , Bataill e makes no attempt to locate th ese groups in th e colonial worlds of Alaska and British Columbia (or Am erica and Can ada). N either do es he trace th e history of the word that has been borrowed - th e history of th e word "potlatch". However, Bataille do es provide som e narrative detail: The least advanced of these American tribes practice potlatch on the occasion of a person's change in situation - initiations, marriages, funerals - and, even in a more evolved f orm, it can never be separated fr om a festival ; whethe r it provides the occasion for this f est ival, or whether it takes place on the festi val's occasion. Potlatch excludes all bargaining and, in general, it is const ituted by a considerable gift of riches , offered openly and with the goal of humiliating, def ying, and obligating a rival. The exchange value of the gift results fr om the f act that the donee, in order to effa ce the humiliation and respond to the challenge, must satisfy the obligation ... to respond later with a more valuable gift, in other wor ds, to return with inte rest. (1985: 121)

Bataill e go es on to discuss th e spectacular destruction of wealth , which is of gre at int er est for his own writings on excessive behaviour and transgr ession . He also discusses th e way in which status or "ra nk" arises in potlatching soci eti es from th e loss or partial destruction of property ( 1985: 122) . Thus, wh en gifts of grea t valu e are given away at a potlatch or even destroyed, th e giver gains in other forms of pr estige. Apart from on e mor e brief referenc e to th e Kw akiutl totem poles , th e potlatch in this account becomes a concept that can be used to analyse class in contemporary soci ety : A s Bataille understands it, gift giving does not mar k a limit between civilizat ion and barba rity. Rathe r, it is the demise of the potlatch , the loss of the practice of

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leading to a number of possible r esolutions or permutation s, instead of a str ike escalating to th e point wh ere a new type of soci ety is born. As no t ed in Chapter I (see p . 23), Baudrillard arg ues for a "real" m edia in th e May 1968 up ri sing: The real revolut ionary media during May were the walls and their speech, the silk-scre en posters and the hand-painted notices , the street where speech began and was exchanged - everything that was an immediate inscription , given and returne d, spoken and answered , mobile in the same space and time , reciprocal and antagonistic. (1981: 176)

Re-reading thi s passage in th e light of Bataille's com m ents on th e potl atch , and class str uggle as b eing th e contempo rary m anifestation of sum ptuary expe nditure , we can see th at speech itself gains symbo lic weight from th e processes of exchange . Thi s passage from Baudrillard is less a nostalgia trip , as asser t ed by cr itic Steven Co nno r ( 198 9 : 50-62), and m ore a referen ce to a recovery of symbo lic exchange in con temporary soci ety. Th e inscr ipti on s consum ed on th e str eets of Pari s involved a proximity and immer sion in th e site of r esistance, analogous at som e level to th e proximity and immersion of th e participant s in a potl at ch . But even in th is analogy we must dem ar cat e th e sources of th e word "po tla tch", noting th at th e analogy can only b e cons t ruct ed by combining Bataille' s potl atch and Baudrillard's symbolic exchange . Does Baudrill ard's other key sourc e - Mauss's The Gift - enable us to m ap out th e word / conc ept "po tlatc h" in any m ore det ail?

MAUSS'S POTLATCH After Bataille' s minimalist acco unt of th e potl atch , Mauss's acco unt pr ovid es th e reader with an embar rassment of riches or detail. In exam ining a typ e of gift giving th at constr ucts a system of total serv ices, Mauss decides to use one word to summa r ize or acco un t for th ese "to tal serv ices": We propose to call this f orm "pot latch", as moreover, do American authors using the Chinook term, which has become part of the everyday language of

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Whites and Indians from Vancouver to Alas ka, The word potlatch essentially means "to feed " , "t o consume ", (1990 6)

Mauss hints at th e inst ability or indet erminacy of this word "potlatch" in two footnotes , th e first a footnot e to his introduction , wh er e he says: " , it does not seem to us that the meaning propounded [by early accounts?] is the original one, In f act Boas gives the word potlatch - in Kwakiut l, it is true , and not in Chinook - the meaning of "f eeder" , and literally, "place of being satiated " ," (1990: 86, In. 13)

In a lat er footnote Mauss notes th at '" it seems that neither the idea nor the nomenclature behind the use of this term have in the languages of the Nort hwest the kind of preciseness that is afforded them in the Anglo-Indian "pidgin" that has Chinook as its basis, (1990: 122, In. 209)

Baudrillard , through Bataill e, through Mauss , will use a term as th e absolute other to contemporary m anifest ations of Western soci ety, when th e term its elf is highly dubious, unstable and ind et erminat e. In The Potlatch Papers ( 1997), Chris Brack en traces thi s ind et erminacy with great skill, noting that it was in Canada in 187 3 th at William Spr agge used th e term "I'atlatches", derived from Israel Wo od Powell , th e "Indi an superintendent" in Victoria, Briti sh Columbia, who gener ated reports for th e year 1872. Th ere is a problem with what th e word describes right from th e start . Did th e word describe acts of pure gift giving, in effect a destruction of property sinc e th er e is no return , or did th e word describe an economy of exchange, where gifts ar e r eturned at a later date? Bracken notes: In the discourse on "Indian Affairs" the difficulty of deciding whether these practices involve gift giving or exchange is supplemented by the dif ficulty of naming them , Though Powell calls them "Pat latches " in 1872, an undecidability never ceases to haunt this word as it circulates through

government

dispatches , (1997 36-37)

Mau ss borrowed thi s word "po tlatch", but even Mauss isn't sure, like th e Canadian gover nm ent, from wh om th e word has been b orrowed . Mau ss calls th e word "po tlatch" "precise" ( 1990 : 122), wh er eas th e actual Native words th at seem t o b e describing facet s of potl atching are "num ero us, vary ing, and concrete . . ." and , wor se still, over lap in terms of th eir m eanin gs ( 1990 : I 23) . Mauss is sett ing up a binar y oppos ition b etween a European-influenc ed langu age - " .. .th e Anglo Indian ' pidgi n ' th at has Chinook as its basis" ( 1990 : 122) - and th e Native languages or" . . .arc haic nom enclat ur e" ( 1990 : 123) . Thi s binar y conc ep oppos ition fun cti on s alo ng th e lines of Euro pean languages conc eptual tual precisen ess and conc eptuality, Native languages ind et erminacy or vaguen ess and "concreten ess" . In other words, Euro pean languages can th eorize and philosophize, whereas Native languages directly represent th e naming of co ncrete objects or things, or pr ocesses th at involve th ose objects or thi ngs. A trading language th e pid gin "Chinoo k" - becom es m ore advanc ed conceptually th an an indigen ou s language . Mauss has thus neatly sidestepped hi s worries abo ut th e ind et erminacy of th e word "po tlatch" by deciding th at it is a conceptual word th at is m ore accurate in terms of th e abstrac ted pr ocesses of potl atching th an th e cult ures and languages from which thi s abstractio n is in part derived . Convenien tly, th e entire history of colonial int er venti on s and appro priatio ns is left out of th e acco unt of th e potl atch , even th ough th e word itself derives from th e economic and politi cal conc er ns of a colo nial power .

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DANGEROUS NARRATIVES OF PRIMITIVISM In chapter I of For a Criti que if the Poli tical Economy if the Sian, Baudrillard gives a warning - wh eth er anno unc ed in general or m ore specifically to himself is not clear - but th e warning is unequivocal: "Allud ing t o primitive soci eties is un doubtedly danger ou s . . ." ( 198 1: 30). Thi s warning appears early on in Baudrillard's career, and th en seems to be ign ored , with th e myri ad referen ces to "prim itive" societies th at follow. H ow ar e we to int erpret thi s warning in light of Baudrillard's continual transgression of it ? Did he sim ply decide th at he was wrong? What do es th e warning m ean ? Wher e pr ecisely does th e danger lie? D oes th e danger lie in th e inco rrect or mi srepresentativ e use of so-c alled "primitive societies"? Or is th e da nger som ething far wider -r eachin g, m eaning th at alluding to "pr im itive societies" can N A R R A T I V ES OF PRIMITIVI SM

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eventually destabilize th e cat egories of West ern thought? Immedi ately afte r giving th e warning, Baudrillard launches into an analysis of th e "original" consumption of goods and th e way in which this consump tion was based not upon needs, but from "cultural constraint" (198 I : 30 ). In other words , th e process of consumption is an institution that r egist ers and reinforces social hi erarchy. Apart from th e dubiousness of th e notion of th e oriqina] consumption , Baudrillard do es launch into a narrative of "primitive" behaviour to contextualize his use of th ese concepts . He refers to th e Trobriand Island ers and th eir division b etween th e circulation or "consumption" of classes of obj ects , called th e Kula and th e Gimwali. Th e Kula is a symbolic exchange and th e Gimwali a commercial exchange . Baudrillard argu es th at this division b etween symbolic and commerci al has all but disapp ear ed in contem porary society, in favour of th e dominanc e of th e latter, but th e principle of th e Kula remains in place because ... behind all the superstructu res of purchase, market, and private property , there is always the mechanism of social prestation which must be recognized in our choice, our accumulation , our manipulation and our consumption of objects. (1981 30)

A "sociological th eory of obj ects" will thus b e based upon th e principle of th e Kula/potlatch replacing th e importance of use-valu e with symbolic exchange- value. In this section Baudrillard really do es "allude" to "primitive" soci eti es, giving us th e bare-bones structure of th e Trobriand Island ers and using th e word "potlatch" twice : onc e in th e title of th e section (Symboli c Exchanqe: the "Kula" and th e "Potlatcb') , and onc e in th e text ( Potlatcb ) . Th e allusion to th e potlatch with no accom panying d escription may dep end upon th e reader having r ead th e anth ropologists Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski (1884-1942) and Marcel Mauss on th e Trobriand Island ers (Baudrillard do es cit e Malinowski by name as a source) ; in whi ch case, as Mauss argues, th e Kula is not actually different from th e potlatch : "The Kula is a sort of grand potlatch" ( 1990 : 21). But, if th e r ead er knows this, and agrees with this point or conflation (not for getting that potlatch is a pr ecis e concept not a concret e "naming" word), th en why do es Baudrillard feel th e need to keep "Kula" and "Potlatch" separate as words in th e first place? Perhaps Baudrillard's allusion to th e potlatch is dangerous

because it signifies not ju st a concept th at he is going to use to cr itique Marxism , but it also signifies th at hi s allusion itself reveals a m ore complex and pot entially destabilizing world b eneath or behind th e conc ept of potl atch . Bracken not es how th e early use of "po tlatc h" was itself contained in qu ot e m arks and par entheses, th e use of which " . . .suggests, if inadvertently, th at her e ' potlatche s' is itself a problem in need of a solution and does not refer to an event" ( 1997 : 39) . Fur ther, wh at is found" ... on th e west coast of Vancouv er Island . . . is not a word th at asks t o be discussed but a practi ce th at West ern civilization want s abo ve all t o exclude from itself : th e practic e of no n-productive expe ndit ure ... " ( 1997 : 39) . Baudrillard seems to be saying th at th e con flation of Kula and potl at ch is dangerous because it is in th eir speci ficity as exchange events th at th eir power as abstracte d conc epts resides, yet it is th e conflation, and thus rem oval, of th eir specificity whi ch activates th em as concepts for Western readers or th eori sts. "Potlatc h" is th er efore functi oning at th is early stag e in Baudrillard's work as ano ther decon structive term , or som ething used to int errogat e West ern phil osophi cal syst ems of th ought. Th e work of decon structi on at thi s point overrides necessaril y (altho ugh still pr obl em atic ally) th e accuracy of his use of non -West ern societies and conc epts . But is thi s th e case through out Baudrillard's work? Is it th e potl atch on ly whi ch fun cti on s as a deco nstr uctive term ?

DECONSTRUCTION The term "deconstruction" is widely attributed to its most famous proponent, Jacques Derrida (1930-), who is known mainly for three early books, all publ ished in French in 1967: Speech and Phenomena (1973), Of Grammatology (1976) and Writing and Difference (1978). However, an earl ier use of the word "deconstruction" can be found in the related work of philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), who in his main book Being and Time discusses the notion of a " crit ical dismantling".The latter def in it ion is generally the one used, unreflectively, by literary and cultural critics. Indeed, it is necessary to distingu ish betwe en a philosoph ical and non-philosophical not ion of decon struction because these position s can vary quite con siderably.

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"PHILOSOPHICAL" DECONSTRUCTION Derrida's project of exploring the limits of metaphysics (systems of thought that articulate grand concepts such as "t rut h" and "being ") is achieved via the use of a number of philosophical tools. Derrida examines the founding binary oppositions of metaphysics and argues that the excluded side of each binary opposition is actually implicit within metaphysics all along. Therefore, metaphysical arguments must contain blind spots or "aporias" where certain excluded binaries cannot be seen or accounted for by those same arguments. Deconstructive tools are built from these unaccountable binaries, and include neologisms or new words and phrases, that can be used to explore metaphysical reasoning from within. For example, Derrida argues that the "supplement", something which is both an addition and a substitute, works via a deconstructive logic. Philosophers have argued that writing is both something unnecessary, if not damaging, to original speech (a substitution), yet also supplementary - that is to say, needed to fulfil original speech (an addition).

In other words, one of the founding

binary

oppositions of

metaphysics, that of the priority of speech over writing, or the "live" voice over the "dead" letter, is called into question by the supplement as deconstructive tool.

"N ON - PHIlOSO PHICAl" DECON STR UCTIO N Literary and cultural thinkers have created a critical approach called deconstruction, drawing upon key Derridean ideas and terms, without necessarily understanding or "importing" the philosophical contexts and purposes of those terms. This can lead to a debased parody of Derrida's project. Nonetheless, such a non-philosophical approach is arguably the most popular and most widespread way of understand ing deconstruction. The popular approach takes "dismantling" literally, and regards deconstruction as a breaking apart of oppressive systems, then going on to rebuild the systems with a new set of values. Clearly such an approach is useful to other types of criticism, such as feminism and postcolonial ism, if only as a first move in a larger theoretical argument or process, whereby a philosophical rigour is returned to. This can lead to hybrid forms of criticism , which contain a deconstructive component. Popular deconstruction focuses on the hierarchies implicit in systems built upon binary opposi-

tions (e.g. good/bad, male/female), and normally aims at a reversal of them . Philosophical deconstruction argues that the reversal is a temporary, strategic move that doesn't really take us "outside" of metaphysics, because the hierarchical system has merely been reorganized (hierarchy is still in place). Popular deconstruction regards this reversal as far more radical and liberating, going beyond closed, formal systems. While popular deconstruction has largely been absorbed int o the general background of literary and cu ltural theory, or simply been rejected outright (hav ing reached its peak in the raging theoretical debates of the 1980s), it is arguable that the questions raised by philosophical deconstruction are still of value and int erest.

In Symbolic Exchange and Death , th e narrativ es of "pr im itivism", from a postcolonial perspectiv e, take on a regr essive form : non-Western peopl es have b ecom e unsp ecified "savages". Chapter 5 op ens with a sweeping statem ent whi ch, whil e part of th e th eoreti cal arg um ent under construction, isn't given any cultural spe cificity : "As soon as savages began to call ' men ' only th ose wh o were m ember s of th eir tribe, th e definition of th e ' Hum an ' was consider ably enlarged" ( I 998 a: 125) .

POSTCOLONIALISM A term used most widely to theorize the ongoing impact that colonialism has upon people in the modern world. For example, British Columb ia's First Nations are only just beginning to get properly negotiated treaties with the Provincial and Canadian governments. In other words, many years after Britain's colonial presence in Canada was withdrawn, it is still affecting indigenous people's lives. Gilbert and Tompkins argue that postcolonialism is " ...an engagement with and contestation of colonialism's discourses,

power

structures,

and

social

hierarchies"

(1996:

2).

Postcolonial ism is often studied in a variety of academic subject areas, such as cultural studies, literature and sociology.

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Baudrillard do es refer to Jean de Lcrv's sixt eenth-century Hi stoire d'un voyage en la terre de Bresil, but th ere is no sens e of an empir ical or anthropological basis to th e use of th e word "savages" . Baudrillard is utilizing th e West ern discourse of "primitivism", wh er eby gen eric "savages" live in gen eric "tribes", supposedly existing utterly outside of th e West, although in reality th ey live nowhere but in th e West's psyche. Th e problematic status of this gen eric existe nce in conceptual materi al is illustrated neatly by Wittgenstein in his "R emarks on Fraz er's Golden Bough". Wittgenstein argue s that "Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for th ey ar e not as far removed from th e understanding of a spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman" (1993 : I 3 I) . While this is an explicit critique of Frazer and his comprehension of th e Other, th e problem lies in th e revers al of th e civilized /savage binary opposition . To say th at Frazer is more "savage" than a "savage" is m erely to revers e th e binary opposition and simultaneously keep its values in place. In oth er words, non-West ern cultures may have complex soci eti es that Wittgenstein thinks people like Frazer cannot grasp in all th eir complexities, but th ey are still soci eties fundam entally inferior to West ern civilization . Th e tying in of th e two uses of th e word "savage" also undermines th e reversal that Wittgenstein att empts to ar ticulate; Frazer's "savage" nature necessarily contaminates th e gen eric use of th e noun "savage / s". This is an important point in relation to Baudrillard's use of narratives of primitivism: if he is always presenting th e "savages" as an absolute Other to th e West, th en he has simply performed a revers al of values . If, on th e other hand, he can prove that th e concepts of "savage", "primitive" or "potlatch", for exam ple , ar e apor ias - blind spots that unravel th e founding pr esuppositions of West ern thought - th en his primitivist discourse is deconstructive in som e sens e . But, this primitivist discourse may b e op erating to deconstruct Baudrillard's work as much as he is trying to do th e sam e to th e "non-symbolic". Baudrillard expands his thus far rather limited account of "primitiv es" in th e chapt er "Political Economy and Death" in his Symboli c Exchange and Death, with a number of narratives: initiation ceremonies, inc est prohibition and cannibalism . Ov erall, Symboli c Exchange and Death is about th e way in which in contemporary society th e symbolic is replaced by th e semiotic. Contemporary soci ety turns all obj ects into commodities, which circulate endlessly like signs : thus obj ects los e th e inh er ent valu e that th ey "once" had, and th e typ es of value gain ed in

processes such as th e potlatch, for exam ple , in th e gift of a hand-wov en blanket. Symboli c Exchange and Death also asserts th at th e concept of death must now be set outside of soci ety, deni ed, effaced , repressed, and so on, inst ead of b eing an int egral part of a soci ety's beli efs. Rex Butler argues th at in many resp ects this book is " . . .in part a history and sociology of th e plac e of death in West ern soci ety" (1999 : 98) : from the dead time or labour implied in the modern industrial process in the chapter "The End of Production " (Sf , 6-50) , through the self-punishment and discipline required in the new regime of health and f it ness in the chapter "The Body, or the Grave of Signs" (Sf, 101 -124), and on to the actual suppression or hiding of death in the funeral parlour or retirement home in the chapter "Polit ical Economy and Death " (Sf, 125-195). (Butler, 1999: 9S)

How do es Baudrillard's use of "primitives" help his argument? In oth er words, how do es th e refer enc e to "primitives" prove that th ere was a state of affairs prior to th e semiotic? Baudrillard argues that, for "prim itives", death is a social relation and that, paradoxically, death is a more material fact for such people becaus e th ey are awar e of and function with th e form of death . In contrast, West ern soci eti es conceive of death as a biological fact or materiality, wh er eby th e dead ar e separated utterly from th e living : the dead cease to exist . Baudrillard argues that initiation rites ar e on e way in which death as a social relation is articulated . In Christian soci eti es , th e subj ect has his or her mortality emphasized by th e ritual of baptism; in "primitive" societi es, th e biological birth simil arly do es not lead to socialization, and requires a ritualized supplem ent. In th e latter case it is th e initiation ceremony that is a symbolic birth / death: The important moment is when the mah (the grand priests) put the kay (the initiates) to death , so that the latter are then consumed by thei r ancestors , then the earth gives birth to them as their mother had given birth to them . After having been "killed" , the initiates are left in the hands of their initiatory, "cult ural" parents , who instruct them , careforthem and t rain them (initiatory birth). (199Sa: 131 -132)

A material, irreversible death has been r eplaced by on e that has b een given and received. Death is a gift, as well as birth ; no longer th e NARRATIVES OF PRIMITIVISM

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monocultural mortality of "giving birth", but inst ead th e multivalent giving birth /giving death . Initiation is theorized as a doubling of birth / death through symbolic exchange , not to "outdo" or "eclips e" death, but to remove th e division of birth from death, th e splitting or disjunction which contemporary society uses to efface death . Baudrillard argues that West ern soci ety functions via a disjunctive code, wh ere th e real is gen erated through th e" . . .structural effect of th e disjunction between two terms .. ." (1998a: 133). This will b e more familiar in relation to th e binary oppositions that soci ety structures itself through, where on e sid e of th e binary is prioritized according to th e prevailing id eology, e.g. mal e /fem ale, white /black, and so on. Baudrillard argues th at th e symbolic do es not allow for th e op eration of this binary disjunction . This is b ecaus e Baudrillard regards th e symbolic as som ething that is not a structure, but an act or process that "heals" divisions within soci ety . Problematically, this can lead to idealiz ed and romanticized accounts of "primitive" peoples living totally "in touch" with nature, and so on . While Baudrillard do esn't use th ese images as such, th e logic of his argument leads inexorably in this direction. Where ar e th e "primitive" peoples Baudrillard uses in his discussion of initiation ceremonies, inc est prohibition and cannibalism ? With r efer enc es to anthropological accounts by writers such as Maurice Leenhardt, Jean de Lcrv and Marcel Mauss among oth ers, th e read er is given an abstracted "savage" or "primitive" rac e that is an amalgam of all th ese accounts. Th e discussion on cannibalism , for exam ple , locates this practice not in anci ent times, but among a Catholic rugby t eam whose aero plane crashed, as Baudrillard narrates, into th e Cordillera in th e And es (1998a : 137) . Baudrillard's point is that cannibalism is in itself a symbolic act, not som e "savage" giving-into transgressive desir e ; devouring is a mark of exchange not a consumption of "vital forc es", in that it cr eat es a resp ectful relationship with th e dead , who ar e being paid homage to. What is important in this account, again, is th e location of this devouring : "In any case th ey don't just eat anybody, as we know . . ." (1998a : 138) . "We" are given no furth er information about th e "they" in this sentenc e, at th e sam e time as "w e" ar e awarded knowledg e of th e "th ey" . Logically, th e "th ey" are th e cannibals, th e subj ect of this section, but th e only cannibals that have been located for us ar e th e Catholic rugby team! Th e sequenc e: "primitives" "cannibals" "th e 'thev'" has been int errupted and cross ed over, wh er eby we get som e-

=

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=

thing lik e: "primitives" "cannibals" "Catholic rugby t eam". This crossover would seem to suggest that the absolute Other has always b een th e sam e, and that th e same has always b een th e absolute Other . Put another way, Baudrillard is trying to oppose West ern society with something drawn from its own conceptual and id eological fram ework . In answer to th e qu estion "Where ar e th e ' pr im itive ' peoples?", th e answer must b e: They have vanished, or th ey wer e n ever th er e in th e first plac e. And this is why Baudrillard's continual r efer enc e to "primitiv e" soci eti es must b e clos ely exam ine d and watched out for at all times : when h e claims to b e looking at "primitive" soci eti es, h e is oft en only ar ticulating West ern myths and structures concerning th e Other. H e claims to acc ess something r adically different from th e W est, when his statem ents on "primitive" soci eti es ar e bas ed firmly upon th e W est . Critics have discussed Symbolic Exchange and Death as Baudrillard's last "real" book, with virtually ever ything produced aft erwards suffering from a "p ermanent misunderstanding" (Gane, 1993 : 189) . In his introduction to Jean Baudrillard: The Deience if The Real, Butl er discusses this point at length, noting that Symbolic Exchange and Death is r egarded as: ... the last of Baudrillard 's books that is observational , empirical , scienti fic . It is the last that comes out of his discipline, that could be taught in a conventional course, in sociology. Death .. . is a real object , something that exists out there in the world before it is written about. It is a topic that can be measured , of which a history can be constructed , that is not simply a fabrication of Baudrillard himself. Henceforth , Baudrillard 's work becomes fictional , inventive , "pataphysical " . (1993 5)

Mike Gan e notes that it is in Symbolic Exchange and Death that Baudrillard expre sses " . . .his argument in more orthodox t erms" (1993 : xiii) . While th e latter is undoubtedly true, th e r eading of Baudrillard's "primitivism" presented h er e undermines the notion that Symbolic Exchange and Death presents "observational , em pir ical , [and] scientific" material. One way of addressing th e p erceived differ enc es b etween th e ear lier, supposedly "sociological" work and the lat er "p crforrnativc" writing involves a simple comparison for "truth" content . Fatal Strategies (first published 1983 ; translation I 990b) contains a number of refer ences to "primitives" and th e potlatch (or N A R RAT I V E S 0 F P RIM I T I V ISM

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"p otlach ") , for example , "prim itive peopl e" share a principle of "fundam ental duplicity" th at allows th em to both affir m and negate th eir gods:" .. .th ey invented th em only to put th em to death , and dr ew th eir ene rgy from thi s int ermittent sacr ifice" ( 1990 : 77) . Baudrill ard gives th is decentring drive one example - th e Aztecs - and th en relates duplicity as a strategic , fatal act to Bataille. Similarly with "gam ing", whi ch is show n to be som eth ing different from th e transgressive activiti es of " . . .potl ach [sic] and expe nditure " as th eori zed by Bataille ( 1990 : 53). "Pr im itives" are narrat ed as havina li ved with th e burden of pred estination and an ordered univers e: "Primitives believed in a world of thi s kind , a world of th e om nipo t ent th ought and will , without th e shado w of a chanc e. But th ey lived really in m agic and cr uelty" ( 1990 : 148 ) . Th e past tens e signifies th at th is univer sal world-view was onc e th e case, but exist s no longer. "Pri mitives" are doubly condem ned her e, having no cult ural or historical specificity and existing in th e past only. But thi s simulacr um of "primitives" is essentially th e sam e as found in th e earlier "empir ical" studies; in fact , by presenting "pr im itives" without th e narrative detail found in th e earlier works, th e simulacrum is simply m ore obviously just th at . In other words, th e use of th e "p otl atch" through out Baudrillard's work is actually th e use of th e "p otl ack" - a simulation of "primitivism" whi ch is always lackin g and excessive at th e sam e time . But thi s, parad oxic ally, m ean s th at to critique Baudrillard's use of "primitives" as being inaccurat e is t o mi ss th e poi nt th at, from th e ver y begin nin g, he has been working with a simulacr um of "primitivi sm" . Thi s in turn leads to a destabili zation of what Baudrillard m eans by "the real" or an Other to contem po rary soci ety. N o lon ger seen as laughable nostalgia, Baudrillard's continual r efer enc e to "arc haic" cult ures dem and s furth er (more ser ious) analysis.

SUMMARY The need for Westerners to "see" the past to compare it with modern soc iety leads to an intense fasc ination with so-called "primitive" soc iet ies,

which

are

visually

interesting

and

impressive.

Baudr illard

continually " displays" "prim itive" peoples in his work, and this chapter explores the way in which such a series of displays is highly problematic. Baudr illard's concept of symbolic exchange is examined in relat ion to Mauss and Bataille and, using the colonial word for such indigenous pract ices, the potlatch. The chapter argues that Baudr illard is using notions of "prim itivism" in dubious, dangerous ways, even given his own warning against "a lluding to prim itive societies". Finally, the opposition between Baudr illard's early sociological wr itings and his later postmodern books is examined in relation to the postcolonial critique. Symbolic Exchange and Death has been called Baudrillard's "last real book" because it

contains empirical analysis of the "real" world, examining facts and truths, whereas his postmodern books blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, analys is and performance. But, in examining the use of nonWestern societies in his early work, th is oppos ition is it self called into question.

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An important tran siti on al phase occ urs in Baudrillard's ear ly work with his rew orking of Marxism. This chapter will discu ss th e str uc tura list noti on s of Marxism (1968- 1972) and th en th e stro ng cr itique of Marx from 197 2 on wa rds. Th e influen ce of Marx within Baudrillard's work has often been overlooked in th e English-speaking world. Thi s is due in part t o th e fact th at Baudrillard's earliest writings were mainl y translat ed into English lon g after th e event and beca use of th e inter est in th e lat er m or e performati ve "p ostmodern" pieces. Thus, Le Systeme des objet s ( 1968) wasn't tran slat ed until 1996, and th e m ore Marxist b ooks La Societe de consommation ( 1970) until 1998 and Pour une criti que de l'economic politiqu e du sia ne ( 1972) until 1981. O nly Le Miroir de 1a produ ction ( 1973) was tran slat ed relatively qui ckly into English in 197 5. Th e d evelopment of Marxist conc epts and id eas was also downplayed by m any cr itics b ecau se of th e int ens e focu s on po stmod er nism , com municat ion th eories, semiotics, and Baudrillar d's relati on t o str uc turalism and poststructuralism. More ser ious studies of Marxi sm and Baudrillard ar ose with Kellner ( 1989) and Gane ( 199 1). In thi s chapte r we will examine th e ear ly clu st er of b ook s th at are basically engaging with qu esti on s gene ra ted by Marx. In thi s resp ect , we will see th at th ere is a d efinite shift of persp ecti ve with th e publicati on of Th e Mirr or if Production , whereby th e att em pt t o co nst r uc t a str uc tural Marxism turns into someth ing far m or e cr itical and sceptical.

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STRUCTURAL MARXISM: 1968-1972 Th e overriding bin ary opposition of concern in th e early Baudrillard is that of production/ consumption. We can trace Baudrillard's changin g relationship with or attitude s to Marxism by gauging th e ways in which th e key processes of production and consumption are treat ed . In classical Marxism - th at is to say, th e th eory that sticks clos est to Marx's original way of thinking - production is th e key process in industrialized Capitalist soci ety . In Baudrillard's early works, a strong int er est in consumption is app arent , an int er est ar ising no doubt from th e application of Marxism to th e modern Fre nch world of increasing wages and mass consumption of consumer goods. But Baudrillard's int erest in consumption is temper ed by th e fact that production is still accorde d priority. Why is this ? Because Baudrillard had yet to engage with Marx in a critical fashion . In other words, he still believed in many of th e th eoreti cal positions as elaborate d in Das Kapi tal . With The Mirror if Production, Baudrillard argue s that contemporary French thought has b ecome dominated by th eories of production or, at th e very least, th e "p erspective" of production in gen er ating new id eas . So what Baudrillard says he will do is shift that perspective, from production to consumption . Th er efore, to get to grips with Baudrillard's use of Marxism involv es sketching out his ideas concerning consumption and th en (briefly) his devel opment of a critique of th e political economy of th e sign . Baudrillard op ens The Consumer Society with a vision of a new system of human b ehaviour: on e of th e abundant consumption of obje cts. Int ersubj ective communication is repl aced with th e int er action of humans , goods and whole systems th at surround th e manipulation of th ese goods. What do es this m ean ? That inst ead of a world of human b eings communicating at a personal on e-to -on e level (about daily life, political or spiritual b eliefs, and so on), human bein gs become commodities, like consumer goods. In oth er words, human b eings are valu ed for reasons other th an th eir "humanity" and th ey also live th eir lives according to a new pattern or rhythm (a "n ew temporality") : that of th e succ ession or consumption of obj ects . In comparison with this new t emporality, Baudrillard harks back to a previous era and previous civilizations where" . . . it was timeless obj ects , instruments or monum ents which outlived th e gene rations of human beings" ( 1998b: 25) . For example, th e Christian chalice (a silver cup holding Communion

wine) was an object in th e past th at would only ever be tou ched by th e average per son in churc h on a Sunday. Th e chalice would "outlive" th e parishion er s, b eing an object th at existe d in th e church for cen t ur ies . In con tempo rary times, whil e thi s religiou s object is still important to many peopl e, silver chalices ar e b ought and sold as valuable antique s. Any person with enough m on ey can bu y a chalice on e day, and sell it for pr ofit th e next. Th e per son in th is case "outlives" th e obj ect . Ano th er related example is th e cathed ral, onc e a holy building th at "ou tlived" th e lives of th e wor shippers, now treat ed by many peopl e within a secular soci ety as a tourist destination , to be visited for an hour or so, and "co nsum ed" in thi s way. Baudrillard argues th at th e ju ngle of objects th at th e subject has t o negoti ate on a daily basis, at hom e and at work, th rough adver tisem ents , dr eams and fant asies, are imp ortantly th e product of human activity ( I 998b : 26) . Quoting Marx , such production is related t o th e law of exchange- value. In other words, th er e is a ten sion immediately made obvious by th e fact th at Baudrillard is m apping out th e m od ern, contempo rary world of consum erist objects, but using th e m ore traditional logic of Marxi st use and exchange- value . Marx had th eori zed th e commodity in Capita l as som ething car ry ing use-val ue and exchange-val ue.

USE-VALUE AND EXCHANGE-VALUE USE-VAL UE Arises from productive activity to construct something that fulf ils a need, such as shoes or cloth ing.

EXCHA NGE-VAL UE An expression of the labour-power necessary for the production of a commodity. It is an "abstract" expression because it does not relate to the commodity itself, such as the shoes or clothes considered above, but to the cost of the labour (among other things) needed to make the commodity.

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Both use- and exchange- value are anchored in production. Later on in Capital , Marx notes how th e subj ect is alienate d or distanc ed from th e products of his or her own labour (in other words , th e worker do esn't get to ben efit from th e full exchange- value of th e obj ect th at he or she has produced) and th e m ethods of production th emselves, e.g. th e factory ma chine (th e worker is no longer a skill ed craftsp erson but a cog in that m achine) . For Marx, th e workers' consumption is broken down into two separate entities: productive and individual consump tion . Productive consumption is wh er e th e worker uses up or "consumes" his or her own ene rg ies used to m ake a part of som ething in th e factory production lin e. But th e worker passes on th e b en efit of th e production process to th e factory owner (the Capitalist). Individual consumption is th e process of survival , wh er eby th e worker uses all of his or her money to buy basic necessiti es such as food , shelter, clothing and heating. Individual consumption also ben efits th e processes of production because th e worker is usin g all of his or her money to keep th ems elves strong enough to r eturn to th e factory th e following day, whereby he or she onc e more expe nds ene rgy which ben efits th e Capitalist. Marx argues : "The fact that th e worker performs acts of individual consumption in his own int erest, and not to please th e Capitalist, is something entirely irrelevant to th e matter" (1979 : 718) . Even whil e Marx is showing how individual consumption is essentially need ed under Capitalism for th e reproduction of th e workforce, not th e fulfilment of vicarious individual needs, he is still focusing on usevalu e: th e worker buys a commodity to fulfil a need (and is conned in th e process, but no matter, according to Capitalism) . For Baudrillard, th e consumption of obj ects by th e worker is far more complex and int er esting, becaus e such consumption involv es, to use critic Charl es Levin's phrase, a "cultural transformation" ( 1996 : 62) . In other words, what th e modern-day consumer do es with th e obj ect may bear no rela tion to th e obj ect's use-valu e, but th at do esn't m ean that th e obj ect is not important or capable of having a profound impact up on soci ety . Think of th e personal computer hooked up to th e Int ernet, for example, and th e practic e of "surfing th e Web" which was initi ally seen by som e people as a pointless activity. Now e- commer ce is becoming more important and volatil e, "dot. com" int ernet company shares are having an impact upon leading stock m arkets. Baudrillard constantly asks this qu esti on : Where does this cultural transformation take plac e? Th e answ er is in th e ever yday life of th e

subj ect, which is "the locus of consumption" (1998b : 34). Henri Lefebvre (1901 -1991), in his Critiqu e if Everyday L!fe, argued that alienation was going to be th e central notion of philosophy and lit erature, sinc e philosophy involved a critique of, and lit erature an expre ssion of, "being in" th e world (1991 : 168). Th e fact that Marxism was beginning to dominate French thought - with th e concept of alienation as another key component - m eant, in other words, that "being in th e world" now had to be understood via alienation. Lefebvre argued that alienation is a "fixing" of human activity in a material and abstract sens e. What this m eans is that human beings in industrialized Capitalist nations no longer understand th eir "soci al relations", which wer e stable within old er soci eti es . N either do human beings consider th ems elves as subj ects given m eaning by th e tools th ey use at work - as did, according to Marxists, th e craftsperson in pr e-industrialized soci ety. Now th e individual is isolated, cut adrift from stable soci al relations, and any notion of a skill ed craft or trade . It is up to th e critic to pen etrate th e app arent relations that alienate th e subj ect, which is to say that, whil e th e worker cannot perceive th e root caus e of his or her ever yday alienation , th e critic can do this . Lefebvre argues : "G enuine criticism will th en reveal th e human r eality b en eath this gen eral unreality, th e human 'world' which takes shap e within us and around us : in what we see and what we do, in humble obj ects and (appar ently) humble and profound feelings" (1991 : 168) . Baudrillard shar es with Lefebvre this notion of "unreality", but at this stage in his work he is not content with th e sociological analyses of consumption that argue, crudely speaking, that th e subj ect is conned into wanting an existe nce that supplies ar tificially constructed needs or desir es via th e "humble obj ects" of consumer society . Baudrillard builds his own idiosyncratic th eories of consumption via a dov etailing of an updated critique of ever yday life and Marx's th eories of production . In The Consumer Society , Baudrillard maps out th e logic of consump tion. He still argues that society is " . .. obj ectively and decisively a soci ety of production, an order if production . . ." but notes that th e orders of production and consumption become entangled with on e another (1998b : 32-33) . Under th e traditional Marxist analysis of alienation, consumer goods are necessarily divorced from production . For exam ple, th e (idealiz ed) craftsperson would have constructed a given product from beginning to end , being intimately involv ed in all th e stages of its development, from accumulating th e raw mat erials to REWORKING MARXISM

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gaining satisfaction from seeing th e finish ed goods . Th e modern worker, however, has no such relation with th e product. He or she may b e positioned in th e factory, placing on e piece of raw materi al in a machine over and over again , abstracting th e task in its endless rep eti tion. Th e product has b een subsumed by th e process of industrial manufacture, and th e worker th er efore no longer follows th e construction of a particular product from beginning to end . Lefebvre argues that : As he strives to control nature and create his world, man conjures himself up a new nature . Certain of man's products function in relation to human reality like some impenetrable nature , undominated , oppressing his consciousness and will f rom without. Of course, this can only be an appearance; products of human activity cannot have the same characte ristics as brute , material things . And yet this appearance too is a reality : commodities, money, capital, the State, legal, economic and political institutions, ideologies - all function as though they were realities external to man. In a sense, they are realities , with their own laws. And yet, they are purely human products . (1991: 169)

What must b e add ed to this equation , however, is th e fact that as modern society develops th er e is an abundance of commodities, and an increase in wag es (while Marx clearly predicted th e form er, he did not expe ct th e latter to occur) . Th e commodity may still be an entity, divorced from th e mode of production , but it is not necessarily an oppressive or immediately negativ e thing. To explain this stat e of affairs, this subtle shift from alienation to increased expe ctation , Baudrillard constructs an analogy with th e "cargo myth" of Melanesian natives, which he sees as a fable of consumer soci ety. Baudrillard says that th e Melan esian natives witnessed th e descent of aeroplan es (although th ey had no idea what th ese were) to th e whites , who had similar obj ects placed on th e ground. In other words, by some app ar ently miraculous process, th ese aeroplanes brought "pl enty" to th e whites . However, th ese obj ects /aeroplanes never descended from th e sky to th e nativ es : th e inferenc e dr awn was that th e nativ es need ed to build a simulacrum of an aero plane to attract th ese obj ects (I 998b: 3 I) . Likewis e, th e modern consumer" ... sets in place a whole ar ray of sham obj ects, of characteristic signs of happiness, and th en waits ... for happiness to alight" (I 998b : 3 I) . For exam ple , modern-day consumers

think that th ey will receiv e happiness from th e obj ect if th ey get th em selves a new, superior model like th e latest mobile phone or car. Of course, happiness do es not usually arrive and, rather than th e consumer int erpret this as a critique of th e expe ctation, th e obj ect is blamed: "I wouldn't feel this way if I had waited for th e next, b etter model of mobile phone ... " and so on. Thus th e waiting for happiness starts all over again . Th e processes of consumption are expe rienced th er efore as magical, partly becaus e th e signs of happiness have replaced "r eal", total satisfaction, and because thos e signs ar e used to invok e th e endlessly deferred ar rival of total satisfaction: "In ever yday practice, th e blessings of consumption ar e not expe r ienced as resulting from work or from a production process; th ey are expe rienced as a miracle" (I998b : 31). Th e miracle takes plac e ever y day on th e tel evision, which further divorces th e social process of production from that of consumption, reinforcing th e magical quality of th e app earanc e and significance of th e consumer obj ect. In many r esp ects, tel evision "proves" th e efficaciousne ss of th e consumer obj ect, in that it oft en shows people whose lives ar e made happi er becaus e of th e expe nsive consumer it ems th ey poss ess, just as th e beliefs of th e Melanesians ar e proven by their construction of th e cargo cult: that whites can live lives of plenty by diverting and capturing goods m eant for th e nativ es th em selves (I 998b : 32) . In both instances - television and th e cargo cult - a social group watch another group consuming more obj ects, only to confirm th eir b elief in future abundance and happiness. Embodied in this beli ef is th e concept of th e "right" to abundance disp ens ed by a ben eficent agency, b e it technology, progress or growth (I998b : 32) . But what Baudrillard is trying to sugg est is that this expe ctation tak es plac e via th e signs of abundanc e, is reinforced and assuaged by th e cod es and symbolic syst ems of our soci eti es (I 998b: 33) . And th e latter needs th e kind of investigation lacking in Marx (although he points towards such an investigation in several dens e passag es of Capital) . Baudrillard regards th e "universality of th e news item" as characterizing consumer soci ety because th e m edia reduces information to a homogeneous or similar form that is both anodyne and miraculous (I 998b: 33) . What he m eans by this is that reality is both made spectacular and distant at th e sam e time : th e subj ect is brought seemingly clos er to th e world of events, but this world is consumed via signs, which keep th e real at a distance. With a very early formulation that will eventually lead to notions of th e hyp erreal, Baudrillard argues that th e media R E W 0 R KI N G MAR X I SM

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do esn't pr esent us with reality, " . . . but the diz zyina whirl if reali ty . .. " (1998b : 34) . Th e m edia app ears to give us abundance wh en it is actually "empty" of all real cont ent ; it is th e sit e of th e playin g out of our desir es, protecting us at th e sam e time from confronting th e ever yday r ealiti es of a dangerous and problem atic world : "So we live, shelt er ed by signs , in th e denial of th e real" (1998b : 34) . Such language may b e shocking for those read ers more famili ar with th e later "postm oder n" writing, wh er e notions of "reality" are problem atized ; but th ey are problem atiz ed not by th e disappearance if th e real , but by th e di vision from th e real. At this point in The Consumer Society, Baudrillard arg ues that he can defin e th e pr actic es of consumption: The consumer 's relation to the real world , to politics, to history , to culture is not a relat ion of interest , investment or committed responsibility nor is it one of total indifference: it is a relation of curiosity . On the same pattern , we can say that the dimension of consumption as we have defined it here is not one of knowledge of the world , nor is it one of total ignorance: it is the dimension of misrecognition.

(1998b : 34: Baudrillard's emphasis)

Th er e are a number of un explained issues here, such as th e qu estion of how we gain a perspective which allows th e critic to see through th e mi sr ecognition and th e emptine ss of th e curiosity, and also what a world prior to apprehension th rough signs was actually like. But it needs to be emphasized th at such a world is clearly on e prior to th e alienation generated by Capit alism . In th e Marxist narrativ e, th e ever yday world of th e consum er is impoveri shed by th e collusion of th e m edia and th e clos ed , isolated world of th e private individual who attem pts to find person al satisfaction in th e consum ption of go ods not through social r elations. Th e world is reint erpret ed according to th e dictates and desir es of consumption and , worse still , it is th erefore subj ectiv e, unlik e th e obj ectivity of th e tot alit y ( 1998b : 35) . In The Consumer Society, Baudrillard suggests that th eorists must go b eyond th e notion of needs as being r elated to specific, individual products, whi ch are pr essed up on th e subj ect in advanc e of his or her purchase (or desir e to purchase). For example , Baudrillard do esn't think th at people are forc ed som ehow to want a particular product, say a new car. Rath er, th er e is a wh ole system of need s, which is th e product of th e syst em of production (1998b : 74 ). It m ay be difficult to

distinguish th e precise differ enc es between wh at Baudrillard is rejecting her e, and wh at he puts in its plac e. Th e key issue is th at he wants to ret ain th e Marxist emphasis on production , but lose th e sociological reduction of consumption into a seri es of forc ed purchases based upon inflicted desir es . Inst ead of th ere bein g som e kind of on eto -on e relationship b etween producer and consumer - say, with th e producer designin g and building a new typ e of motor car which is th en proj ect ed directly to th e consumer as th eir next desir ed obj ect - th ere is a syste m of needs that is th e effect of th e logical progression of th e syst em of productive forc es. Baudrillard argu es that th e order of production do esn't seek to appro priate individual levels of enjoyment but, more radically , it denies enjoyme nt to supplant it with th e system of needs . Thus we have a gene alogy of consumption:

2

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4

Th e order of production produces th e m achine /productive force, a technical syst em radic ally different from th e traditional tool. It produces capital/rationalized productive forc e, a rational system of investment and circulation , radically differ ent from "w ealth" and from earlier modes of exchange . It produces waged labour power, an abst ra ct , syst ematized productive forc e, radically different from concret e labour and th e traditional "workmanship". And so it produces needs, th e sys tem of needs, demand/productive forc e as a rationalized , int egrat ed , controlled whole, complem en tary to th e three others in a process of total control of th e productive forc es and production processes. ( I 998b: 75 ; Baudrillard's em phasis)

We can think this through in relation to th e industrialized worker . First , th e worker no longer understands th e tools used in making a product. Before industrialization, th e worker understood precisely th e tools used - such as th e blacksmith or th e weaver. But, afte r industrialization, th e worker became part of a "m achin e" (the factory) and only worked at on e small part of that machine with no real comprehension of th e overall unit . Baudrillard argue s th at this shift in th e rel ationship between th e craftsp erson enjoying th e fruits of his or her personal labour, and th e industrialized worker alienated from th e factory as machine, is th e first stag e in a new typ e of production . Th e second stage is non-symbolic exchange : th e "product" - say a hand-cr afted R E W 0 R K IN G MAR X I S M

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silver chalic e, which onc e had spiritual significance - becomes th e obj ect valu ed prim ar ily for its financi al return . Thus "w ealth" no longer has symbolic valu e or m eaning (the chalice was always worth money, but th at wasn't its primary signific anc e) . Inst ead "w ealth" is now related to capital , eithe r in th e form of accumulation (savings, shar es , etc.) or investment (m ore ma chines, factories , etc.) . Rem ember that waged labour power is an abstraction, a value given to th e worker s' ene rgy consumed th at no lon ger bears any relation to th e goods produced by th e industrialized machine. Thi s is th e third stag e that changes notions of consumption, followed by th e fourth stag e, th e "syst em of needs", wh er e consumption is not related to use-valu e or a furth er imposed desir e. Rath er, human b eings now exist within a syst em of consumption wh ere th e act of bu ying a product is as abstra ct as th e ways in which th e products are made in th e first place. In For a Criti que if the Politi cal Economy if the Sian , Baudrillard calls th e notion of th e individual subject driven by needs to consume a real , individual obj ect, a " . . . th or oughly vulgar m etaph ysic" ( 198 1: 63) . He suggests th at analysing consum ption is akin to analysing dream s in th e Freudian sense: th ere is no point in trying to make sense of th e mani fest dream becaus e it is a complex narrative constructed from th e processes of condensation and displacem ent . Similarly, Baudrillard argues that m er ely to look at th e ever yday surface would be a mistake : it is th e pr ocesses of an "unconscious social logic" th at must be analysed in relation to th e realm of ever yday life ( 198 I : 6 3). Baudrillard m akes a number of fairly complex mov es , which can be briefly sum ma rized . Fir st, th e empir ical obj ect its elf is a myth , because it is actually constructed via" . . . th e different typ es of r elations and significations that conv er ge, contradict th ems elves, and twist around it . . ." (198 I : 6 3) . At this stage we can think of two categories of obj ects beyond th e utilitari an : th e collected obj ect and th e obj ect of consumption. With th e coll ect ed obj ect , th e obj ect is imbued with personal m eaning in a psychologic al pr ocess. Any object, from stamps to "classic" cars, can b e coll ect ed - wh at is important is th at th e coll ector find s th e act of coll ecting pl easurable and special. Th ese feelin gs m ay have nothing to do with how th e object fun ctions: it do esn't matter that stamps can b e put on envelope s and old car s driven. With th e obj ect of consumption, th e obj ect (say, a design er dress) has a social m eanin g, such as status (th e wear er must have great wealth to b e able t o afford such a dress), prestige, fashion , and so on . But th e obj ect of consumption do es not

function via th e utilitarian or th e personal: it functions via its relations with other obj ects. In oth er words, it functions like th e Saussurean sign : differ entially and arbitrarily (198 I : 64) . N ext, with th e transition from pre-C apitalist soci eti es to a Capitalist syst em, th ere is a shift from symbolic exchange to "sign -valu e" . What do es Baudrillard m ean by this ? In symbolic exchange , an obj ect is given not for th e sake of th e obj ect itself, but for th e signification gen erated by th e transaction (e.g. th e potlatch). However, this has th e strange effect of both effacing and individualizing th e obj ect, becaus e any obj ect will do in th e process of giving (a child's drawing or a Rembrandt), yet aft er th e gift has b een received th e obj ect carries or is imbued with special m eaning. (We say: "This obj ect has sentimental valu e.") Under Capitalism, th e obj ect is divorced from th e processes of pre-industrialized production and symbolic valu e and starts to function like a sign : "The sign obj ect is neither given nor exchanged : it is appropriated, withheld and manipulated by individual subj ects as a sign , that is, as cod ed differenc e. Here lies th e obj ect of consumption" (1981 : 65) . In other words, I might decid e to wear a design er suit not to fulfil a need, but to expre ss a differ enc e from other people who surround m e. For Baudrillard, symbolic exchange reveals concret e and transparent int erpersonal rela tionships ; with th e transition to sign -valu e, such relationships are no longer transparent: The object-become-sign no longer gathers its meaning in the concret e relationship between two people. It assumes its meaning in its differenti al relation to other signs. Somewhat like Levi-Str auss' myths , sign-objects exchange among t hemselves. Thus, only when objects are autonomized as diffe rential signs and thereby rendered systemati zable can one speak of consumption and of objects of consumption . (1981 66)

Think of th e act of wearing th e design er suit again : th e suit is not worn with on e other person in mind, who will value th e suit for its quality of workmanship , and so on . Inst ead , th e design er suit functions or has m eaning becaus e it is not a high-street brand. Th e various suits function, also, regardless of who wears them (think about th e fact that most catwalk models , apart from th e sup ermodels , ar e anonymous people to th e averag e consumer) . In other words, design er suits circulate in th e fashion world and beyond like signs - th ey can be worn /used by no R E W 0 R K IN G MAR X I SM

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on e or anyone, and th e act of wearing do esn't change what th ey signify. Another way of thinking about this is in relation to Saussure: wearing a suit is like th e speech act or "parole". Th e speech act is given m eaning by th e syst em of language or "langue" overall , not th e individual speaker. Thus Baudrillard's consumer indulges in acts of consumption (wearing suits), which are given m eaning by th e syst em (e.g. th e fashion-syst em or cod e). Baudrillard argue s that we must distinguish, th erefore, between th e logic of consumption and th e logic of use valu e, exchange- value and symbolic exchange . A clear example is that of th e differenc e between a wedding ring and an ordinary ring. Th e wedding ring has symbolic valu e (th e marriage), and in th e process of being given becomes a singular obj ect ; for exam ple, th e ring isn't periodically changed for on e of a different fashion, and so on . Th e ordinary ring, however, is not usually symbolic: it can be changed for on e of a differ ent fashion, thrown completely away, be worn for show (e .g. a show of wealth) or b e worn purely for personal pl easure. Th e ordinary ring is non-singular and functions like a sign ; it is an obj ect of consumption (1981 : 66) . Baudrillard go es on to sugg est th at much of th e thinking about "needs" fails to take into account th e syst ematicity of subj ect-obj ect relations and th e ways in which th e different logics of consumption and exchange ar e confused and confl ated. What is th e solution, th en, if consumption is to be elucidated ? With a rath er grand gesture, Baudrillard says "It thus proves necessary to r econstruct social logic entirely" (1981 : 72) . This is to be done not m erely by arguing that th ere is no such thing as th e obj ect (because we deal with th e obj ect as sign) but that th er e is also no such thing as th e individual. Baudrillard's structuralist Marxism her e is moving a very lon g way from Marx , even given all th e comments concerning production. Following Levi -Strauss and others, Baudrillard is sugg esting here th at th e individual subj ect is preced ed by th e soci al syst em : "Even b efore survival has b een assured, ever y group of individuals expe r iences a vital pr essure to produce th emselves m eaningfully in a syst em of exchange and relationships" (1981 : 74) . Inst ead of th e liberal-humanist position , wh er eby human b eings contain and expre ss th eir inn er and innate identities, Baudrillard is arguing that people are only ever given th eir identities by th e soci al syst ems th at pr eced e th em . A "language" of exchange preced es th e subj ect, becaus e th e subj ect can be on e of th e signifiers involv ed in th e syst em , th e subj ect is identified by th e syst em (e.g. in terms of

marriage or kin ship systems) and th e subject can b e one of th e "significant cleme nt s" within th e hier ar chy of th e system . Th e argument runs th at goo ds and products also ente r th e system like th e human subj ect, thus consumption equals exchange ( 198 1: 75) . Ju st as langu age is not const r ucte d instant by instant by th e ind ividual speech act , so consum ption is no t cons tr uct ed or or dered instant by instant by indi vidu al need . Th e subject is born int o language and con sumption exists and occurs within a field of differe nces and codes : The circulation , purchase, sale, appropriation of differentiated goods and signs/objects today constitute our language, our code, the code by which the entire society communicates and converses. Such is the str ucture of consumption, its language [langue], by comparison with which individual needs and pleasures Uouissances] are merely speech effects. (1998b : 79-80)

Baudrillard's analyses of consumption as fun cti oning as a differential sign-sys tem is elaborate d and further th eori zed in For a Critique if the Poli tical Economy if the Sian . This collection of essays from th e late 1960s and early 1970s analyses th e sign form in a way analogo us to earlier Marxist analyses of th e commodity form . At times supplem enting The System if Objects and Consumer Society, at othe r tim es presenti ng sim ilar argu m en ts from a less th eoret ically coher en t per spectiv e, th ese essays provide a det ailed allianc e of Marxist and sem iotic th ought. While it is beyond th e sco pe of thi s chapter to pr ovid e an in -depth sur vey of th ese essays, it can be not ed th at th e polit ical fram ew ork of th ese analyses also fun cti on s as a boundar y m arker of th e ultimat e str etc hing of Marxi st th ought b eyond whi ch Baudrillard may occasio nally go in thi s peri od , but always with his return t o Marx and th eori es of producti on in mind .

THE CRITIQUE OF MARX Fro m being a tou chst on e to th e th eories of consum ption in th e early cluster of works , production after 197 2 becom es instead th e aporia or "blind spo t" of Marxi st th ou ght . Producti on is per ceived to be a conc ept wh ich do minat es Marxist th ought . Because of thi s do m ination it b ecom es a limit to th e system of Marxist analyses - in other words, Marxism canno t see beyo nd producti on. Thi s is why it is a "blind spo t" . REWORKI NG MAR XISM

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The Mirror if Production, whil e developing m any of th e id eas in th e early cluster of work, is far more of a radical break with those works th an is oft en realiz ed . In The Mirr or if Production , Baudrillard atta cks th e onto logical (how we exist in th e world) and episte m ological (how we know th e world) Marxist notions of production th at lead to production , circumscribing" ... th e entire history of man in a gigantic sim ulation model" ( 1975 : 33) . In m any ways this at tack is far more blunt-edged than clos ely det ailed, partly b ecaus e Baudrillard is trying to tackl e an entire system broadsid e on, and partly because he is using deconstructiv e logic which isn't always ver y clear. But it is thi s deconstruction of Marxism th at gives th e argume nt its radicalism , and we shall try to clarify thi s strand of th e over all argum ent . Baudrillard r eturns to th e building blocks of Marxist th eory in The M irror if Production. In particular, he is int er ested in th e dialectic of quality and qu antity ( 1975: 25) . Comparing th e notion of quality as it r elat es to pre-industrialized modes of production (where "qu alit y" equals th e fact that th e worker is involved with th e product from b eginning to end ) and qu antity as relating to mass production (sinc e th e ene rgy to work is sold to someone else and th e worker just rep eti tiv ely performs th e sam e task with no pleasure or pride in th e final product) , Baudrillard th en thinks about th ese in relation to use-valu e and exchange -value . Thus, "In th e subsequent capitalist mode of production labour is analyzed under a double form" ( 1975: 26 ). For Marx , labour can be eithe r "con cret e and special" (with th e production of use-valu e) or "abstract, univ ers al and homogen eous" (with th e producti on of exchange value) ( 1975 : 26) . Marx arg ues th at use-valu e produces exchange valu e : The product ... is a use-value, as yarn, f or example, or boots . But although boots are, to some extent , the basis of social progress , and our capitalist is decidedly in f avour of progress , he does not manufacture boots for their own sake ... Use-values are produced by capitalists only because and, in so fa r as t hey f orm the material substratum of exchange-value , are the bearers of exchange-value . (1975: 293)

Th e narrative of th e shift in modes of production em phasizes th e chang es in labour r elations in th e eighteenth century. But Baudrillard argues th at it is not th e shift away from pre-industrialized modes of

production th at leads to th e universalization of th e notion of labour its elf. Inst ead, the universaliz ed notion of labour is generat ed by th e "structural ar t iculation" of th e two t erms "quality" and "quantity": Work is really universalized at the base of this "fork," not only as market value but as human value. Ideology alwaysthus proceeds bya binary, structural scission [splitting], which works here to universalize the dimension of labour. By divi ding ... quantitative labourspreads throughoutthe field of possibility. (1975: 27)

This is an incredibly difficult point to grasp, b ec aus e Baudrillard is sugg esting, as with Levi -Strauss's notion of th e inc est taboo (see Ch apter 6) , that th ere is an "originary" ar ticulat ion of an impossible binary opposition h ere. Another w ay of putting this is that a whole syst em of thought - h ere it is Marxism - is put into motion by a contradiction . Thus, quality do es not precede quantity, as Marx arg ue s, where quality is r eal, concret e, derived from nature, and quantity is ab stra ct and artificially ge ne ra te d. Or, where qu ality is th e product followed by th e craftsperson from b eginning to end (the entire boot), and quantity is th e ab stracte d sold labour (the eyele t in a boot punched at a machine over and over again) . Rather, th e structural syst em ge ne rate d by th e articulation of these oppositions enables us to articulat e th e notion of th e universal nec essity for productive labour in th e first place . But such a structural syst em , and any "universal" notion, will b e in th emselv es "abstract" .W e th en (as Marxists) r ead back into pre-Capitalist modes of production th e notions of concret e, r eal, qualitative labour, and los e sight of th e fact that all of these notions derive from our lat er ab st ra ct syst em . Baudrillard's d econstructive argument has radical implications for many (if not all) of th e founding concepts of Marxism . H e summariz es his analysis of this structural ar ticulat ion as follows : ... "concrete" is an abuse of the word . Itseems opposed to the abstract at the base of the fork [between quality and quant ity], but in fact the fork is what establishes the abstraction. The autonomization of labour is sealed in the play of the two from the abst ract to the concrete, from the qualitativeto the quantitative, from the exchange valueto the use value of labour. In this st ructuralized play ofsignifiers, the fetishism of labourand productivitycrystallizes. (1975: 27)

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For Baudrillard, Marxism is bound up with a narrative wh er e humanity is regarded as a productive community of b eings who are condemned or saved by labour dep ending on th e ideological syst em in op er ation . In other words, th e human subj ect realiz es himself or herself in labour. We have alre ady briefly examine d th e mast er/slave narrative in Hegel, where th e seeds of th e slave's salvation are sown precisely through work . But wh at we haven't examine d in any gr eat depth ar e models of human society that do not construct th ems elves via productive labour. Such models, Baudrillard argue s - for example , "primitive" or "archaic" soci eti es - would contradict th e founding premis e of productive labour. Baudrillard is keen to maintain th e opposition between material and symbolic wealth . Th e form er is produced within a tel eological syst em - always gaining more, alw ays becoming more productive, always real izing more capit al, and so on . Symbolic wealth, however, is non-tel eological and non-productive, coming as it do es from int er changes of destruction, abandonment, giving and transgression . Symbolic wealth, as its nam e sugg ests, simply do es not signify in th e sam e way as material wealth . To take on e example - with th e emblazoned copper obj ects of th e Canadi an northwest coast Haida and Kwakiutl th at Marcel Mauss discusses briefly in The Gift, we find symbolic wealth may have an existe nce, a beina as such , alien to th at of materi al wealth ; th e copper obj ects may speak or grumble, demand to b e kept warm, given away or destroyed ; th ey may attract other copper obj ects, but not in a simplistic causal relationship, becaus e of th e intri cat e int erconnections of obj ect, spirit and title (Mauss 1990 : 45). Th e crucial factor in symbolic wealth is on e of relationship : it is th e process of each particular "exchang e" th at cr eat es symbolic m eaning, including th e reciprocal recognition from other people, spirits and obj ects (which ar e an ama lgam of th ese categories in th e first plac e) . In many r esp ects Baudrillard is maintaining a "purist" reading of Marx her e to push th e logic of Marxism to its limits without turning it into som ething radically different, e.g. th e excessivene ss of Bataill e's th eories that promote transgression, destruction , wast e, and so on . One of th e limit strategi es used is that of exam ining th e ways in which Marxist concepts are "univers alized" in th e process of critiquing bourgeois thought. In other words , such concepts ar e not regarded as historically situated int erpretiv e devic es, but univ ersal cat egories. We can see th e problem by briefly thinking about Hegel's Phenomenoloqv if Spirit her e ;

th e dialecti cal m ovem ent of th e Phetiom enoloqv is alw ays t ow ards "Ab solute Spir it" ; but , right fr om th e star t, "Absolut e Spir it" is en code d in the naive positi on of th e subj ect , sinc e no p ositi on can b e entir ely "outsid e" th e dialecti c , and th e end p oint fuels or drives th e b eginning. With th e univ er salizati on of Marxist conc epts, Baudrillard argues th at th ere is a threefold r esult : th e concepts cease t o b e analytical and b ecome "religious" or mystical ; th e co nc epts t ake on a scient ific cast ; th e conc epts b ecome r epresentativ e of r eality!tr uth , not interpretive ( 1975 : 4 8). As univer salized concepts, like "Abso lut e Spir it" , th ey b ecome th e goa l and th e driving force in an en closed syst em of th ou ght . O th er societies, e .g. so-called "prim itive" or "arc haic" soci eties, must , within thi s enclosed syst em, b e presented as som eh ow "embryoni c". Baudrillard arg u es th at w e can see th e limits of Marxist th ou ght precisely at thi s failed p oint of contac t (failed b ecau se th e Other is interpret ed via the sam e) : "Th er e is neither a mode if production nor production in primitive soc ieties . Ther e is no dialectic and no unconscious in primitive soci et ies . Th ese conc epts ana lyze our ow n soci et ies, which are ruled by political econ omy" ( 1975 : 4 9) . In th e previou s cha pt er w e di scu ssed how Baudrillar d is able to m ake suc h interpretive claim s abo ut oth er societies himself; h er e the point is th at , in bringin g Marxist th ought up against an alien O ther, Marxism is shown t o b e a local ph enomen on , if one of gr eat explanat or y p ow er , not a set of univer sals.

SUMMARY Baudr il lard 's att empt to articulate a structural Mar xism has been shown to turn into the critique of Mar x from 1972 onward s. Thi s chapt er has examined the way that Baudrill ard's description of the everyday exper ience of th e jungle of object s prefigures the crit ique of Mar x from th e posit ion of a new theory of consumpt ion. In oth er words , we have seen how Baudr illard maps out the contemporary world of consumerist objects using the logi c of Mar xism (especially use-value and exchange-value), but then goes on to realiz e that there are gaps in the Marx ist account, such as the astronomical rise in wages and the negativity and oppression of the consumer produ ct turning into a positive fa ctor in people's lives. We have

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also seen how for Baudri llard the process whereby the object is divorced from production and symbo lic value means that the object now functions like a sign. The critique of Marx which follows depends upon this ins ight, as well as analyses of notions of quality/quantity and the oppos ition between material and symbolic wealth.

5 SIMULATION AND THE HYPERREAL

Thi s chapter explore s two of th e centra l ideas in Baudrillard's later work: simulation and th e hyp er real. Th e chapter puts th ese ideas into th eir historical context, as well as r elatin g th em to postm od er nism , war and film . Finally, th e chapter examine s som e of th e th eor eti cal int erc onn ecti on s between Baudrillard and Frenc h th eori sts Mi chel Foucau lt and Guy D ebord.

WATERGATE On 17 June 1972 , five m en broke int o th e offices of a building called th e "Watergate" in Washingt on , D C. Ov er th e next two years, th e US Pr esident, Richard Nixo n, would att empt to cover up th e involvem ent of him self and his m en in thi s deed . What unfold ed during th ose two years , instead , was th e recognition th at co r r uption in th e White Hou se ran deep er than anyo ne had im agin ed possible: th e attem pt to bug th e Dem ocrats' offices in Watergate was one in a ser ies of cr im inal offenc es th at included a plan to fireb omb a liberal thi nk tank called Th e Brookings Institution , th e illegal bu gging and burglar y of peopl e con necte d with th e release of th e Pentagon Paper s in 1971 , and a wh ole host of pr esidential campaign "dirty tricks" (see th e 1976 film All the President 's Men) . Th e investigation s th at foll owed led Pr esident Nixon t o resign - th e fir st Pr esident t o do so - rath er th an face

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impeachment, in Augu st 1974 . A wh ole host of Nixon's closest advisers - th e m ost senior m en in gover nm ent - were eventually charg ed with criminal offenc es and imprison ed. With Gerald Ford 's speech, as he took over as th e thirty-eighth Pr esident of th e United States, it could b e argue d th at thi s dam aging scandal was over ; oth er "gates" have foll owed - Iran -, Iraq- and Whitew ater -gate - but, as Fred Em ery not es, Wat ergat e "is still th e m other of all 'ga t es'" (Em ery, 199 5: xiv) . Th e Water gate narrative can be summa r ized succi nctly : a burglar y r uptures th e pret en ce th at th e gover nm ent in charg e of a Capitalist democracy is actually law -abiding; th e scandal of a governm ent going "off th e rails" and th e attempted cover -u p is gradually m ade public , until th e nation's legal processes take over, rem oving or destroying th e cor r upt m en in office, so th at democracy is onc e again rest ored. But thi s is not Baudrillard's point of view. In hi s Simulations, he argue s: Watergat e is not a scandal: this is what must be said at all cost, f or this is what

everyone is concerned to conceal , this dissimulation masking a strengthening of morality, a moral panic as we approach the primal (mise en) scene of capital : its

instantaneous cruelty, its

incomprehensible f eroc it y, its fundamental

im morality - this is what is scan dalous .. . (1983b 29)

Baudrillard seems to be reversing th e Watergate situa tion here. He suggests th at it is not th e corr uption of gover nm ent th at is scandalo us, but th e fact th at wh at Wat ergat e reveals abo ut gover nm ent is a "tr uth" (that is th en covered up by th e suggestion th at thi s event) is an aberration not a co nstitutive "fact" . In oth er words, inst ead of Wat er gat e r evealing a m orally superior system going wro ng (Capitalism contr olled by dem ocracy breaks d own), Baudrillard arg ues th at Wat er gat e reveals th at "C apital do esn't give a damn abo ut th e idea of th e co ntrac t whi ch is imputed to it - it is a m on strou s unprincipled undertakin g, nothing more" ( 1983 b : 29) . So th e scandal arises, for Baudrillard , not because of th e Wat er gat e break-in , not because of th e cover-u p th at follow s, but wh en th e revelati on th at gover nm ent is unprincipl ed is itself covered up by th e so-called return to order with th e end ofthe Nixo n regime and th e inauguration of Pr esident Ford . If we sim ply had th e abo ve rever sal of valu es to deal with (o ne scandal repl aced by ano ther), th en Baud rill ard's acco unt of Wat ergat e

would be easy to under stand . But th ere is m ore to his acco unt th an an inver sion of m oralit y and m oral lesson s. Baudrillard's fir st m enti on of Wat ergat e is far m ore com plex : "Waterga te. Sam e scena rio as Disneyland (an imag inary effect concealing th at realit y no m ore exists outside th an inside th e bounds of th e ar tificial perimet er ) . . ." ( 1983b : 26). How can th e m ost disturbing politi cal scan dal of th e 1970s be compared with Disneyland ? And wh at d oes thi s com par ison tell us abo ut postmod ernism ?

POSTMODERNISM Roland Barthes once described the literary text as "a tissue of quotations ". This description could have been used just as accurately for the postmodern. A postmodern text, building, performance, and so on, is usually a mixture of styles, drawing upon different historical movements and features to produce a hybrid form. This is in direct opposition to modernism, wh ich rejected the past to build a new, enclosed st yle of its own. Postmodern form is open-ended, self-reflective (in that the form may "quote" itself) and dynam ic in the sense of welcoming incorporation of it s own feature s into other postmodern texts, buildings, etc. Critics still argue about when the postmodern began. Generally, the term gathered pace durin g the 1950s and 1960s, coming to the fore in the 1970s wit h the appearance of inf luenti al French theorist Jean-Francols Lyotard 's La Condition postmoderne (1979; Engl ish edition 1984). However, if one major

histori cal event marks the shift int o the postmodern world, it may be the Vietnam War (1959-1973), wh ich led to a widespread di strust of authority and technology, at the same time promoting the televisu al experience of reality. In literature, key postmodern novel ists include Thomas Pynchon (e.g. The Crying of Lot 49, 1966) and Don Delil lo (e.g. White Noise , 1984; Pic ador edition 1986).

To answer th ese questions we need to think closely, fir st abo ut th e Disneyland example and th en about th e way in which th e othe r "exam ples" in Simulations sketch out a highly cri tical vision of a postmod ern world .

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DISN EYLAN D If we think abo ut a place such as Di sneyland , in th e US, we t end to think in terms of a fantasy representati on of reality, a simulation of th e r eal taken t o extre mes (such as th e "fairy -tale" Di sney castl e based upo n buildings found through out Euro pe) . But Baudrillard regards Di sneyland , and th e country th at sur ro unds it , as partakin g of th e "third order" of simulation . A first -order simulation would be wh ere th e represent ation of th e r eal (say, a novel , a painting or a map) is obviously just th at : an ar tificial represent ati on . A seco nd-order simulation, however, blurs the bound aries between reality and representation . Baudrillard points us towards Borges' fable "Of Exactitude in Science", wh ere " . . .th e car to graphers of th e Empir e draw up a map so detailed th at it ends up exactly covering th e territory . . ." ( 1983 b : I ); in other words, th e "map" and realit y can no longer be discerned , so th e m ap has b ecom e, in a sense, as real as th e real. But third-order simulation go es b eyond th ese position s; third-order simulation produces a "hvperreal", or " . . .th e generation by m od els of a real without origin or realit y . . ." ( 1983b : 2). In a rever sal of order, in third-order simulation, th e m od el preced es th e real (e.g. th e map preced es th e territory) - but this do esn't m ean th at th er e is a blurring between reality and representation; rath er, th er e is a detachment from both of th ese, wh er eby the reversal becomes irrelevant . Baudrillard sugg ests th at hyperrealit y is produced algor ithmically (o r via math em ati cal formulae), like th e virtual reality of com puter code; th at is to say, deta ch ed from notions of mimesis and representation and implicated , for exam ple , in th e world of math em atical formulae. Th e important and disturbing point to all thi s is th at th e hyperreal do esn't exist in th e realm of good and evil, because it is m easured as such in terms of its performativity how well do es it work or op erate?

THIRD-ORDER SIMULATION W ith first- and second-order simulation, the real still exists, and we measure the success of simulation against the real. Baudrillard's worry with third-order simulation is that the model now generates what he calls "hyperreality" - that is, a world without a real origin. So, with third order

simu lation we no longer even have the rea l as part of the equat ion. Eventual ly, Baudrillard thinks that hyperreal ity will be the dominant way of experienc ing and understand ing the world .

To comprehend th e com plexities in Baudrillard's conc ept of th e hyp er real, it is necessary to think through th e concrete exam ples scatt ered through out th e two essays th at make up th e English publicati on of Simulatio ns . It is worth thinking through th e referen ces to m edicine, th e mil itar y and religion , and th e noti on s of simulation th at are explore d. In a section called "The Divin e Irrefer enc e of Images", Baudrillard discusses th e differen ce b etween feigning /dissimulatin g and simulation ; with th e form er, th er e is a r elationship with absence and presen ce, or a relationship with th e "t r ue" state of affairs. Dissimulati on is a form of pret enc e, or a covering of on e' s r eal feelings. Baudrillard says: "To dissimulate is to feign not to have wh at on e has" (I98 3b : 5). Thus, som eone who is hungry , for exam ple, may pr et end not to be, perhaps to maintain a cer tain im age of contro l. Baudrillard argu es th at , in dissimulation , th e r ealit y principle is left inta ct - for exam ple , som eone goes to bed and feigns an illn ess sim ply by saying that he or she feels unwell. But with th e simulation of an illn ess, th e person in bed actually produces som e of th e symptoms for example , excessive sneezing. In th e latt er case, how ar e we to know wh at th e real state of affair s actually is? Do es th e person have flu or not , if we can witness th em sne ezing away? In th e example of someone feigning an illn ess, with no obvious sym ptoms, we can probably verify th at th ey have som e other reason to lie about th eir true stat e (like a child who do esn't want to go to school) . Th e point is th at we can iden tify th at th e subject actually has good health and that th ey are feigning its absence. In other words , we can still negoti ate th e differ enc es between a true and false state of affair s. With simulation , we can no lon ger negotiate th e differ en ces, so th e differ en ces th em selves are threaten ed . If this logic is taken any furth er, th en m edic al scienc e is itself brought into qu estion: " . . .if any symptom can be ' pro duced ' , and can no longer be accepted as a fact of nature, th en ever y illn ess m ay be considered simulatable and simulate d , and m edicine los es its m eanin g since it only knows how to treat ' tr ue ' illn esses by th eir obj ective

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caus es" (1983b : 5-6) . Baudrillard gives two furth er examples of this blurring of th e boundaries between true and false, with exam ples of simulation in th e ar my and th e church . In th e past , Baudrillard argu es , th e army would "unmask" those subj ects guilt y of simulating an illn ess or madness, for exam ple , to get out of a particular duty (or to get out of th e army alto geth er) ; th e subjects would th en b e punished for th eir misdeeds . However, in th e present , Baudrillard argues that th e ar my now attem pt s to "r eform" simulators - in other words, treat th eir "illnesses" as real and return th em event ually to duty. In thi s reformation, th e reality principle has broken down, b ecaus e th er e is no attem pt to look beyond th e simulated symptoms for a "true" state of affairs : th e sym ptoms are always already th e performative truth of th e subj ect , regardless of wh eth er he or she is ill or not.

PERFORMATIVE KNOWLEDGE In Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, technology is discussed as something that optimizes performance; that is to say, the attainment of the maximum output for the minimum input. There is no notion here of technology leading to

something more profound -

such as a deeper

understanding of the universe, through the use of computers for examplejust a more efficient or productive way of technology functioning. Philosophical ideals such as "truth " or " et hics" are subordinated in the postmodern to performativity: if it works, it is good. Lyotard argued in the 1970s that higher education would come to be dominated by perform ativity: skills needed to increase the "performativity of the social system" would be pr ioritized. For example, the teaching of computer sciences and genetic engineering would take priority over traditional subjects such as philosophy and the arts.

Baudrillard's final example is th at of th e religious ima ge, and th e danger of a m on otheistic (single) God being scatt ered via a multitude of icons or simul acr a. In such a process, th e "tr ue" God would b e r epla ced by a seri es of sim ulated gods. Baudrillard argue s th at it cannot b e quite so simple, because th e icons would th en b e dissimulating (that is, feigning) th at th ey haven't th e power of th e on e God , th erefore

being in relation to th e absent God (proving that God exists and that God potentially has ultimate power) . Inst ead, th e problem with th e icons is th at th ey have a facility" . . .of effacing God from th e consciousness of m en" ( I983b : 8) in th e process suggesting th at " . . . ultimately th er e has never b een any God , that only th e simulacrum exist s, ind eed that God himself has only ever been his own simulacrum" (I 98 3b : 8) . Baudrillard calls Disneyland a third-order simulation, which can now b e linked to Wat erg ate. It is easy to think about Disneyland as a second-order simulation, wh er e fake castl es look more real than th e real , b ecaus e th ey embody all of our childish and romantic notions of wh at a castl e should ideally look like, and th e machinery of r epresentation is so well hidden th at r eality and representation blur together. But th e implications of Disn eyland as third-order simulation are much harder to come to grips with. Baudrillard argue s th at Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the "real" country, all of "real" A merica, which is Disneyland .. . Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in f act all of Los Angeles and the A merica surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation . (1983b 25)

Baudrillard makes th e comparison with prisons , arguing th at prisons hid e th e fact th at we are incarcerat ed in soci ety ; in other words , we beli eve in our freedom pr ecisely becaus e we lock criminals away and lose sight of th e structural similarities between th e two social realms . This was a point th at Foucault made explicitly in his Surveiller et punir in 1975 (translated by Alan Sheridan as Disciplin e and Punish: The Birth if the Prison) . Foucault made famous th e notion of micro-powers in society functioning like th e panopticon ; that is to say, th e famous prison plan devised by th e English philosopher Jer emy Bentham ( 174 8- 1832), which gives th e notion of a discipline m ech anism through th e potential of perman ent surveillanc e. Foucault's description of th e panopticon is worth quoting at some length her e (alth ough we will also examine Baudrillard's critique of it at th e end of this chapter) : ...at the periphery, an annular building ; at the centre , a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells , each of which extends the whole width of the S I M U L A T I ON AND THE H YPERREAL

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building ; they have two windows , one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside , allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other ... By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower , stan ding out precisely against the light , the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery . They are like so many cages, so many small theatres , in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. (Foucault, 1979: 200)

Fouc ault picked up on Bentham's notion of panopticism , wh er eby soci ety no longer functions according to th e traditional model of sover eign power, or power inflicted directly and physically on th e people from abov e, but inst ead int ers ects with ever y subj ect through th e relations of discipline (Foucault, 1979 : 208). In relation to th e comments made in "Why Baudrillard?" (see p. 3) and Chapter 1, this is a structuralist notion of how power op erates in soci ety - think back to th e notion of th e indicativ e Monnet Plans, which are brought into being by each individual in soci ety not by some order from abov e. Baudrillard's point in Simulations is th at soci ety can only function if th e subj ect believes that rationality holds sway, and discipline, childishness, madness and so on are seen to be elsewhe re . Or, to put this another way, soci ety needs to believe th at th e sover eign power of rationality holds sway.Thus he calls Disneyland" . . .a det errenc e machine set up in order to rejuv enate in revers e th e fiction of th e real" (1983b : 25) . What he m eans by this is th at Disneyland exists to convince us that rationality is outside th e walls of its childish domain, rather than th e fact that rationality has been r eplaced by childishness ever ywhe re . This is why Watergate gets compar ed to Disn eyland. Wat ergate gen erates a scandal that exists to rejuv en ate or regen er ate "a moral and political principle . . ." (1983b : 27). Th e principle is that government is fundam entally moral in its approache s, and that soci ety shares that morality ; but such a notion is undermined by th e obfuscation or obscuring actions by gover nment forc es in Am erica at th e time (such as th e FBI) and th e way in which th e journalists had to take as devious an approach to th e event as th e people who were implicated. Baudrillard thus accuses th e famous Washinqton Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein , of employing m ethods analogous to those of th e CIA (1983b : 27) . But this is quite an astounding claim, which would seem to conflate two journalists trying to get at th e truth with those corrupt

and immoral officials of th e Nixon adm inistration who were clearly int ent on breaking th e law (and, in th e process, regarding th ems elves as som ehow abov e th e law) . This is a claim th at Baudrillard can only ju stify and explain with referenc e to Capitalism and notions of left and right -wing political actions. Quoting French philo sopher Pierre Bourdieu , and his view th at relations of for ce are not onl y bound up with dissimulation, but actually gain power through dissimulation (e.g. a multinational corporation claiming an ethical policy towards th e enviro nment in th e West whil e d oing th e co mplete opposite in th e Developing World), Baudrillard follows thi s through with th e argu m ent that capital, which is "im m oral" (placin g itself beyond qu estions of go od and evil), can only fun ction through dissimulation. Capital th er efore needs a moral "fro nt " with which to pr esent itself to th e world . Any regen eration of thi s moral "fro nt" thus increases th e power of capital to mi srepresent itself. Thus th e claim that Woodward and Bernstein further " . . .th e order of capital" ( 1983b : 27). For Baudrillard , Woodward and Bernstein (and, indeed , Bourdieu ), all make th e sam e mi stake: th ey believe in th e "rationality" of capital (even if this is sim ply wh er e th ey want capital to "end up ", so to speak) wh en Baudrillard regards capital as being divorced from rationalit y. Thi s leaves us in th e position wh ereby we can 't tell if ri ght-wing actions such as "D eep Throat" in th e Water gate case, who leaked key fact s to th e Washington Post journalist s - are for left - or right-wing results, and vice ver sa (especially if we accept th e argum ent that th e moral regen eration of gover nm en t increases th e power of capital as such) . This would seem to leave us in a frightening abyss , wh ere th e hyp erreal produces a society of surfaces, performativity and a fragm entation or fracturing of ration ality. Such a world has b een called by m any critics "the postmod ern".

P05TMODERN 1 9 705 One of th e ironi es of th e Watergate peri od , with its ende m ic corrup tion , is th at th e Nixon administra tion was bringin g th e Vietnam War to an end. In fact , Henry Kissinger's pr em ature anno unc em ent in O ctober 197 2 th at peace in Vietnam was at hand, while far from th e truth , signa lled correctly th e directi on in which th e US governm ent was heading. Ju st five m onths aft er th e Wat ergat e burglar y, th e Nixon administration was re-elect ed with a hu ge majority; in Vietnam , th e S I M U L A T IO N AND THE H Y PER REA L

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peace deal that Kissing er had hinted at finally became a reality after th e problematic but politically effective "Christmas bombing", leading to a Nobel prize for Kissing er and th e Communist lead er Le Duc Tho (Emery, 1995 : 231) . Eventually, Congress would demand th e withdrawal from South Vietnam of all American troops, and th e war would b e over, except in on e of th e plac es it still seems to rag e to this day : th e Am erican psyche. Vietnam has been called th e first "television war", referring to th e way in which im ages of its death and destruction permeat ed th e West via this dominating technology. In many r esp ects, r eporters would never have such freedom to roam th e battlefield again , as military powers r ealized th e potential of controlling or directing th e m edia reporting of war. Subsequ ent wars, espe cially th e Gulf War, have all b een discussed as being part of a massive desir e for cath arsis, a healing moment wh en US power reasserts itself afte r th e failures in Vietnam . But this, in turn, fails to come to terms with th e Vietnam War "itself" and a seri es of qu estions left un answ er ed : What was th e war all about? Why did so many Am ericans die in a situation that didn't seem to make sens e to so many people back home?Was th e war responsible for th e ris e of student and oth er activists in th e West, for exam ple , with May 1968 ? And what was Am erica's position as a "superpower" aft er th e defeat in Vietnam ? Many more qu estions r emain unanswer ed , but in th e m edia , espe cially film , such qu estions becam e issu es that were constantly explore d , that constantly circulated . In Chapt er I we noted th e way in which Baudrillard regarded th e m edia in May 1968 as short-circuiting notions of symbolic exchange , a kind of divorce from actions and language that can change th e world ; in a sens e, we can say that by May 1968 th e m edia had alr eady ente re d th e world of third-order simulation, wh er e it didn't matter if it represented revolution as a good or bad thing, or even if it portrayed th e events as truly revolutionary or simply a temporary student uprising (even given th e associate d strikes, etc.). This gives us a hint as to how to th eorize Baudrillard's notion of th e m edia in Vietnam as alr eady b eing som ething other than a true or false representation of th e situa tion on th e ground. What happ ens during and aft er Vietnam is in some sens e for Baudrillard alr eady hyp erreal, as with Wat ergate, and this hyp erreality is a way of describing th e postmodern situation in th e 1970s.

WAR AND FILM Th e fir st essay in Baudrillard's Sim ulations, "The Pr ecession of Simulacra", actually deriv es fr om a b ook published in France in 1981 called Simulacres et Sim ulatio n . In th e latt er th er e is a chapter on Fra ncis Ford Coppo la 's Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now ( 1979), whi ch gives furth er insight int o third-order simulation . Baudrillard arg ues th at war and film are both , in th e Am eri can world , hyp erreal: both are th eorized as tests. What exactly do es Baudrillard m ean by thi s? He suggests th at th e Viet nam War was like a film b efore it was even film ed , b ecause it was co mposed of "special effects" and techn ological and psyched elic fant asy ( 1994a: 59) . Fur ther, th e war b ecam e a test-site or t esting gro und, wh er eby th e Am ericans could t est new weapon s techn ologies and t echn ologies of power (which, unlike th e GulfWar, wer e ir onic ally not of much use because of th e problem ati c t errain in Vietnam ) . Baudrillard argu es: Coppola does nothing but that: test cinema's power of intervention, test the impact of a cinema that has become an immeasurable machinery of special effects. In this sense, his film is really the extension of war through other means, the pinnacle of this f ailed war, and its apotheosis. The war became f ilm, the f ilm becomes war, the two are joined by their common hemorrhage into technology. (1994a: 59)

Coppo la doesn't ju st r ecreat e th e war in realistic ways, e.g. th e napalm ed Philippine for ests and villages (this, in itself , would b e seco nd-order simulation) ; instead , he reveals th e sim ilitude b etween his psyched elic series of excesses th at mad e th e film (e .g. m assive econom ic and ner vou s expe nditure , excessive destruction of th e environment for ver y little r eturn, and so on) and th ose th at took place during - or "as" - th e Vietnam War. In other words, while th e war had a phy sical m anifest ation , th at of m assive and excessive expe ndit ure , it to ok place as a psychical pr ocess: th e film Apocaly pse No w is ju st as much a part of th at physical and psychic al process as th e war itself: th ey are "cut from th e sam e cloth", as Baudrillard says ( 1994a: 60 ) . For Baudrillard , what is hyp erreal about thi s situation is th e rever sibility between destruction and production: th e war ends and Am erican econom ic aid is "immedi ately" forthcoming ; th e film destroys to

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produce itself. In b oth instances, destruction and producti on are inter chang eable.

LYOTARD In his accounts of th e Vietnam War and Apocalypse No w, Baudrillard is ar ticu lating a postm od ern pr ocess wh ereby th e "gr and narrativ es" of progress, techn ology and rationalism are repl aced by th e hyperreal world of third-order simulation : an excessive world of expe nditure and psyched elic specta cle . Thi s is in acco rd with a survey of th e state of kn owl edge in West ern society at th e close of th e I9 70 s written by Jean-Franc;:ois Lyot ard - a survey called The Postmodern Conditio n . Lyotard's noti on of th e loss of th e power of th e "gr and narratives" th at derive from th e Enlightenm ent is fundam entally a positive one, compared with Baudrillard's cynicism and cr itical edge , espe cially concerning Baudrillard's noti on th at th e overall effect of th e hyperreal is to prove th e system by th e cr isis ( I 983b : 36) . Lyot ard regards th e postmod ern I970s as m ovin g towards new t echnologies whi ch all focus on issues of language: compu ter languages, comm un ication th eori es, th e return in phil osoph y to langu age with th e work of thinker s such as Wittgenstein (especially his ideas conc erning "language gam es", or a way of thi nking th rough lingui stic m od els and how th ey functi on in ever yday life), and associated t echn ologies, to take ju st a few exampl es. However, rath er th an regarding such language-based m od els as genera ting a hyper real, Lyot ard breaks d own m od els of informati on int o th ose field s th at reject narrative (such as scienc e) and th ose th at are nar rative-based . He d oes thi s to argue a com plex case, wh ereby scienc e is shown t o be ultimat ely basing itself up on a high er level of narrative - a "m etanar rative" - th at legitimizes noti on s of progress in soci ety through scien tific m eans. Lyot ard argue s th at in th e I970s th er e is a wanin g of th e power of such m et anarrativ es, and it can be argued th at th e Vietnam War is an exam ple of thi s, as peopl e gradually b egan t o be sceptic al of th e politi cal m etanarratives (tha t th e fall of Vietnam t o Co mmunist co ntrol woul d m ean th e uncontainable spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia) and th e scientificlt echno log ical m etanarratives (that Am eri ca' s super ior technologies cou ld end th e war) . What is b eginning to happ en w ith thi s waning of m etanarrativ e power, according to Lyot ard , is th e splintering of kn owl edge int o a kind of ut opi an space wh er e peopl e can creatively leap from one

knowledg e domain to another to come up with radically new ideas or th eories (see Connor, 1989 : 33) . Baudrillard's vision is much more bleak : he would reject th e notion that such a "utopian spac e" can develop as long as information in gen eral is constructed and conv eyed via th e hyperreal. That is to say, he qu estions th e very grounds of creativ e new th eories wh en knowledg e is produced by models, and thos e models are controlled by governments and m edia groups. Baudrillard's analysis of how such hyp erreality functions can be found over a decad e lat er with th e Gulf War texts eventually published in English as The Gu!flVar Did Not Take Place.

THE GULF WAR In his introduction to The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, Paul Patton narrates an absurd moment in th e reporting of th e war wh en th e news channel CNN switched to a group of r eporters "live" in th e Gulf to ask th em what was happening, only to discov er that th ey were watching CNN to find out th ems elves (Baudrillard, 1995 : 2) . This absurd moment reveals th e detachment from th e real , and th e production of "r eality" with third-order simulation: news is gen erated by news, or th e source of th e news is also th e news. This isn't to sugg est a degradation of news information - th e notion that th e first piece of coverag e is clos est to what is really happening, th e next bit slightly less accurate becaus e bas ed upon th e first, and so on. If anything, th er e is nothing to "degrade" b ecaus e news isn't being gen erated by som e singular event . Rath er, news is producing th e "r eality" of th e war, not only for viewers, but also for those involv ed . Propaganda is th ereby taken to a new level : it isn't a case of misrepresenting what is actually happening somewhere in a differ ent way ; more a case of constructing what will be happening in advanc e (that is, what will b e happening to th e troops on th e other side of th e conflict) , so that it does happen . Hyp erreal propaganda is th er efore like th e Cold War, another war that did not take plac e in th e sens e of physical combat am ong comparative powers. It is fought through proj ections and simulations of what might be (e.g. Armageddon), pr ecisely to make sur e that a particular outcome do es happ en : th e coll apse of th e Soviet threat . Baudrillard's three essays in The Gulf War Did Not Take Place all have on e aim: to show that th e GulfWar was hyp erreal, and that war in th e conv entional sens e never actually occurred. One of th e key quotes S I M U L A T I ON AND THE HYPERREAL

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from th e book, which Patton also uses in his introduction, sugg ests that th e GulfWar functioned like th e flow of capit al : Just as wealth is no longer measured by the ostentation of wealth but by the secret ci rculation of speculative capital , so war is not measured by being waged but by its speculati ve unfolding in an abstract, electronic and informational space , the same space in which capital moves. (1995: 56)

In Simulations, Baudrillard argued that th e hyp erreal was gen erated in effect by computer softwar e or analogous syst ems ; with th e Gulf War, Baudrillard argues that th e war was preprogrammed by th e Am ericans, and that its "events" unfolded according to that programme. Thus th e absurdities, for example , of th e fear of an ene my that was technologically inferior and in th e final instance didn't even exist (th e withdrawal of th e elite Iraqi troops before th e endgame ). But th ese wer e not absurdities according to th e hyp erreal programme of what should be happening and what sort of responses should be gen erated. If we analys e th e virtual war (i.e. th e tel evision war) as being of th e second order of simulation - that is to say, it r epresents a blurring b etween reality and representation (an example of this would be missil es that were practically usel ess, being represented as a genuine threat) - th en we would expe ct at som e stage a progression to a "r eal" war with potentially apocalyptical cons equ enc es. One of th e proofs of th e Gulf War's hyp erreality is th e fact that this "progression" do esn't tak e plac e, it remains in th e informational spac e: "We ar e no longer in a logic of th e passage from virtual to actual but in a hyp errealist logic of th e det errenc e of th e real by th e virtual" ( 1995: 27) . This virtual war is symptomatic, for Baudrillard, of an illn ess that it is quite difficult to int erpret, except to say that an entire culture (the West) is now gear ed towards decep tion, in oth er words th e production of virtual reality and th e "counterfeit" (1995 : 43) . Th e Gulf War doesn't have an obj ective in th e traditional military sens e of th e word . Inst ead, th e war is about its elf - it is a self-r eflexiv e act or test, to see if war is possible in th e postmodern world: " . . . wh at is at stak e . . . is war itself: its status, its m eaning, its future. It is beholden not to have an obj ective but to prove its very existe nce .. ." (1995 : 32). One of th e key deceptions of th e Gulf War was that it was a "clean" war, devoid alm ost entire ly of

bloodshed and suffering. Baudrillard's response to thi s is th e cutting phrase th at "A clean war ends up in an oil slick" ( 1995 : 4 3) . Yet thi s suggests th at critics such as Baudrillard can differ enti ate bet ween th e hyp erreal and th e real ; th at we ar e not as caught up in th e postm od ern state of third -order simulation as Baudrillard initially suggests. At th e sam e time as he seems to desire th at an "event" will override "vir tuality", Baudrillard is arg uing th at th er e is no such thi ng as th e real or th e true. What is going on here? I would argue th at one of th e probl em s in r eadin g Baudrillard is th e int ersecti on of perform anc e and cri tique in his work: The Gulf War Did Not Take Place is both a postmod erri performance, takin g th e logic of hyperreality to it s extre me (thus th e Gulf War did no t take place because it was nothing but simulation) , and it is a critique of hyperrealit y (just as in Chapter I Baudrillard cri tiques th e m edia representation of May 196 8) . At times, performance and critique are at odds with on e anothe r in Baudrillard's work; at oth er times, he is wr iting at th e limit of ideas, pu shing th em until th ey almost shatter under th e strain . It is thi s limit-writing th at m akes Baudrillard a radi cal thinker, but also on e firmly in th e French int ellectual traditi on of thi nkers wh o pu sh ideas to th e limit (see Chapter 7). Thi s contradicto ry spac e of thinking (and writing as performance th at leads t o a fragm entation of ideas) may in itself be seen as part of postm od ern existe nce .

ENDGAME - LIMITS In a section of Simulatio ns called "The End of th e Panopticon ", Baudrillard takes care to distance himself from th e th eor y with whi ch his work int er sect s at key m om ents, and thi s distancing is design ed so as t o get as close to th e th ought of hyperrealit y as possible. Two of th e thinker s "rejected" or critiqu ed are Foucault and D ebord ; in particular, Baudrillard want s t o get beyond a m oralisti c noti on of th e "spectacul ar" implicit in both (see "Society of th e Specta cle", p. 99) . In a dense burst of statem en ts and ideas, thi s going beyond is realized through an early fly-on -the-w all t elevision docum entary produ ced in th e US in 1971 . The docum entary foll owed th e Loud famil y for seven m onths of con tin uo us filmin g, including th e break-up of th e family, inevitably raising issues of surveillanc e, m edia pr essur e and th e noti on of th e obs erv er affecting th e obs erv ed . Baudrillard 's analysis of thi s situation cou ld be profitably retheori zed in relati on to th e feti shizati on of such a S I M U LA T IO N A ND THE H Y PER REA L

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situation as it currently exists in different forms on th e Int ernet with live digital cam era feeds . Baudrillard argues that th e Loud documentary was not simply about voyeurism ; that is, a relationship between spectacle and spectator that is on e-way, with th e spectator "spying" on th e subj ects via tel evision cam eras . Inst ead, by arguing that th e documentary took place as if th e cam eras wer e not th ere, th e director signalled a utopian ideal wh er eby th e distanc e between spectacle and spectator was reduced to zero, or coll aps ed. In other words, with voyeurism, however intimate th e scen e being watched , th er e is always a perspectival distance, perhaps a window separating th e subj ects, or th e distance b etween scen e and cam era, and so on. But if th e cam eras wer e "not th er e", so to speak, th en th e collapsed dist anc e m eans that th e viewers wer e also in th e scen e: "It is this utopia, this paradox th at fascinated 20 million viewers, much more than th e 'p ervers e' pl easure of prying" (1983b : 50) . Th e viewers ar e absent and present , at a dist anc e and up clos e; th ey enjoy th e thrill of this hyp erreal situation: hyp erreal becaus e th ey cannot say that on e position is real and anothe r false (both subj ect positions have b een collapsed and distanced at th e sam e time) . A helpful analogy is that of th e clos e-up photograph: wh en we get "too clos e" to an obj ect, we sometimes have trouble even distinguishing what th e obj ect is. In that sens e, we cannot say th at we have a grasp on th e "r eal" obj ect in front of us . Th e hyp erreal, in relation to this analogy, is like th e ext re me clos e-up and an extre me long-distanc e photograph at th e sam e time. That is to say, th er e is no longer a third, normative position of realistic perspective. Th e notion of total involv em ent or immersion combined with alienating detachment is also perc eived, according to Baudrillard, in such tel evision sub genres as pornography. In th e collapsing of perspectival space, Baudrillard distances himself in this text from th e th eoretical implications of Foucault's use of th e panopticon, wh er e soci ety is structured by surveillanc e apparatus, however "internalized" . In perspectival space, th ere is still th e play of th e opposition seeing /being seen ; with hyp erreality, any family can stand in for th e Louds on tel evision, and th e Louds on tel evision are any family ; th e active seeina and th e passive beina seen are on e and th e sam e position . Another way of thinking about this is in terms of th e decentred structure, as it b ecomes impossible to locate th e traditional nodes of power and subj ection with th e coll apse of perspectival spac e; instead, th ere is a circulation of positions which, again, all appea r int er -

changeabl e. For exam ple , as th e distinctive modern cit y shopping district gives w ay to suburban hvp errnarket s, th e ge og raphical spa ce of th e latter is interchangeabl e and alm ost "out of place" b ecau se it could b e anywhere. Baudrillard arg u es : Television, in the case of the Louds f or example, is no longer a spectacular medium. We are no longer in the society of spectacle which the situationists talked about, nor in the specific types of alienation and repression which this implied. (1983b 54)

Thi s r eferen ce t o th e "societ y of sp ect acle" and th e di stancing from it is ex ceptionally important, as Baudrillard has highli ght ed an oth er key 1970s intertext for an und ers tanding of his work, r egardless of th e cr itiqu e m ad e in Simulations.

SOC I ETY OF THE SP ECTA CLE Gu y D ebord fir st published his bo ok The Society if the Spectacle in 1967 , whereupon it b ecam e on e of th e key t exts for m any st ud ents and thinker s inv olved in th e May 1968 uprisin g. The bo ok wa s r eissued in 1971 , and has b een r egul arly r eprint ed sin ce , sugg est ing th e on going inter est in th e t ext as a r elevant co m m entary on West ern society and also as a historical do cument. D ebord's thesis, for anyon e brought up on a di et of Baudrillard and other p ostmodernists, is surpr isingly familiar : h e presents hi s thesis in propositi on one : "Th e whol e life of th ose societies in which m od ern co nditions of producti on prevail present s it self as an immen se acc um ulation of spectacles. All th at w as once directl y lived has b ecome m ere r epresentati on " ( 199 8: § I , 12). This r eads very much like the shift from the r eal to th e sim ulation, altho ugh at this point it is not clear if D eb ord's sp ectac ular society takes pl ace in seco nd - or third-order sim ulation . In fact , in the fir st chapt er of The Society if the Spectacle w e can see th e importan ce of th e bo ok for Baudrillard's w ork . But is th eir work th er efore id entical? If n ot , what ar e th e key differen ces? And why d oes Baudrillard end up cr itiquing D eb ord? In the privileging of th e human sens e of sight, in th e so ciety of th e specta cle, D eb ord arg u es that th er e is a di stancing fr om th e r eal world acc essed m ost immedi at ely th rough t ou ch . Worse still, just b ecau se th e SIMULATION AND THE HYPERREAL

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SUMMARY Through two main examples, Watergate and Disneyland, we have seen what Baudrillard means by the hyperreal, where a kind of virtual real ity is produced by models of what we want reality to be. Baudr illard argues that both of these examples "cover up" what is happening in the world, which has become both child ish and duplicitous. We have seen such duplicity at work in the televisual Vietnam War, and with the links to Foucault's notion of "micro-powers". Baudrillard's analysis of war and film is related to his later comments on the Gulf War, where news produces a hyperreal war operating as a kind of testing ground for the concept of war itself. Baudrillard argues in relation to this that Foucault's and Debord's analyses are not radical enough, so he goes on to take their work to its limits with a semiotic twist.

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Thi s chapt er reads one of Baudrillard's m ost infam ou s books - Ameri ca - and shows how th e actual place is important for many key postm od ern conc epts and issues. Th e mod ern and postm od ern city spac e is analysed b efor e m ovin g to th e desert and th e seism ic landscapes of California . Finally, th e postm od er n expe rience of th e Bonaventure Hot el in LA concludes th e chapter, with referen ce to th e important Am er ican cr itic of postm od ernism , Fredric Jam eson .

THE PLACE OF POSTMODERNISM In Chapter 5, we saw how events and location s, such as Wat ergat e and Disneyland , reveal a shift int o th e hyperreal, and how in a wider sense th e hyp er r eal can be th ought of as a defining com pon ent of p ostmod er nism , for exam ple in thi nking th rough th e expe r iences and representati on s of th e Vietnam and Gulf war s. It is no coincidenc e th at th ese events and expe r iences are primaril y Am eri can , eithe r in terms of actual locati on , or involvem ent or perspective, sinc e for Baudrillard Am eri ca is the place of postm odernism . But th e noti on of Am eri can "place" in th e singular is clearly pr obl em atized by a number of fact or s: th e sheer size of th e country, its immen se cult ura l diversit y, powerful historical and ideological noti on s, such as "the frontier", "the Am eri can dr eam " or "th e world's police force", which co nst r uct noti on s of place

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that often override oth er concerns. Baudrillard's "r eading" of Am erica in many respects int ersects with these factors : at times commenting upon th em, at other times reth eorizing th em, but always with a local specificity deriving from th e fact that his writings on America take th e form of a trav el narrative (in th e texts America and Cool Memories) . Th e travel narrative allows Baudrillard to present himself as both naive and perc eptive, someone just passing through and someone deeply involv ed with th e culture being commented upon . This paradoxical position he takes passing through Am erican culture, of necessity situates Baudrillard in th e collapsed pers ectival spac e of th e hyp erreal. In other words, he refuses to take th e "distanced" position of a "superior" int ellectual who can stand abov e and b eyond th e plac e, putting a distance between critic and expe r ience . Other critics who attack him without taking this coll aps e into account, i.e. for being too naive or too int ellectual, have miss ed th e point that both positions are op erative at onc e.

CITIES OF THE EDGE Th e modern spac e par excellence was th e nin et eenth- and early twen ti eth-century city : a plac e of rationality, industry, liberalism and progression . Modern citi es wer e usually at th e centre of hug e empire s, cr eating an opposition between city and countryside, urban and rural, or simply th e contemporary and th e passe. In th e N ew World, th e modern city cam e into its own : new building technologies enabled th e "d ensity" of office and housing spac e to increase expone ntially, and citi es of th e future became present realities. This notion of th e new is also important in th e way that modern architecture developed : it wasn't so much a progression of old building techniques, but a break from and rejection of th e past techniques. Henc eforth, modern buildings, using glass and steel fram es, would develop from this originary moment or resetting of history with th e use of new technologies at year zero. In other words, th e history of architecture would now start with th e new ways of building as th e past was deni ed and left behind . Th e language of th e gr eat modernist architects is utopian, bas ed upon a fundamental belief in th e rational cure of soci ety's ills. In th e new, functional rel ationship between th e ways people worked and lived and th e ways th ey could be housed, homes wer e now built like a machine, with rep etitive similar housing "units" with light and air compared to th e unh ealthy workers' slums at th e b eginning of th e Industrial

Revolut ion . Architects not only sought t o realize solu tions to age-o ld problem s, such as poor-qu alit y buildings, but also new problem s, such as hou sing sho r tag es th at arose after th e Industrial Revolution .Yet , for many peopl e, thi s new fun cti on al urban spac e was som ething shocking, disori entating and deeply threatening, as great crowds of peopl e were brought together for th e fir st time on an unpreced ent ed scale for urb an living in a dense and charg ed atmosphere. Walt er Benjamin asser ts th at "Fear, revul sion , and horror wer e th e em otions which th e big-city cro wd ar oused in th ose wh o fir st obs er ved it" ( 1992 : 170 ) .

WALTER BENJAMIN Benjamin (1892-1940) is probably one of the most famous theorists of modern ity. His most well-known essays are "T he Work of Art in the Age of Mechan ical Reproduct ion " and "Theses on the Philosophy of History". Recently translated is Benjamin 's great fragm entary work called The Arcades Project, an immense labyrinth of quotat ions, notes and essays. Benjamin links Marxist theory and Jewish messianism to creat e a unique series of insights into subjects such as art, history, literature, philosophy, photography and film. One of Benjam in's key authors/precursors is Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), famous for his poetry, his theor ies of the flfmeur (an idler or loafer, someone who stroll s at random through the modern urban space), and his comments on the new city spaces of modernity.

Ironically, th ese cro wds did no t br ing a feeling of co mmun ity, but isolation and alienation: th e city as a machine places th e subject in its urb an spac es jus t as he or she is position ed in th e factory at th e producti on line . Symbo lically, th e m od ern cities represented power : th at of th e econom ics th at drove th e new Am eri caniz ed fact or ies (w ith Taylorist principl es and Fordist pr acti ce), and th at of th e em pire s such cities con tro lled . Mod ern cities were centres of power, pr ojecting th eir econom ic, cult ural and m oral superiority across th e world.

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TAYLORISM AND FORDISM Frederick Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911, was the culmination of many years spent collect ing and analysing time and mot ion studies. These studies examined the way s in which workers moved and behaved when set various tasks, and were aimed at increas ing productivity on the factory floor. The general application of Taylor's ideas became known, unsurprisingly, as Taylorism . The most famous shift in work practices took place with the open ing of the product ion line in Highland Park, Detroit, by Henry Ford (1863-1947), the des igner of the Model T Ford automobile. Ford directly applied Taylorist principles in a highly effective and successful way. However, the concept of Fordism involves extending the experiences and practices of the production line to other area s of social existence.

What makes a city postm od ern? How different is Baudrillard's descrip tion of a city from , say, Baud elair e' s? When he gets to N ew York, is Baudrillard describing a place, or m erely writing firmly within a tradi tion, of Europeans visitin g th e N ew World , wh ich th ey describe with th e ideologies and land scapes and languages of th e Old World? Baudrillard asks: Why do people live in New York?There is no relationship between them, Except for an inner elect ricity which results f rom the simple fact of their being crowded together. A magical sensation of contig uity and attraction f or an artificial centrality. This is what makes it a self-attracting universe, which there is no reason to leave, There is no human reason to be here, except for the sheer ecstasy of being crowded together, (1988a: 15)

Co mm enting on Baud elair e, Walt er Benj amin not es th at th e traffic of a big city involves th e subject in "a series of shocks and collision s", th e worst of which occur at bu sy and dangerou s int ersecti on s wh er e " . . . nervou s impulses flow th rough him in rapid succession, like th e energy from a batt er y" ( 1992 : 171) . Fur ther, "Baudelaire speaks of a m an who plunges int o th e crowd as into a reservoir of electr ic ene rgy" ( 1992 : 171 ) . Th e key to thi s description of urban experience lies with th e fact

that in th e m echanized world a singl e human gesture can trigger a sequ enc e of results . Benjamin gives as examples th e match, th e telephone and th e cam era . Th ese are technologies of detachment (humans no longer do all th e physical work in th e world) , which return to haunt th e subject, who becomes immers ed in th e trigger ed sequenc e or, to put this anothe r way, th e technologies of th e city take on a life of th eir own which become shocking and frightening to th e isolated individual, who wanders around th e urban technological machine. Unlike th e alienated dw eller of a modern city, for Baudrillard, th e postmodern city dw eller enjoys - not fears - th e "ecstasy" of th e crowd, although it is only this "ecstasy" that gives th em a reason for actually being physi cally present in th e city. What do es this signify ? Th at th e city is no longer th e only plac e of work, that it no longer has th e sam e sort of centralizing power that it onc e had, and that it no longer holds so much sway over th e surrounding r egions and small er urban sit es. Inst ead of people pouring into th e modern city from th e surrounding rural environment, people ar e now setting up living spaces in numerous locations that have th e b est of both worlds . In essence , th e postmodern city is decentred and disp ers ed (Delany, 1994: 4) . Th e expe riences of th e modern and postmodern city may th er efore appear similar, but th er e has been a subtle shift in th e raison d' ctre of th e city spac e. Two exam ples can exem plify this subtle shift : that of geographical location and that of representation . Paul Delany argues that, as th e modern centres ar e render ed less unique du e to th e disp ersal of th eir functions or activities (such as being plac es of work and cultural production , e.g. television or th e music industry), peripheral citi es gain in vitality (1994: 4). Th ese peripher al citi es are usu ally citi es of th e edge , border lands between land and sea, which " . . . illustrate th e ecological principle that th e great est vari ety of life-forms will be found at th e boundary b etween different habitats" (D elany, 1994: 19) . Paradoxically, peripheral citi es such as Vancouv er or San Francisco ar e decentred and centred at th e sam e time, becaus e of th e hug e number of different cultures that collide th er e (but not necessarily to accumulat e wealth and power for th e colonial masters, but rather to make wealth or security for th e postcolonial people who ar e oft en in th e process of passing through). In America , Baudrillard describes N ew York and LA as being "at th e centre of th e world" (I 988a : 23) - this "centre" is a paradoxical spac e, ironically revealed by Baudrillard by arguing that two different locations occupy th e centre at the same time . Th e second A MER I C A AND P 0 S T MOD ERN ISM

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example of th e subtle shift in th e raison d' etre of th e city spac e can b e thought through in terms of representation, comparing film and tel evision . Benjamin argues that, in th e modern city, with its machine-lik e shocks and other processes, such as th e new int ensities of th e factori es and th e m echanized transport systems, " . . . t echnology has subj ect ed th e human sensorium to a complex kind of training" (1999 : 171) : There came a day when a new and urgent need for stimuli was met by the f ilm. In a film , perception in the form of shocks was established as a formal principle. That which determines the rhythm of production on a conveyor belt is the basis of the rhythm of reception in the f ilm. (Benjamin , 1992: 171)

In other words, th ere is a circularity here between th e machine-lik e existe nce of modern city dw ellers preparing th em for th e expe r ience of film , and th e way in which film can train th e city dw eller (through new modes of perception) to function in a productive way as part of th e industrial city -machine. How do es this compare with Baudrillard's description of N ew York? In a moment of specific comparison, Baudrillard compares th e European and Am erican street . He argues that European streets only come alive periodically and sporadically in r evolutionary upsurges - th e rest of th e time th ey ar e m erely conduits for busy people. In Am erica, however, Baudrillard uses th e cliche that th ere ar e no comparative revolutionary moments to make th e finer point that th e streets ar e always revolutionary in th eir turbulenc e, ene rgy and "cin ematic" state (1988a : 18) . A furth er comparison is made with th e entire country, in th e sens e that change is prioritized, abov e all else, to make it a viol ent forc e (citi es develop quickly, and ar e just as rapidly torn down and r ed eveloped, for example). But th e source of that change - Baudrillard lists technology, racial differ enc es and th e m edia - is neither here nor th ere becaus e th e will to change is simply all-pervasive. Th e qu estion is wh ether that change has a common goal (a modern t elos) or m erely exists for chang e its elf, in a fragm ented seri es of virtually random outcomes. Delany argues that th e remote control is "the first and for emost postmodern tool" (1994 : 5) - it is detached from th e resulting events that its op eration produces, but, more importantly in relation to change, flipping channels produces th e feeling of infinite differ enc e and th e nightmare of ultimate similitude (that all th e programmes claiming to be different

are basically th e sam e) . Flipping through TV channels produces th e effect of a richness of information, but ultimately it is an empty expe r ience. Baudrillard's phrase to describe this expe r ience is "autistic performance": "Th e N ew York marathon has become a sort of int erna tional symbol of such fetishistic performanc e, of th e mania for an empty victory, th e joy engende re d by a feat that is of no cons equenc e" (1988a : 20) . Th e slogan which represents autistic performance is "I did it!" and Baudrillard compares its exclamation after th e marathon with mountain eering and even th e moon landing. Th e success of all th ese activities is preprogrammed by a soci ety that knows in advance that it has th e ability or technologies to achieve th em . Th ey are activities that app ear to have a progressive aim, but in reality th ey have always alr eady "been achi eved" : "C arrying out any kind of programme produces th e sam e sens e of futility th at comes from doing anything m erely to prove to yourself that you can do it ... " (1988a: 21) . Baudrillard's N ew York is a city of th e mad set free, with th e ene rgy and electric "buzz" of th e modern city taken to another level with its speed ed-up non-teleological activity, or lack of a r eal goal. Th e city is approaching an apocalyptic stat e of speed, nois e and overconsumption ; with its "total electric light" and perpetual gam es, th ere is an artificiality that has broken away entirely from nature: th e plac e is no longer in opposition to nature or its hinterlands . Baudrillard is fascinat ed by thos e who occupy this site, making him less a tourist or European acad emic, and more an anthro pologist reaching or seeing a remote tribe for th e first time: The terrifying diversity of f aces, their strangeness, strained as they all are into unbelievable expressions . The mas ks old age or death conf erred in archaic cultures are worn here by youngsters of twenty or twelve . But this ref lect s the city as a whole. (1988a : 14)

In such a vision of nativ e death -masks and an accelerat ed culture, Baudrillard reads N ew York alm ost as a Surrealist painting or text ; his vision of clouds filling people's heads or coming out of th eir eyes conflates architecture and human subj ect, compresses th e verticality and horizontality of skyscrap er and sky with that of th e subj ect and th e street . But th e effect isn't on e of claustrophobia - th e opposite is th e case. Using th e cliche of th e sickly European sky compared to th e AMERICA AND PO STMODERNI SM

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immen sity of th e Nor th Am erican sky, Baudrillard adds ano th er fact or: th e reflecti on of th e city and it s enviro nme nt from th e glass skyscrapers . However, thi s hyp erreal expansion of spac e through th e re flection of hu ge skyscrapers is already obso lete. Instead , th e postm od ern city par excellence will b e th e hori zontal spac e of Los Angeles, where cities expand by consu ming m ore and m ore of th e surro unding land in a kind of self-replication pr ocess, b efor e th e city disapp ears alt ogether : "New York is th e final fling of thi s baroque verticalit y, thi s centr ifugal excentr icity, before th e horizontal dism antling ar rives, and th e subterranean implosion th at will foll ow" ( I988a: 22) .

PARIS, TEXAS - OR - THE DESERT In Wim Wenders' film Paris, Texas, a man called Travis walks out of th e Am eri can desert and into a bar, wh ere he event ually collapses from exhaustion. Th e desert appears to have erased his m em ory t o such an exte nt th at he has forgotten how to speak . Aft er Travis is rescued by his brother, painful m em ori es from th e past are m ost vividl y recalled by som e hom e m ovies; Travis eventually begin s to speak again as he inter acts with his son and begin s th e searc h for his lost wife. The film , whi ch is str uctured by divi sion and jo urneys, ends with an ambiguo us r econ ciliation between mother and child, with Travis still on th e road, still in a state of perpetual m ovem ent .Th e desert and th e road m ovie two of th e m ost powerful devices of Am erican cinema and symbo ls of th e Am er ican way of life because of th e ways in which Am er ican society is constantly reinventing it self , rem oving th e traces of wh at has b een cons tr uc ted for som ething new, always m oving on in time and space . Paris, Texas, as th e nam e suggests, plays on th e divisions and differenc es between N ew and Old Worlds, both in th e sense of Am eri ca and Europe, and new life / old life in m ore per sonal or indi vidu al t erms. Th e juxtap ositio n of such dissimil ar places provid es th e m ovie with a ten sion , b etween qu esti on s of origin(s) and ways of star ting again, a perpetual newness t o erase th e pain s of th e past . Paradoxically, th e truly anci ent deser t landscapes of th e West are also th e "newest" places in postm od ern Am erica. Baudrillard's Am erican deser ts are cinematic before th e invention of cinema and semiotic before th e invention of human sign -systems.

SEMIOTICS Semiotics can be thought of as a "science of signs " (see " st ruct urali sm" : p. 15). While it is an approach that has parallels with structural ism, the main difference is that semioticians search fo r the logical rules or laws of

signs and sign-systems. Semiotics is therefore a more formal and "purist " approach. However, for all its sc ientific pretensions, for example with the analysis and modell ing of communication systems, it would be more accurate to think of semiotics as a "pseudo-science" or theory. Apart from the importance of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), one of the "founding fathers " of semiotics was Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who equated logic with the sc ience of signs (see Hawkes, 1977: 126). One of the key components of Peirce's system is that of the triad of signs called the icon, index and symbol. The icon is a sign that bears a similarity to the object (such as a paint ing), an index is a sign that has a material relationship with the object (such as smoke sign ifying fire), and a symbol has an

arbitrary relationship with the object (the symbolic sign, in other words, is constructed through a cultural system).

It is important, however, not to confus e th em with oth er deserts, other landscapes: The American desert is an extraordinary piece of drama, though in no sense is it theatrical like an Alpine landscape, nor sentimental like the forest or the countryside. Nor eroded and monotonous like the sub-lunar Australian desert. Nor mystical , like the deserts of Islam. It is purely, geologically dramatic , bringing together the sharpest, most ductile shapes with the gentlest, most lascivious underwater forms - the whole metamorphism of the earth 's crust is present in synthesis, in a miraculous abridged version. (1988a: 69)

Baudrillard is car eful to distin guish between lands capes here, b ecause he wi shes to reveal th e differ en ce between th ose deserts whi ch have ente re d mythology or th eol ogy through centu r ies of human car tography and shifts in imp eri al or colo nial power (like th e deserts in Ondaatj e' s The English Patient ) , and th ose deserts wh er e th e human subj ect is m erely an acto r or player in a pre-exi stin g scene . Ano th er AMERICA AND POSTMODERNISM

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way of thinking through th e latter is with referenc e to th e op ening shot in Wenders' Paris, Texas, where the cam er a looks down on Travis from th e perspective of an eagle : th e desert looks at Travis b efore Travis looks at th e desert. Th e desert pre-exists man geologically, but it also pre-exists m an semiotically - that is to say, nature isn't pr esented in America as some blind forc e, or a forc e direct ed by God; rather it is a geological sign -syst em : Geological - and hence metaphysical - monumentality, by contrast with the physical altitude of ordinary landscapes. Upturned relief patterns, sculpted out by wind , wate r, and ice .. . The very idea of the millions and hundreds of millions of years that were needed peacefully to ravage the surface of the earth here is a perverse one, since it brings with it an awareness of signs originating, long before man appeared , in a sort of pact of wear and erosion st ruck between the elements . (1988 3)

Condens ed in this description of th e Grand Canyon is a vision of th e Am erican landscape as surpassing th e European norm ; not in terms of a European Romantic sublime (a way of perc eiving th e landscape prevalent in th e nin et eenth century), but in terms of th e monumen tality of th e landscape - a landscape constructed on a grand scale and left as a reminder that humanity is just on e in a seri es of signifying syst ems. But th er e is something else going on her e and throughout th e t ext: Baudrillard is critiquing th e nature /culture binary opposition through which such sublime landscapes are usually int erpret ed . In his account, nature is alr eady cultural and culture has to take into account other alien signifying syst ems (which we will see lat er as relating to Baudrillard's conception of th e symbolic). How is this critique of th e nature /culture binary opposition possible? And why do es it need to b e performed in th e first plac e? We can think of th e modern, in a crude sens e, as th e instrumental manipulation of nature for cultural or technological aims. Nature is something that needs to be left behind or overpower ed , as th e gr eat industrial and urbanization programmes go hand in hand towards building a new world that has thoroughly broken with th e past. However, postmodernism reincorporates th e past into itself as a way of attempting to construct an aesthetically "richer" expe rience , espe cially - or more obviously - in th e realm of archite cture . That is not to say,

however, that modernism (see page 28) cannot itself be on e of th e historical elem ents that postmodernism em ploys. Examples of this "r eincorporation" include th e Mus eum of Contemporary Art in Los Angel es, a building of steel and brick that contains a hug e curved Palladian window, and th e Clore Gallery in London, which is th e exte nsion to th e Tate Gall ery. With th e Clore, th e classicism of th e Tate is reflect ed in th e pergola, pool and trellis (see Jencks, 1987 : 165 for photographs) . Put even more simply, th e machine aesthetic rejects th e natural, organic past , whil e postmodernism welcomes it . Som e examples of anthropomorphic (resembling th e human form) architecture and th e construction of postmodern spac e should illuminate th e ways in which "nature" is reworked and reintroduced . Charles Jencks notes how, with th e work of architects such as Minoru Takeyama and Kazumasa Yamashita, im ages of th e body are used in a completely unsubtle way; Takevama's Beverly Tom Hotel (1973-1974) uses phallic imag ery both insid e and outside th e building and Yamashita's Face Hou se (1974) is, reductively, nothing but a boxy face. More subtle, however, is th e boundary-blurring work of architect Michael Grav es, who deconstructs th e thresholds of architecture: windows, doorways and overall profiles . Th e subj ect is slowed down in his or her transition from int erior to exte r ior (or vice versa) by th e int er est gen erated and th e new pleasures of th ese spac es, and thus expe r iences th e natural elem ents that are dramatized by such an architecture (Jencks, 1987 : 117) . Finally, in a wider sens e, postmodern spac e overall historicizes itself, but also cr eat es blurred boundaries both int ernally and exte rnally, unlike th e uniform spac e of th e modern . Jencks argue s that postmodern spac e is not really organic, but " .. . an elaboration of th e Cartesian grid . . ." or syst em of m ental mapping (1987 : 118). This summary is correct becaus e, while postmodernism can incorporate or structure itself partially via th e organic, such a process is part of a more complex package of id eas and sources. Th e moderns may have had a notion of a pure nature / culture opposition. By blurring th e boundaries between nature / culture, postmodernism is doing more than allowing org anic elem ents "into" its structures; it is sugg esting that in som e ways th e organic alre ady exists in th e cultural and th at th e cultural is alr eady organic. Thus th e evolution of postrnodcrn architec ture inst ead of th e revolutions of th e modern. Th e impossible bin ary nature / culture was explored most famously AMERICA AND POSTMODERN ISM

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by th e structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss . In an essay called "Structure, Sign and Play in th e Discourse of th e Human Scienc es", Jacques Derrida notes how th e structuralist analysis of th e inc est prohibition led to th e "scandal" of th e critique of th e nature / culture binary: "The inc est prohibition is univ ers al ; in this sens e on e could call it natural. But it is also a prohibition , a syst em of norms and int erdicts ; in this sens e on e could call it cultural" (1978 : 283) . Th e inc est scand al is som ething which should be either gen er ated by cultural law or by natural law ; inst ead, it is outside of (or pr eced es) both syst ems b ecaus e it cannot be "contain ed" by eithe r. Derrida arg ue s that such a problem atic binary is impossible to think through in philosophy, whil e being som ething that simultaneously grounds philosophy. H e concludes th at such binaries either need int ens e investigation, or th ey are used as "tools" to int errogate thought systems from within . This brings us back to Baudrillard in th e desert with his own critique of th e nature / culture binary. Baudrillard uses th e discourse of travel writing and of commenting on th e gre at Am erican citi es, ro ads and landscape, not as a way of being just on e more in a long line of European commentators, but as a way of both r etaining th e discourse while critiquing its assum ptions. Th e desert b ecomes for Baudrillard what Rodolphe Gasche calls an "infrastructure"; th at is to say, something which gene rate s signifying syst ems but th en disappears wh en we try and pin it d own (see Gasch c, 1986) . Baudrillard's trav el narrative, thought of in this more philosophical way, is both postmodern performanc e and critical commentary . His travel narrativ e, unlike th e modern Europeans', is non-teleological; it is " . . . th e conception of a trip without any obj ective . . ." (I 988a: 9) . Th e form of Am erican culture that is found in th e West is seismic: "a fractal, interstitial culture, born of a rift with th e Old World, a tactile, fragile, mobile, sup erficial culture . . ." (I 988 a: 10) . "Supe rficial" is m eant in th e sens e of surfaces repl acin g th e old depth-models of modernity (the "inner" compar ed to "surface" knowledg e), and th e ge ne ration of a "seismic" model her e allows not only for th e shifting of surfaces, but also th e potential of th eir collision, disruption and apocalyptic destruction at th e sam e time as th ey are consumed or lived as present-day utopias. As Baudrillard says, this is th e land of th e "Just as it is", which m eans that th e seismic possibilities are ignored (I 988 a: 28) .Th e seismic desert landscape is a "pr ima l scen e" from which, and through which, th e culture, politics and sexuality of Am erica must b e read. Th e desert

is already cinema tic : "The desert you pass through is like th e set of a West ern , th e city a scre en of signs and formulas" ( 1988a: 56) .Yet , like a television set left on in an empty ro om , nobo dy is watching th e deserts for th eir semiotic significanc e (see Lan e, 1999) . Baudrillard states th at : My hunting grounds are the deserts, the mountains, Los Angeles , the freeways , the Saf eways, the ghost towns , or the downtowns, not lectures at the university. I know the deserts , their deserts , better than they do, since they tu rn their backs on their own space as the Greeks turned their backs on the sea, and I get to know more about the concrete , social life of America from the desert than I ever would from offi cial or intellectual gatherings. (1988a: 63)

Th e des er t is not held in oppos ItIOn to th e cities or to cult ure in general; rath er th ey reveal th at third-order simulation gene rates a cult ural mirage, whi ch presumably w ill even t ually disapp ear t o leave only th e desert. Th e deser t is thus a background , a past and future possibility, a vision th at pervades th e postmod ern Am eri can cult ure. Baudrillard calls th e deserts "our mythic opera to r", whi ch is to say th at th e deser ts are symbo lic for an infinite number of cult ural formation s, like th e alien "sea" in Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, but , unlike a computergenera te d im age based on a series of math em ati cal formulae, when th e formati on has disappear ed th e desert is still physically present. In som e ways, postmod ern cities can be com pare d with th e deserts: th eir cons tant reinvention and spatial drift is analogous to th e shifting sands and erasure of geolog ical formation s, but cities are also desiring machines (places wh ere th e system of needs are generated), wh ereas th e desert preced es desir e even as it still critiques th e nature / cult ure binar y by being a pot ential signifying system prior to human existe nce : " . . . th e desert is simply th at : an ecstatic cr itique of culture, an ecstatic form of disapp earance" ( 1988a: 5) .

THE BONAVENTURE HOTEL With th e pre-eminen ce of th e advanc ed t echn ologies of Silico n Valley, th e simulations th at are Disneyland and Hollywood , and th e grea t Los Angel es dec entr ed urban sprawl itself, California appears to be postm od ern through and through . How does th e subject expe rience thi s postm od ernity? How does he or she int er act with , or find th em selves AMERICA AND POSTMODERNISM

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in, this new space for living in ? In The Dismemberment if Orpheus (1982), Ihab Hassan constructed a now widely referred to and complex list, which enables us to compar e and contrast th e differenc es b etween modernism and postmodernism . This list can be exam ine d not just for its int ellectual content, but also its experiential aspe ct, in th at it describes th e ways we expe r ience th ese two worlds : Modernism Romanticism / Symbolism Form (conjunctive / clos ed) Purpose D esign Hi er archy Mast ery / Logos Art Obj ect/Finished Work Distance Cr eation /Totalization Synthesis Pr esenc e Centring Genre /Boundary Par adigm Hypotaxis Metaphor Selection Root /D epth Int erpretation /Reading Signified Lisible (Rea de rly) N ar rative/ Grand Hi stoire Mast er Code Symptom Genital/Phallic Paranoia Origin / Caus e Met aphysics D et erminacy Transc endenc e

Postmodernism ' Pataphysics/' Dadaism Antiform (disjunctive, op en) Play Chanc e Anarchy Exhaustion/ Silenc e Process / Performance / Happ ening Participation Decreation /Deconstruction Antithesis Absenc e Disp ersal TextlIntertext Synta gm Parataxis Metonymy Combination Rhizome / Surfac e Against Int erpretation /Misreading Signifi er Scriptible (Writerly) Anti -narrative /Peti t Histoire Idiol ect Desir e Polymorphous / Androgynous Schizophreni a Differenc c-Diffcrancc / Trace Irony Ind et erminacy Immanenc e (Hass an, 1982 : 267-268)

We have seen with N ew York how th e city gen erates th e potential anarchy of th e crowd charged with desir e, ranging th e streets in a permanent stat e of performance; we have also seen how th e postmodern city is decentred and disp ers ed through a seri es of "p eripheral" city-sites replacing th e singular modern centre. Th e desert has b een th eorized as a plac e of exhaustion and potential: it is a kind of textual surface which can be remoulded in an infinite vari ety of shifting, temporary forms which, as Baudrillard argue s, will ultimately coll apse. But what about postmodern buildings th emselves, situated as th ey are as a kind of midpoint between desert and city, between th e solitary individual and th e crowd? One of th e most th eorized postmodern buildings is th e Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angel es, which Baudrillard th eorizes as ludic and hallucinogenic , whil e Fredric Jam eson em phasizes th e disjunctive nature of th e expe r ience of simply moving through th e building; th e building itself, to refer to Hassan's list, is against int erpretation and op en always to misreading. One of th e key factors in th e Bonaventure expe rience is th e way in which th e building fails to int eract with th e local city enviro nment : physically, th ere is no singular grand entr ance; visually, with five hug e towers of mirror-plate glass, th e city is thrown back upon itself. Th e hotel, cut off in this way from th e city, isn't asserting its differ enc e or sup eriority (such as might be found in th e new architectural languages of modernism as modernist buildings were plac ed violently in th e traditional urban space); inst ead, th e Bonaventure is a miniature city, holistic in its perfect reproduction of all of th e city utilities and spac es (Baudrillard, 1988a : 60) . Jam eson argues that th e modernist disjunction between building and city was" . . . viol ent, visible and had a very real symbolic significance", leading to th e expe cte d transformation of th e degraded city fabric into th e utopian spac e of th e modern (1988 : 12-13). However, th e Bonaventure has no such ideals or purpose ; its reflection of th e city sugg ests an acceptance of th e surrounding spac e and in this sens e 1 would argue th at it does have an int erfac e at th e level of th e imag e and th e spectacle. As th e subj ect mov es into th e building th ere is instant confusion becaus e he or she app ears to be in th e middle of an undefin ed space, needing to travel in a number of directions to find th e check -in desk, for example . Baudrillard notes that on e " .. . cannot fathom out its int ernal spac e, but it has no myst ery" (1988a : 60) . This latter is important, because it makes th e expe r ience for him "empty", lacking in AMERICA AND POSTMODERNISM

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actual concret e content: th e building is a "box of spatio-tcmporal tricks" (1988a : 59) . This is hyp erreal archite cture , a series of spatio t emporal simulations, which m eans that th e subj ect finds himself or herself in th e wrong plac e at th e right time, or th e right plac e at th e wrong time ; th ese tricks th erefore work primarily through disorienta tion, even at th e level of just getting in th e building: The entryways of the Bonaventure are, as it were , lateral and rather backdoor affairs: the gardens in the back admit you to the sixth floor of the towers , and even there you must wal k down one f light to find the elevator by which you gain access to the lobby. Meanwhile, what one is still tempted to thin k of as the fr ont entry , on Figueroa, admits you, baggage and all , onto the second-storey balcony, from which you must take an escalator down to the main registration desk. (Jameson, 1998: 12)

Even though th e building has vertical components, it is structured like a palimpsest - a seri es of layers - which th e subj ect has to negotiate as if in a labyrinth (see Lane, 1993). Th ese layers, through being int erconnect ed in "illogical" ways, disrupt th e relationship between horizontal and vertical, which allows us to perc eive volume : ... if it seemed to you before that the suppression of depth observable in postmodern painting or literature would necessarily be difficult to achieve in architecture itsel f, perhaps you may now be willing to see this bewildering immersion as its f ormal equivalent in the new mediu m. (Jameson, 1998: 14)

Jam eson argues that human beings have not yet evolved th e perc eptual equipme nt need ed to deal with such a hyp erspace as he calls it . 1 would argue that, nearly two decad es on , with th e advent of virtual-reality t echnologies and even th e hyp ertext links in standard Web -pag e use (wher e th e user clicks on a highlighted bit of text and jumps to another Web site automatically) , this hyp erspace is no longer quite as problem atic . Th e task of actually moving around th e Bonaventure building, with all its playful disruptions and disappointments, its disorienting tech niques and attacks on cognitive mapping skills , b ecomes analogous to th e computer gam e, which in itself uses th e notion of "levels" to m ean more of th e sam e but slightly more difficult, rath er than referring to

th e modern verticality of th e imposing skyscrapers that function far more two-dimensionally. Is th e Bonaventure utopia achieved? Is this labyrinthine, but selfenclosed and safe, miniature city th e urban environment perfect ed, either in terms of its gam e-playing potential or with th e fact th at its only dang ers seem to be a slight headache in getting from an entrance to th e hotel ch eck -in desk ? Th e building is a r esid ential shopping mall wh ere th e insane ar e definitely kept out (hotel security in this sens e having already replaced th e official police forc e, who fail to maintain law and order in th e city spac e itself) . But this sanitized environment is, for Baudrillard, a sign of death: utopia achieved is a negation of th e struggle, of th e processes of becoming ; it is what Oswald Spengl er in Tbe Declin e if th e West (1926) called the become or th e bard- set . Am erica begs this qu estion: What do you do wh en everything is availabl e . . .? (Baudrillard, 1988a : 30). Th e perfection of soci ety is also its end. However, this seems to contradict th e ludic nature of buildings like th e Bonaventure, th e fact that th e gam es played in th em are th eir "m eaning", so to speak. Also, th e new spac es and expe riences of postmodernity are not necessarily as sanitized as Baudrillard makes out. Postmodern Am erica produces non-t erritorial weapons ; that is to say, weapons which physically rain down on an ene my, but electr onically bombard th e entire world through television (Baudrillard, 1988a : 49) . Jam eson takes this notion furth er, making a direct link between th e new perceptual spac es of postmodern buildings and th eir analogue: postmodern warfare. With th e Vietnam War, th e grand narratives of th e war correspondent could no longer function, sinc e th e action was schizophrenic (taking place "on th e ground" and in a virtual r eality of fake body-counts and television bulletins) , th e nationalistic int entions and th eories susp ect (the domino th eory which would lead to th e destruction of th e West by Communist regimes if Vietnam fell), and th e combatants high on a rang e of recreational drugs as a way of coping with th e insane dem ands plac ed upon th em . For Jam eson, th e problem becomes on e of finding a new discourse actually to write about this expe rience , connecting th ereby what is happ ening in th e sanitized world of th e Bonaventure and other such buildings with th e realm of th e postmodern war; this discourse is found in Vietnam War journalist Michael Herr's book Dispatches:

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The extraordinary linguistic innovations of this work may be considered postmodern in the eclectic way in which its language impersonally f uses a whole range of contemporary collective idiolects , most notably rock language and black language, but the f usion is dictated by problems of content. This f irst terrible postmodernist war cannot be recounted in any of the traditional paradigms of the war novel or movie - indeed, that breakdown of all previous narrative paradigms is, along with the breakdown of any shared experience, among the principal subjects of the book and may be said to open up the place of a whole new refle xivity. (Jameson, 1998: 16)

Th e ways in whi ch Herr constructs his hallucinogeni c account of th e war through "collective idiolects " - that is, langua ges or discourses drawn from popular culture - is analogous to th e ways in wh ich th e Bon aventure constr ucts its arc hit ect ural codes out of th e Am eri can arc hitectural ver nacular (every day normal expe r iences, such as checking in at a "no r ma l" hot el , whi ch are th en tot ally disrupted ) . Like th e cons tr uc tion of a truly great Am er ican lit er ature from th e vernacular /idioloects, for exam ple, with Mark Twain' s The Advent ures if Hu ckleberry Finn , postm od ern arc hit ecture hold s "uto pia achieved" in t en sion with "apocalypse now" - th ey are bo th sides of th e sam e coin .

SUMMARY In thi s chapter we have seen how America is the place of postmoderni sm for Baudrillard. Baudr illard's semiot ic con ception of th e American des ert enab les us to understand how he theorizes th e moderni st and postmodern ist cit y- spaces and experi enc es. We have seen that th e decentred postmodern city i ncorporat es the organi c and the evoluti onary, w hereas the modern ist c it y rejected nature and wa s a revolutionary space. W ith example s suc h as the postmod ern experience of th e Bonav enture Hotel in Lo s Ange les, and th e movement and disorientat ion of "postmod ern " war, we have seen how Baudrillard's work relates to oth er critica l theori st s such as Fredr ic Jame son.

7 WRITING STRATEGIES Postmodern perfo rmance

In thi s con clud ing chapter Baudrillard's writing strategies ar e exam ined as a way of addressing a wh ole host of recurring th em es and conc epts in his work . In particular, it examine s th e way in whi ch Baudrillard's postmod ern writings are seen as performance pieces with no real con tent and wh y thi s sho uld be so , given Baudrillard's phil osophical and th eoretical backgrounds. Th e chapt er examine s terrori sm , nihili sm , and Baudrillard's contradicto ry position as cr itic or defend er of postm od ernism.

SIMUVAC There is a scene in th e Am er ican postmod ern novelist D on Delillo's White Noise wh er e th e resid ents of a sma ll Middle Am erican town are simulating a major disaster in pr eparation for th e "r eal" th ing. Th e irony in thi s is th at th e "real" has already occ ur red with th e "to xic airbo r ne event" . Th e protago nist asks: "Are you peopl e sure you 're ready for a simulation?You may want to wait for one m ore m assive spill . Get your timing down" ( 1986 : 204) . Th e reacti on to th e tox ic airbo rne event has been chaotic, rand om , terrible, wh ereas th e simulation is ordered, orga nized and peaceful. Th e private consulti ng firm th at ope rates th e simulate d evacuation stress th e importance of a "logic" revealed to be based up on myth : "The m ore we reh ear se disaster, th e safer we'll be

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from th e real thing. Life seems to work th at way, do esn 't it ?" ( 1986 : 205) . Using th e exam ple of forgetting to take an umbrella t o work and th at being th e day th at it rains, th e firm's representatives sugg ests th at thi s "m echanism" w ill b e "employed" amo ng oth ers, implying a satura ti on of th e "real" with th e simulation, until th e "real" is negat ed or neu tra lized (in other words, turned into th e hyp erreal). White Noise is a novel sat ura ted with th e fear of th e "real" irrupting int o th e hyperreal (such as a real disast er interrupting th e simulation), and th e hyperreal irrupting int o th e "real" (such as th e pr otagoni st's obs ession with death m eaning som ething in th e r eal world) . Events are only ever th ought about in relati on to or through m edia respon se and representati on , or in terms of wh at was happ ening in th e world of th e m edi a at th e time (e.g. th e death of JFK) . Th er e is a con stant teasing-out of any hint of ina uthenti citv , a constant bant ering between charac ters abo ut th e disjuncti on b etween info rmation overloa d and th e feeling th at nothi ng abo ut th e world , abo ut being in th e world , is kn own . At th e sam e time, vari ou s univers ity professors lurk aro und th e campus town , performing semiotic analyses of popular cult ur e, super mar kets and Am er ican histor y. White Noise is perh aps th e book critics would have liked to have seen instead of Baudrillard's America, th e former not containing so many of th e Eurocen tr ic stereo types of th e latter, whil e still covering much of th e sam e cult ural ter ritor y. O ne of th e problem s with Baudrillard's America (and other works) is th at it d oes not have th e fall-back positi on of a Delillo novel ; th at is to say, however "accura t e" D elillo's descr iptions of postm od ern Am erican society m ay b e, th ey are essentially catego rized as "fiction" and can th er efore be laugh ed with or at, reject ed , acc epted and so on, safe in th e kn owl edge th at th ey can be put down and th e "real" non -ficti onal world r eturned to . Baudrillard , afte r Symbolic Exchange and Death , roughly speaking, r efuses t o make such a fine distin cti on between ficti on and documentar y, or ficti on and academ ic text.

TERRORISM Th e prot agoni st in Don Delillo' s Mao II ( 1992) arg ues th at as th e power and efficacy of novels t o affect th e "inner life" of a cult ure wanes, th at of t errorism incr eases: "N ow b omb-m akers and gunm en have taken th at territor y. Th ey make raid s on human conscio usness. What writer s used to do before we wer e all incorpor ated" ( 1992 : 41 ) .

Th e noti on of t errori st "ter r itory" is important to Baudrillard in this sense: it is a conc eptual territor y. In Simu lacra and Sim ulation, th e argum ent runs th at it is impossible to stag e an illu sion because th e real has disapp ear ed . Go and hold a fake hold -up , Baudrillard suggests , with fake weapon s, a hostage and as much performance close t o th e "real" thing as possible. Th en look at th e consequenc es: ... you won't suc ceed : the web of artificial signs will be inext ricably mixed up with real elements (a police officer will really shoot on sight; a bank customer will fain t and die of a heart att ack; they will really turn the phoney ransom over to you) in brief, you will unwittingly f ind yourself immediately in the real, one of whose f unct ions is precisely to devour every attempt at simulation ... (1983b:39)

Simulation is th eori zed as bein g m ore th reatenin g to th e establishe d order (w ho constr uct th e acceptable legalized "r eal") precisely b ecause it can reveal th at th e "real" of law and order is a simulation in th e fir st place. Th e argu m ent r un s th at a "simulated" hold -up will be puni shed for either fallin g short of suc cess or b eing too succ essful, but never for being a simulation itself. The implicati on s, according to Baudrillard , are th at "law and order" belong to seco nd -order simulation (the "real" and th e "represen tation" blu r into one ano ther) , whereas th e simulation event "itself" belongs t o third-order simulation or th e hyperreal (th ere is no thing to com pare it with). But , to go beyond our earlier analysis of th ese simulation categori es, th e issue now becom es th at if simulation canno t be verified, neither can th e real. Terrori st activity impacts up on society in a straightfor ward way because it has becom e a preprogram me d event, whi ch will be analysed and presented by th e m edi a acco rding to an unfolding of expe cte d sequenc es, and so on . Baudrillard asser ts, however, th at thi s does not m ean th at such activity has been neutralized ; if anything , th e hyp errealit y of th e terrori st "attac k" becom es even m or e frightening in its disper sal and reoccurren ce or, t o put it ano ther way, in its effect , whi ch always takes place elsewhere (in th e m od e or pr ocesses of r epresentati on) . Ter rori st activity tests th e limits of soci ety, of its institution s of power and th e way in wh ich such institution s ar e located conc eptu ally. In Fatal Strateqies, th e terrori sts and th e hostages have b ecom e "unn am ablc"; that is to say, th ey exist in a hom ogen eou s society (the perfecti on of "uto pia achieved") whi ch it is th eir fun ction to inter r upt, re-cod e, W R I TIN G S T R AT E G I E S

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redirect. Th e hyp erreality of postmodernism is b eyond good and evil: the work of th e terrorist is to return society to th e world of ethical structures and event s. But this is a fantasy, an impossibility, sinc e th e t erritory of t errorism is no longer located at th e margins of soci ety, a fr acturing or insertion point: We speak of "t error ist space" : airports, embassies, fractile zones, non-territorial zones. The embassy is the infinitesimal space in which a whole country can be taken hostage . The plane, with its passengers , is a parcel of land, a wandering mole cule of enemy territory, and therefore almost no longer a territo ry, the refore almost a hostage already, since to take something hostage is to tear it from its territory and revert it to the equilibri um of terror. Today this terror is our normal , silent condit ion everywhere . (199Gb 38)

The interconnectedness of contemporary soci ety - wher e ever y occurr enc e must have a caus e (Butler, 1999 : 90) - leads to an overdet ermined soci ety that takes th e notion of "security" to th e limit, a kind of oversaturation of security. From this position, however, th e smallest, most random ups etting of th e overdet ermined status quo b ecomes incredibly fright ening, like th e snapping of a small branch in a forest at night. Where did the nois e come from ?Who caus ed it ?Who is out th er e ? Where exactly ar e th ey? How big ar e th ey? Th e questions and p erceived threats escalate by th e moment . The paradox for Baudrillard is that t errorism takes advantage of this situation (indeed, contemporary t errorism is structured along th ese lin es) and is n eutralized by it (b ecause soci ety is detached, d et erritorialized, "m anag ed" from th e extr ate r r it or ial , extr aplane t ar y space, held hostage under nuclear threat in its entire ty) . Th e subj ect now perceived as exist ing via th e bl ackmail of th e nuclear soci ety , internalized via th e "blackmail" of th e body, its econ om ies , and those of th e family, leads to th e qu estion of where Baudrillard as subj ect(ed) situates himself in r elation to this and other visions of th e world . His writing has b een condemned as too p erformative (and th er efore not analytical en ough , or philosophical, sociological, psychological . . . en ough ) and as being simply a m anifes tation of some kind of postmodern nihilism, situated like the hyp erreal in a Ni etzschean spac e b eyond good and evil. The qu estion b ecomes : Who, and wher e, is Baudrillard in his t exts?

NIHILISM In a short essay on nihilism in Simulacra and Simulatio n, Baud rill ard writes "I am a nihili st" ( I 994a: 160 ) . Thi s statem ent, so stra ightfor ward and cer tain, is decon structed by th e text th at produces it .

NI HILIS M Nih il ism is an extreme f orm of reject ion : of authority, insti tu t ions, systems of belief (especially rel ig ious bel iefs) and value. Nihil ism can also be def ined as a revolutionary destruct ion for it s own sake and there fore the practice or promu lgat ion of terror ism (Collins Engli sh Dictionary ). To say " I am a nihi list" is to f orm a series of aff il iations, intel lectually the strongest being with the work of German philosopher Friedr ich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who infamousl y asserts in his texts that " God is dead " . It is Nietzsche who performed one of the most susta ined analyses of bel ief systems as being themselves nih il istic.

Baudrillard's statem ent can be sum marized thus: "If nihilism is ' x ", th en I am a nihili st ." But this only temporarily stabilizes wh at it m ean s to b e a nihili st in th e po stm od ern world, where nihili sm has been "entirely realized" ( 1994a: 159) and is sim ultaneously "im po ssible" ( 1994a : 161 ) . Th e accusation th at Baudrillard is ultimately a nihili st postmod ernist writer (rather th an a more ser ious acade m ic per son ) must be brought int o contac t with thi s shor t essay in Simulacra and Simulation , to decid e if it is po ssible to locat e th e speaking voice of Baudrillard's t exts in such a straightfor ward way and accuse th e voice / subj ect /Baudrillard of bein g a cer tain negativ e typ e of writer . When we think of th e rejection of "higher valu es" in nihilism , for exam ple th e denial of a god or a religious system, th en we are refer ring to a reactive nihili sm - th e domination of "higher valu es" is r eact ed against. But th ere is anothe r position or per spectiv e th at pr eced es thi s: th at th e "higher valu es" in saying th at th ey are super ior to life its elf (the supers ensuo us ver sus th e sensuous), depreciate or negat e life (Del euze, 198 3: 147) Thi s is called negati ve nihilism . D eleuze notes that " . . . [with negative nihilism 1 essence was opposed to appea rance, life

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was turned into an appe arance . Now [with reactive nihilism] essence is denied but appe arance is retained : ever ything is m erely app ear anc e . . ." (1983 : 148) . We can translate this as saying that with negativ e nihilism th e "essenc e" of human beings , such as th e soul or th e spirit , is deem ed r eal, whil e th e "app ear anc es", or how th e world appea r s to a being (see N ehamas, 1985 : 45), are deem ed false and degraded . With reactive nihilism , th e "essenc es" are deni ed , such as th e holy spirit in man , and all we have are th e "app ear anc es" or perspectives upon th e world . Meaning in th e reactively nihilistic world is gen erated by humanity, not some being who preced es or transc ends humanity. For Baudrillard, postmodernity is about th e play of "app earances" and th e destruction of symbolic m eaning (1994a : 160) . Baudrillard argue s that in th e postmodern world we ar e involv ed in th e em pt y and m eaningless play of th e m edia ("play" as in chanc e, and "play" as in th e playback of a prer ecorded piece of information, music or software). Baudrillard calls th e play of th e m edi a a "transp arency", b ecaus e all valu es b ecome ultimately "indiffer ent forms" . Think of th e ways in which advertising absorbs and regurgitates th e seemingly radical forms of th e avantgarde, thus a piece of ar t that attempts to chall eng e th e whole syst em of aesthe tics can be used to adver tise some gizmo or haircare product on television. A transp arent system is on e where th e avant- garde is neutralized as a styl e, fashion or trend in advanc e, which m eans that th ere is no point in even trying to ar tistically challeng e any system . How do es th e th eorist op erate or write within this transp ar ency? Baudrillard suggests that critical analysis has itself become unc ertain and op en to chance (1994a : 161) . And in this sens e, nihilism cannot exist any more becaus e it is still a solidifi ed th eory or critical analysis of existe nce . "I am a nihilist" says th e narrativ e voice of "O n Nihilism". But is th e voic e a narrator or protagonist? Som eone outside of, or abov e postmodernism ... or insid e, writing about postmodernism through postmodernism? "I am a nihilist", says th e voice, but only if nihilism is defin ed in certain ways: first, if it is nihilistic to see "the mass es" as b eing caught up in anothe r paradoxical notion , th at of an accelerate d inertia, and to privilege this paradoxical point in its analysis; and second, if it is nihilistic to be obs essed with th e mode of th e destruction or disapp earanc e of m eaning (1994a : 162) . But to be nihilistic with th ese provisos is not to b e nostalgic ; inst ead, th er e is a more profound melancholia behind th e nostalgia that on e finds in figures

such as Walt er Benjamin, who lam ented th e destruction of m eaning in th e modern world of Nazism and war. Baudrillard's persona at this point identifies deeply with this m elan cholia .

WR ITIN G/READIN G STRATEGIES How do we deal with th e fact that Baudrillard's writing car eer can b e thought of as an exte nde d attack upon th e hyperreal and th e loss of th e symbolic, whil e he hims elf is considered a defender of th e postmodern or a postmodern nihilist? Throughout this text th er e has b een th e sugg estion that many of th e reactions to Baudrillard have b een to do with his styl e of writing. Thus, wh en Christopher Norris calls Baudrillard a " . . . cult figur e on th e current ' p ost rnodc r nist ' scen e, and purveyor of som e of th e silliest ideas yet to gain a hearing among disciples of French intellectual fashion" (1992 : II), th er e is a delib erate em phasis on th e stylistic aspects of his work . Baudrillard is condemned b ecaus e he is a "cult figur e" and his followers ar e condemned as not b eing real thinkers, but m erely people who follow th e latest int ellectual "fashion" (worse still , from an English perspec tive, it is "Fre nch" fashion) . Yet Baudrillard is partly to blam e for this trav esty, becaus e he has situ ated hims elf as an int ellectual precisely at th e level of styl e or fashion as a way of writing at th e limits of th e hyp erreal. As Bryan Turner notes, books like America and Cool Memories " . . . ar e offensive to acad emics, espe cially serious academics like Callinicos and Kelln er [who both perform strong critiques of Baudrillard], becaus e th ey ar e politically uncommitted, whimsical, and depthless" (Roj ek and Turner, 1993 : 152). But, unlike Norris, Turner is not saying this as a way of condemning such texts ; rather he is describing th em as writing strategies . If we r eturn to th e text America discuss ed in Chapter 3, we can think of its form as travel-narrative and th e parallels with th e "Am erican" road movi e. But another m etaphor can be used to describe Baudrillard's styl e - th at of "cruising". As Turner notes, "A cruise is a trip or voyage typically undertaken for pleasure; it is a trivial exer cise ... Cruising is pointless, aimless and unproductive. It leaves no residue, no evide nce , no archive . It do es not int end to int erpret ; it is post-anthropological" (Roj ek and Turner, 199 3: 153) . Baudrillard do esn't simply analyse cultural forms , but explore s th em through a doubling of those forms : his texts are cultural events th at partake of th e structures of postmodernity. Turner sees a W R I TIN G S T R AT E G I E S

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parallel with th e restl essness of 1960s Am erican writing (see also Lane, 1999): Both Baudrillard and Kerouac are involved in a "reading" of the society th rough the f lashing vision of A mer ican culture as a seen [sic] th rough the car screen , the rear mirror or the subway. The car screen and the TV screen have a number of things in common . The passenger, like the viewer, is passive, indiffe rent, entertained and perhaps over-stimulated by the f lashing trivia of the landscape and scene. (Rojek and Turner, 1993: 153)

But how are we, as reader s, supposed to m ake sense of thi s journey? Pr esum ably (to ado pt th e position of th e "seri ou s" read er) we have com e to Baud rill ard's work not as we would a t elevision progr amme or a novel , but expe cting som e int ellectual con t ent ? Perhap s reading Baudrillard is for som e already not a probl em because th ey ar e so involved in th e expe riential nature of th eir own postm od ern world(s)? Or perhaps others m ay have to develop particular readin g strat egies to cope with th e writing strat egies being used ? Mike Gane sugg ests th at as a "theo r etic al ext re m ist" Baudrillard takes his ideas to th eir logic al limits, but th at th e reader th en need s som e "basic protocol s" or rules to r espond to and make sense of th e resulting work. Reading Baudrillard is broken down int o a number of ph ases: fir st a ph ase wh er e th e r eader is seduc ed int o a suspension of hi s or her cr itical faculti es as th ey drift in th e "flow" of Baudrillard's work; and second , an abr upt rever sal of thi s phase as th e r eader becom es hyp er critical of Baudrillard's work, finally, a m or e balanced series of readin gs are produced ou t of th e ext re m ities of th ese po sition s (Gane, 1991 : 7-10) . Gane regards ph ases one and two as a kind of pot entially self-dest r uctive "delirium", hi s positi on being r emi niscent of th e fear s th at oft en sur ro und( ed ) N ietzsc he 's work (the "ma dness" is som ehow contag ious) . Th e noti on of a m ore balanced series of readings do esn 't really explain wh y th e r eader had to becom e delirious in th e fir st place : whil e Gane defends Baudrillard from th e m any attacks upo n his work, particularly from Marxist thinker s, th e noti on of a delirious readin g could have been productively expanded t o ti e in with th e radicalit y of th e work under discussion . Returning to Turner's analysis of Baudrillard's style, we can look m ore closely at th e parallels between text and hyperreality being

"described" . In his analysis of th e postmodcrn "cruising" text, Turner suggests four technical components :

2 3 4

priority of styl e /form, wh ere content and matter ar e diver sions ; any "m essage" is constructed via r ep etition leading to an "explosion of m eaning"; lit erary hyp erbole (exagg eration used for effect) becomes analogous to hyp erreality; th e sequ ential order of th e text (lin ear progression) replaced by self-contained segm ents, which can be read in any order. (modified from Roj ek and Turner, 1993 : 155)

This list, or on e with minor modifications, can be used as a guide to virtually all of th e texts produced after Symbolic Exchange and Death, although th e division between serious (early) /playful (lat er) works should not blind us to th e fact that Baudrillard addresses a seri es of relat ed issues acro ss his entire oeuvre. In his postmodern styl e, Baudrillard dislocates th e traditional location of m eaning in an analytical text, but that does not lead to a "m eaningless" text that has nothing to say.

ENDING WITH POSTMODERNISM Th e lack or rejection of closure was onc e on e of th e most cel ebrated facets of postmodernism: op enness, continual play, plurality of perspectives and th e endless chance to produce som ething radically new. But how do es postmodernism account for or deal with events on a vast historical scale, such as th e "Big Bang" or "the millennium"?With th e latter, competing disast er th eories proliferate and circulate among th e m edia , from m essianic and apocalyptic pr edictions of a spiritual typ e, to th e banal ever yday "apocalypse" of th e millennium (micro processor) "bug", a transferenc e, perhaps, of th e obs ession with viral destruction during th e last two decad es of th e twentieth century replacing earlier bacteriological disast ers. But for Baudrillard th er e is som ething far worse awaiting us : our failure to reach th e "end" at all : cc• • • now det errenc e has succ eed ed , we have to get used to th e idea that there is no end any longer, there will no longer be any end, that history has become int erminable" (1994b : 116). Humanity missed th e "Big Bang" WRITING S T R A T E G I E S

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and now, through th e op eration of hyp erreality, humanity will "miss" the end , expe r iencing instead a gradual, t edious unfolding of r etro history, of simulated r eturns to events through which a "r etrospective absolution" is d esired . This endless d eferral of th e end, through a sid est epping of the r eal (d et errence, for exam ple, leads to all of our fears b eing located in th e virtual r eality of th e simulat ed nuclear war, and then a fadin g of those fears and a shift in th e econ om ic balance of power) leads not to a halting of history, but its "r eversal" . Baudrillard argue s that sometime during th e 1980s, " . . . history took a turn in th e opposite direction" (1994b : 10) . Th eorizing an "apogee of time" (using the spati al m et aphor of satellite bodies) , a point was r eached where lin ear progression r each es its furth est limits; a gravitational pull th en brings time rushing backwards, like a sat ellite falling back to ear th: We are faced with a paradoxical process of reversal, a reversive effect of modernity which , having reached its speculative limit and extrapolated all its virtual developments , is disintegrating into its simple elements in a catastrophic process of recurrence and turbulence. (1994b : 11)

Thus we try and r ecov er th e past r eality of war with , for exam ple, th e GulfWar, but to no avail : all w e have is a w ar op erative and interpret ed through th e contemporary laws of simulation and the botched atte m pt to start a "n ew world order" . Baudrillard sugg ests that b ehind this d esire to r eturn, this r eversal of history, is th e desire to know where things went wrong, where w e slipped imperceptibly into a world of em pty simulation: "H owe ver, th ese earl ier forms n ever r esurface as they w er e ; th ey n ever escape th e destiny of extre me modernity. Their r esurrection is its elf hyp er-r eal" ( 1994b: 117) . In many r esp ects, The Illu sion if the End b ecomes Baudrillard's most self-r eflexiv e book; th e loss of th e symbolic cannot b e p erceived through nostalgia b ecause then Baudrillard would b e attempting a r eversal of history, h e would not only b e complicit in th e enter pr ise, but he would b e fool ed or seduced by th e substitute . But Baudrillard do cs attem pt to find th e "points" in time wher e w e slipped from th e symbolic to simulation, from th e "r eal" to th e sign, and in many r esp ects his ent ire ente r pr ise can b e summarized by the m apping and pl ayful description of this slip pag e .

SUMMARY By comparing Baudrillard's America to American postmodernist Don Delillo's novel White Noise, th is chapter asserts that one of the problems generated by Baudrillard's work is his refusal to separate fact from fiction. This is marked most strongly in his later writing. The chapter explores this problem with reference to terrorism, simulation and the question of a writing strategy. The latter is explored through the paradoxes and contrad ictions of Baudrillard's essay "On Nihilism ", asking in relation to this: "Who" and "where" is Baudrillard in relation to his own texts? The association with Nietzsche reveals a lot about having different writing strategies or styles, as well as clarifying different types of nihilism. Baudr illard argues that postmodernism is a form of negat ive nih ilism, where the hyperreal is supposed to be "superior" to the real. But Baudrillard's own postmodern writing strategies are at times at odds with his defence of the real - for example, when his wr iting is experienced like the road movies it mimics in America.

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Like a m et eor ente r ing th e Earth's atmosphere, Baudrillard's ideas have broken apart and scatter ed across a number of critical fields . Th ese include aesthe tics, cyb erpunk, global m edi a and film th eory, new approach es to geography and history, popular culture or cultural studies, and postmodernism. Baudrillard has become part of th e postmodern fabric of th e contemporary West . In this concluding chapter we will exam ine some of th e ways in whi ch Baudrillard's work has an imp act upon th ese th eoretical areas, looking briefly at how oth er critics have used his work.

ELECTRONIC LANDSCAPES Th er e is a world developing that breaks away from th e old spaces of Fordist industrialization . In other words, th e massiv e production lin es situ ated in large centralized factory spac es ar e b eing replaced by decen tred and fragm ented sit es of production . Inst ead of a larg e factory being bas ed in on e town , in on e country, sit es of production have become int ernational : it may be cheap er to situate elsewher e, in a number of countries wh ere labour is chea pe r and for various r easons more flexible. Not only is th e physic al site of production fracturing, but th e mode of production is changing, too . Thus onc e heavily industrialized countries are developing new "soft" industries bas ed upon

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computers, software, leisure industries and th e rapid ris e of int ernet t echnologies. This is a world of virtual reality, with capital flowing rapidly across electr onic land scapes, and fortun es bein g created out of hyp erreal compani es (such as Int ernet companies which have no physical product and m ake no profit, yet are still valu ed highly on th e stock exchange , regardless of th eir volatility) . Sociologist s and geographers are exploring th ese electr onic lands capes and related ph enomena using exte nsively th e th eories of Jean Baudrillard. In th eir book Spaces if Identity , David Morl ey and Kevin Robins stat e "We believe th at wh at he [Baudrillard] says should be taken ver y ser iou sly" ( 1995 : 194) . Examining "global m edia, electronic land scap es and cult ural boundari es", Mo rl ey and Robins explore th e po st-Fordist world . In thi s world th e human subject is caught in an impossible double-bind between , as Baudrillard points out, th e dem and s of autonomy and subm ission ( 1995: 196) . In other words, human b eings are expe cte d to keep pace with th e dcccntrcd wo rld with th e ability constantly to find new jobs, and in th e pr ocess re-skill th em selves many times (shifting from factory worker perhaps to soft ware writer or financi al adviser, and so on) . Yet human bein gs are also expe cted to b e passive co nsum ers, subjected to a m ass of adver tising, espe cially t elevision adver tising, and whole syst ems of consum ption . Morley and Robins think through this new impossible double-bind in r elation to Baudrillard's noti on s of ar tificiality and his point th at " .. . th e future seems to have shifted towards ar tificial satellites" ( 1995 : 170). Thus th e importance of cybernetics and th e ways in whi ch people can b ecome totally immersed , even lost , in virtual r eality and other ar tificial worlds ( 1995 : 169-170) . Such cybernetic worlds can be examine d in terms of th e politi cs of identity and nationalism th at often accompany or even str uc tur e th em . Thi s latt er is being explore d today as a kind of "techno orientalism ", where notions of th e alien Other are rewritten in terms of cyborgs and cybernetics (Mo rley and Robins examine th e som etimes racist portrayal of th e Japanese, for exam ple , as cold t echnological b eings) . In more general terms, we now live in a world which often appe ar s dominated by th e "global hyp er space" of massm edia cor po rations such as CNN, N ews Co r poration and Sony. Th ese are virtually stateless ente r prises, op er atin g acr oss th e world and pen etrating homes in alm ost ever y country and culture th at has access to t elevision and / or new sprint . Again , thi s world of th e television screen and th e network is mapp ed out and th eorized at great length by

Baudrillard , and his work is pr oviding critical impetus for new thinker s in thi s realm. Paul Rodaway, in a paper called "Explo ring th e Subject in Hyp er Realit y" ( 1995), examine s th e contemporar y poststructural and postm od ernist debates abo ut th e subj ect b ecoming detac he d from a con t extua lized "real" world , just as th e sign is now considered to be det ached from an ori ginal object . H e puts Baudrillard int o play with a number ofl eading conte m po rary thinker s (such as Jacques Derrida and Fredr ic Jam eson ), to begin sketc hing a map of th e new "hyper -subj ect" or "tra ns-subject" . What thi s m eans is th at th e subject is now perc eived to be a transition al form , on th e ro ad to som ething or som ewhere else. What thi s mi ght be is yet to be finalized or th eorized , but Baudrillard offers a ser ies of critical t ools - such as his concept of th e hyp erreal with whi ch to ar ticulate th e transitional form . Rodaway at times compares Baudrillard's approach with other th eori sts, to examine th e effectivene ss of Baudrillard' s writing and performing at th e limits of th ought. Thro ugh thi s comparison eme rges th e noti on th at Baudrillard has a radical appro ach, wh er e th e subject has been seduc ed, fragm ent ed and even dest roy ed by th e d omi nance of th e object . Our techn ologic al societies are object- do minat ed rath er th an subjectcon t ro lled . Rodaway also uses Baudrillard to explore th e hyp erreal spac es or expe r iences of con tem po rary society, espe cially th e reconstr ucted past in living museums and th em e parks.

RETHINKING HISTORY How useful ar e Baudrillard's statem en ts on hi stori cal revisionism , th e noti on not th at we ar e at th e end of hist or y, but th at we are wiping out our own pasts? How useful are Baudrillard 's statem ents for thinkers exploring th e int ersecti on of colonial and post colonial histori es, or specific no tions of, say, fem inist hist or y? Baudrillard's work offers a useful foil for exam ining contempo rary cult ure and recent hist or y. In many respects Baud rill ard is not ju st som e kind of postm od ern "pro phet" of th e future, but a comm entato r on th e pr esent - wh at is happ ening in our world , right now. Contempo rary histori ans are exam ining th eir subject from a number of new th eoreti cal per spectives. An excellent recent over view of th ese per specti ves can be found in Keith Jenkins' book Why History ? Ethics and Postmodernitv ( 1995), whi ch includes a challengi ng shor t chapter on Baudrillard . Meaghan AFTER BAUDRILLARD

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Morris , in Too Soon Too Late (1998), explore s recent Australian history in relation to th eoretical models provided by thinkers such as Baudrillard. Her feminist account involv es a kind of int ellectual combat with Baudrillard , at times finding his concepts such as th e hyp erreal useful and rel evant, and at other times rejecting his work as too located in th e th eoretical (rather th an th e contextual) realm of cultural studies. For exam ple, in explor ing small-town Australia, Morris analyses th e way that th e constructions of th e past - mus eums, tourist spaces, simulated historical locations - op erate to int erpret th eir own place in or as history. She compares this with Baudrillard's r ejection of analogous towns in Franc e in his transfer enc e of such qu estions to Am eri ca. While Morris qu estions th e validity of Baudrillard's dens e th eoretical stat em ents , such as Am erica is a "giant hologram" , and th e application of such statem ents to pr ecise cultural localities elsewhe re, she do es find valu e in th e effects of Baudrillard's approach : " . . . th e point about holograms (lik e simulacra) is that th ey volatize, rath er th an replace, other models of signifying practice . . ." (1998 : 60). Th e volatility of th e juxtaposed "pasts" in small-town Australia is precisely wh at gives th ese towns a resist anc e to univ ers al th eory. It is this resistance to univ ers al th eories and narratives, this (at times) critical terrorism and extre m ism , whi ch m eans th at Baudrillard can be utilized to enable th e construction of new, indi genous approache s to postcolonial studies, rath er th an relying on mainly European concepts .

AESTHETICS NOW One of Baudrillard's attractions is th e way he mixes th eory with performance, although som e critics have argue d that this becomes a r eduction if th eory to performanc e. In th e realm of aesthetics , Baudrillard has not just been som e idl e spect ator. He has turned his talks into multimedia events around th e world, and he invariably attracts larg e audi enc es which include non-academics int er est ed in his work . In th e mid-1990s Baudrillard travelled to Australia, not just to speak at an academic conferenc e ("Baudrillard in th e Nin eti es: Th e Art of Th eory") but also to attend an exhibition of his own photography at th e Institute of Modern Art, Brisb ane. Baudrillard's photography is a curious mix of th e hyp erreal and th e authe ntic , th e electronic and th e organic ; selections can be seen in th e coll ection Jean Baudrillard: Art and

Artifact, edite d by Nicholas Zurbrugg (1997), along side some fasci-

nating essays by ar t th eorists , historians and philosophers . This coll ection makes app ar ent not only th e wide-ranging nature of Baudrillard's comments on aesthetics , but also makes it clear that th ere are ongoing issues, particularly in th e fields of film and photography for futur e th eorists using Baudrillard's work. Critic Timothy Luk e summariz es this neatly : Jean Baudrillard has exerted unusual influence in the f ields of art , aesthetics, and cultural production during the 1980s and 1990s .

Baudrillard's work on

simulation , seduction, and hyperreality in the 1980s reverberated strongly among various artist communities, while it also enjoyed an enthusiastic reception in the art criticism network . (1994: 209)

BAUDRILLARD ONLINE A good place to start exploring th e impact that Baudrillard has had on wide-ranging critical th eories, espe cially th e catch-all term "postm oder nism" (in th at it covers many differ ent ways of writing about, or as, "postm ode r n") , is th e World Wide Web . "Baudrillard on th e Web", a sit e maintained by Alan Taylor at th e University ofTexas , is a good starting point for any search engine. This site provides many activ e links to a whole host of m ateri al about , or by Baudrillard . One of th e qu ality locations that exist via a hyp erlink is the onlin e journal CTHEORY, which describes itself as " . . . an int ernati onal journal of th eory, t ech nology and culture. Articles, int erviews , and key book reviews in cont emporary discourse are published weekly as well as th eorisations of major 'e vent- scene s' in th e m ediascape" . CTHEORY is edite d by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, and contains essays by Baudrillard such as "Disneyworld Company" and "Global D ebt and Parallel Univ ers e" (first published in th e Parisi an newspaper Liberation) . Baudrillard's global debt essay contains int eresting comments on th e Int ernet its elf , and th e ceaseless accumulation of knowledge, bein g compared to th e expone ntial increase in debt and th e countdown to th e millennium . This latter rel ates, finally, to th e ways in which Baudrillard has imp act ed upon so many diver se critical fields . His work continues to have a rel evanc e across many acade mic domains, even though (or becaus e) it gene rate s a gre at deal of strong responses from those who AFT E R B A U D R ILL A R D

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r eject his approach, espe cially th e later postmodern performances . Baudrillard's work has become part of th e very fabric of a postmodern world .

FURTHER READING

WORKS BY JEAN BAUDRILLARD - - (1968) Le Systeme des objets, Paris : D cn oel . (English version, 1997 , The System if Objects, trans . Jam es Ben edict , London & N ew York : Verso .) Baudrillard's first book, only fairly recently translated into English . A very clear book, written in a styl e quite differ ent from th e well known, later "postmodern" piec es. Th e book uses a structuralist approach th at is undoubtedly related to Barthes' Le Systeme de la mode (1964) , or "Fashion System" . Baudrillard's book is divid ed into four main sections: "Th e Functional System" , "The Non-Functional System ", "Th e Metafunctional and Dysfunctional System" and "The Socio Ideological System of Obj ects and Th eir Consumption". However, don't let th ese section titles put you off - th e book is a fascinating and enjoyable read, moving from int erior design, through "atmospher e", styliz ation, antiques, coll ecting, gadg ets and robots . The Sys tem if Objects overall is a new th eory of consumption and a description of th e relationship between humans and their modern consumer envir onm ent. (1970) La Societe de consommation, Paris : Dcno cl. (En glish version, 1998, The Consumer Society : Myths ~ Stru ctures, London : Sage.)

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Another on e of Baudrillard's early books, only fairly recently translated into English. It is written in a clear style with reference to acad emic precursors and sources, which is not always th e case with th e lat er works . This book is a piece of sociological analysis which continues th e project of The System if Objects, that is to say it maps out th e new consumer world, but in a more th eoretic al way than th e 1968 publication . Th ere ar e three main sections: "Th e Formal Liturgy of th e Object", "The Th eory of Consumption" and "Mass Media, Sex and Leisure". Baudrillard examine s th e ways in which consumption has gone far beyond th e assuaging of needs ; instead, consumption is necessary to fuel th e system of production . Objects are manipulated now, not simply "consumed" ; that is to say, th e obj ect is never satisfying, just manipulated alongside ever y other obj ect, in a never ending process analogous to sign or semiotic syst ems . Baudrillard also radically r er eads sociologists such as Galbraith, using many examples from Am erican soci ety, which pr efigures his own int er est in th e plac e for his lat er postmodern writings. This book is an excellent introduction to th e sociological th eories that underpin all of Baudrillard's work, and is another highly recommended starting point . - - (1972) Pour une critique de l' ecoriomie du sia ne , Paris : Gallimard . (English version, 1981, For 0 Critique if the Political Economy if th e Sian, trans. Charles Levin, US:Telos .) This book is fundamentally a coh er ent coll ection of essays addre ssing on e essential issu e in Baudrillard's work: how Marxism needs to be r e-read and re-theorized in relation to structuralism and semiotics. Som e of th ese essays or chapt ers ar e ext re mely dens e and complicated, such as chapters 6 and 7, "For a Gen eral Th eory" and "Beyond Use Value". However, this book is still a good plac e to make sens e of th e early works of Baudrillard, espe cially th e more readable chapters 5 ( "The Art Auction"), 9 ("Requiem for th e Media") and I a ( "D esign and Environment") . Th e more complicated chapters ar e worth r eading alongside explanator y materi al concerning Marxism and semi otics. - - (1973) Le Miroir de 10 production, Tournail: Cast erman. (English version, 1975, The Mirror if Production, trans . Mark Post er, St Louis : Telos.) A book closely related to For 0 Critique, but written in a much more polemical styl e. In other words, th er e is less critical "grounding"

apparent in this book, and a lot more argument and assertion . Baudrillard's basic premise her e is th at th er e has b een an overreliance on th e Marxist notion of production in contemporary West ern thought , and that Marxism needs to be r eworked via more complex notions of consumption. Th er e are five main sections in th e book: "The Concept of Labor", "Marxist Anthropology and th e Domination of Nature", "Historical Mat erialism and Primitive Societi es", "On th e Archaic and Feudal Mode" and "Marxism and th e System of Political Economy". This is a fairly complex book, at times quite difficult to r ead becaus e it lacks th e clarity and precision of th e earlier works. Nonetheless, it marks an important transition in Baudrillard's own thinking. - - (1976) L'Echange symboli que et la mort, Paris : Gallimard. (English version, 1998, Symbolic Exchang e and Death, trans . lain Hamilton Grant, London : Sage .) Th e first chapter of this book, "Th e End of Production", continues th e argument in The Mirror if Production . But th e scop e of this text is far gr eat er, leading critics such as Mik e Gan e to write that Symboli c Exchange and Death" . . . is without doubt Jean Baudrillard's most important book" (1991 : p.viii) Th e book has six main sections: "Th e End of Production", "The Order of Simulacra" (which was translated in th e earlier English Simulations coll ection), "Fashion, or th e Enchanting Spectacle of th e Code", "The Body, or th e Mass Grave of Signs", "Political Economy and Death" and "Th e Ext ermination of th e Nam e of God" . Th e book overall exam ine s and lam ents th e end of th e symbolic and its replacem ent with th e semiotic. We are introduced to th e conc ept of th e hyp erreal in th e chapt er on simulacra, and we ar e given many exam ples of th e way in which ever ything in modern soci ety op er ates "scmiotically" . Many critics consider this to be Baudrillard's last book written in a fairly acad emic format (with exte nsive refer ences, and so on, backing up th e argume nts). - - (1978) A l 'ombre des tnaiorites sileticieuses, ou la fin du social , Fontenay -sous-Bois : Cahi crs d'Utopie. (English version, 198 3, In the Shadow

if the

Silent Majorities: Or, the End

if the

Social and Other Essays,

trans . Paul Foss, Paul Patton and John Johnston, N ew York : Semiotext(e). ) One of Baudrillard's books which app ear ed in th e N ew York Semiotext(e) seri es, larg ely r esponsible for gene rating inter est and FURTHER READING

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some infamy in th e English -sp eaking world, published as th ey were b efore th e early French works .Th e book has four m ain sections: "In th e Shadow of th e Silent Majorities", " ... Or, th e End of th e Social", "The Implosion of Meaning in th e Medi a", and "Our Th eat er of Cruelty". Th e book exam ines th e notion that "th e m asses" are not subj ect ed or manipulated , but inst ead form a "body" impervious to prodding and complex dem ands . In other words , th e mass es ar e more "powerful" than th e forces which have traditionally been supposed to direct control. Baudrillard makes a number of radical and conte ntious stat em ents in this book, including th e asser tion th at th e "soci al" no longer exists and th at information" ... is directly destructive of m eaning and signification" (1978 : 96) . This shor t book is an excellent introduction to Baudrillard's "postm ode r n" writings, both in th e sens e of content and styl e of argumentation . - - ( 1979) De la seduction , Paris : Deno eI-Gonthier. (English version , 1990 , Seduction, trans . B. Singer, London: Macmillan .) A highly contentious piece of writing from th e perspective of femi nism, yet on e that still initiates debate con cerning Baudrillard's "p osition" in relation to feminist th eory. A . Goshorn argue s that a critical exam ination is need ed of: ... Baudrillard's rather careless employment of the category of "t he feminine, " particularly in constructing one of his central theoretical figures , the notion of

seduction. His usage of "the f eminine" here and elsewhere in his writing surely appears, on the surface, to be ris king a narrowly essentialized definition of the term , and one drawn from the social postu res of a previous centu ry at that. (1979: 258)

Ov erall, Baudrillard's argume nt is convoluted and not terribly well present ed . A poor text. - - ( 198 I) Simulacres et simulation, Paris :Galilee . (English versions: 198 3, part translation , Simulations, trans . Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman , NY: Semiotext(e) ; 1994, full translation , Simulacra and Simulation, trans . Sheila Far ia Glaser, Ann Arbor: Univ ersity of Michigan Pr ess.) A very important t ext for any serious study of Baudrillard's rela tionship to postmodernism . Th e chapt ers "The Pr ecession of Simula cr a" and "Th e Implosion of Meaning in th e Medi a" wer e first

made available in th e Semiotext(e) translations, but th e entire text was not availabl e in English until th e excellent translation by Sheila Faria Glaser in 1994. Th e book overall consists of a number of int ensely written yet acc essible chapters , covering subj ects such as film (e.g. Apocalypse Now), th e hyp ermarket and hyp ercommodity, cloning, holo gr ams and nihilism . - - (1983) Les Strategies fatales, Paris : Grass et. (English version, 1990, Fatal Strategies, trans . Philip Beitchman and W.G.j. Ni esluchowski, N ew York & London : Semiotext(e)/ Pluto.) A performative piece which utilizes a styl e so annoying to many critics, yet th e styl e is part of th e reason th at Baudrillard's popularity has remained high amongst a wide range of read ers. This book has five main sections : "Ecstasy and Inertia", "Figures of th e Transpolitical", "Ironic Strategi es", "Th e Obj ect and Its Destiny" and "For a Principle of Evil". One of th e best summaries of th e book is written by critic Charles Levin, who writes that : "As an exer cise in pure speculation (in th e sens e of irrational and excessive gambling) it [th e book] is also an extra ordinar y tour de force" (1996 : 271) . Levin argues that for Baudrillard, ... the fatal strategy is not a political strategy in the sense of a subject "position " in relation to an object or goal .. . The fatal strategy is in a way neither active nor passive, but a kind of magical identification with the actions of things ... one's "opposit ion" comes out of the system itsel f. (1996: 271-272)

- - (1986) Amerique, Paris : Grass et. (English version, 1988, America, trans . Chris Turner, London & N ew York:Verso.) A book which app ears to gen erate equal amounts of support and loathing, prais e and ridicule. Essentially a travel narrative or journal broken down into six main sections: "Vanishing Point", "N ew York", "Astral Am erica", "Utopia Achi eved", "The End of US Power ?" and "D esert for Ever" . Baudrillard deals with, or r ecycles, a gr eat number of cliches concerning th e US, as part of th e structural opposition throughout this book b etween N ew and Old Worlds (the cliches ar e initially from th e perspective of th e Old World, but eventually problematize th e N ew-Old binary opposition) . As such, th e trav el narrative begins to deconstruct th e act of writing such a book in th e first plac e; it is th erefore postmodern in th e sens e that it fragments itself or

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deconstructs its elf in th e popular use of th e latter term . Baudrillard adopts her e a contradictory tone of simultaneous insight and naivet e, or he constructs his travel narrative out of th e aporia or blind spot of this problem atic. Ov er all , th e book can be recommended as something very readabl e and, at th e sam e time, bizarrely impossible to r ead . Parts of th e book are quite dens e, if not aphor istic in th e Ni etz schean sense, and are hard to understand, but if read with th e aver age banal television holiday or travel show in mind , th e book can at times be incredibly humorous. - - ( 1987) r Au tre par lui-m eme; Paris : Galilee. (English versi on , 1988 , The Ecstasy if Communication, trans. Bernard and Caroline Schutz e, N ew York : Semiotext(e) .) Th e basic premis e of this bo ok is fairly simple: th at we have m oved from th e realms of th e "scene" to th at of th e "obscene" . Th e obsc en e is generated by th e transition from specta cle to transparen cy ; according to Baudrillard, th e world of th e scen e and th e mirror has given way to th e world of th e scr ee n and th e network ( 1987a: 12) Thi s book, which is actually a translati on of Baudrillard's do ctoral dissertati on , or Habilitation, is available in th e hard-hitting Sem iotext( e) seri es. It is composed of six m ain sections within th e usu al fram ework of introduction and conclusion : "The Ecstasy of Co mm unication", "Rituals of Transp ar en cy", "Metamor phosis, Met aph or, Met astasis", "Seduction, or, th e Supe rficial Depths", "From th e System to th e Destiny of Obj ects" and "W hy Th eory?" One way of thinking about thi s b ook in r elati on to th e earlier sociologic al and Marxist analyses is with th e op ening sent enc e: " . . . th ere is no longer a system of obj ect s" ( 1987a: II) . However, Baudrillard do es m ake th e point th at his argum ent in this book is prefigured by Marx's work on th e abstra ctedness of th e commodity. Ov er all , anoth er good point of ent ry for Baudrillard's writings on postmodernism . - - ( 1987) Cool Memories: 19 80-1985, Paris : Galilee. (English version , 1990, Cool Memories, trans . Chris Turner, London & N ew York : Verso .) Th e first of three "jo urnals" by Baudrillard now available. This on e covers th e year s 1980-1984 and a multitude of subjects, most of which are written ab out with an aphor istic style. Taking two pages at random , th ere are entries on : th e worker s, bureau cracy, dream s, th eory, love, H egel , Ari stotle and seduction. However, apar t from some int er esting

comments on French poststructuralists , many of th e entr ies are slightly feeble in comparison with much of Baudrillard's work, and certainly do not match th e power and int erest of Ni etzsche's aphorism s. - - ( 199 1) La Guerre du 8 o!fe n' a pas eu lieu , Paris : Galilee. (English version , 1995, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, trans . Paul Patton , Sydn ey: Power.) A coll ecti on of essays brought to geth er to form on e small, but highly cont entious book . Th e three sections are : "The GulfWar Will Not Take Place", "Th e GulfWar : Is It Really Takin g Place ?" and "Th e GulfWar Did N ot Take Place". Th e essays or iginally appe are d in Liberation prior to, during and aft er th e Gulf War. Th e book analyses th e war as a perfect exam ple of hyp erreality and is espe cially good at explaining Baudrillard's notion of "the test", whi ch appears through many of his writings . Paul Patton, in his excellent introduction, notes that Baudrillard is pursuing " . . . a high risk writing strategy" in thi s book ( 199 1: 6) . It b ecom es clear th at th e b ook illuminates both th e problems and th e potentialiti es of Baudrillard's th eories and writing strategies . Ov erall, thi s is probably on e of th e b est books to star t readin g and thinking ab out th e "later" Baudrillard, espe cially b ecaus e Baudrillard's analyses can be compar ed to th e mass of vid eo and other m edia materi al available "on" th e GulfWar th at he is partly discussin g. - - ( 199 2) L'Illusion de la fin ou la greve des evenetnents , Paris : Galilee . (English version , 1994, The Illu sion if the End , trans. Chris Turner, Cambridge: Polit y.) A collection of essays gear ed towards th e argument that th e notion of th e millenniumlthe end of history belongs to a lin ear , m od ern conc ept of history. Inst ead , Baudrillard argu es th at we have ente re d a period whereby hist or y has go ne int o revers e, through a process of accumulating "effacem ent" . Like m any of Baudrillard's "lat er" writings , essays/ chapter s are self-contained as well as working as a functional whole, and thus th e book can be "dipped int o". - - (199 5) Le Crime parla it , Pari s: Galilee. (English ver sion, 1996 , The Periect. Crime, trans. Chris Turner, London & N ew York :Verso.) Th e cr im e her e is th e "murder of realit y", whi ch of cour se cannot be "perfect" in th e sense of being totally complete . Inst ead , Baudrillard writes b ecau se of th e fissures still available, enabling him to be aware of th e pr ocess of th e crim e. In m any ways thi s book recycles much of th e

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m aterial th at figures so prominently in Baudrillard's "late r" writings, alth ough th er e is a slight narrative st r ucture and "feel" t o th e t ext th at m ay make it m ore readable for som e. While thi s b ook pr obably d oesn't work well at an introdu ctor y level, it is an excellent read for th ose famili ar with th e bulk of Baudrillard's writings.

WORKS ON JEAN BAUDRILLARD Butler, Rex ( 199 9) Jean Baudrill ard: The Deience if the Real , London : Sage. A ver y access ible b ook , with an overview in th e introducti on and three m ain sections (Simulation ; Seduction ; and Doubling). Butler focuses on th e socio log ical aspects of Baudrill ard's work . Gane, Mike ( 199 1) Baudrillard: Criti cal and Fatal Theory , London : Routledge. Probably th e m ost accessible b ook on Baud rillard , com pos ed of four m ain parts (intro duc tion and backgr ound; development of Marxism and th eoreti cal positi ons; analysis of cult ure, seduction , fatal th eory and Am erica ; and th e double spiral) . Gane is exceptionally goo d at m app ing out th e Marxi st cr itique of Baudrillard's work . - - (ed .) ( 199 3) Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews , London & N ew York: Routledge. A collection of twenty int erview s (given som e m anipulati on of th e noti on of th e int erview itself between Baudrillard and Gane), m any of whi ch were first published in other locati on s. Thi s is a valuable r esource for th e r eader of Baudrillard , in terms both of th e accessibility to otherwise co mplex ideas and th e range of subj ects discussed . A valuable contribution t o Baudrillard studies. Genosko, Gary ( 1994) Baudrillard and Signs: Signifi cation Ablaze, London : Routledge . An extre me ly com plex book which dem ands of th e reader a r eason ably advanced kn owl edge of str ucturalist and poststructuralist th eory. Th ere are four m ain sections ("Bar Gam es", "Simulation and Semiosis", "Vari eti es of Symbo lic Exchange" and "Em pty Signs and Extravagant Objects") and an excellent bibli ography. Kelln er, Douglas ( 198 9) Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postm odernism and Beyo nd, Cambridge: Polity.

A demanding introduction to Baudrillard th at do es require a fairly exte nsive knowledg e of background issues, th eoretic al positions and texts. However, th e book do es provide a clearly argued critique of Baudrillard, and is probably on e of th e best plac es to start in terms of understanding th e critical obj ections to Baudrillard . Th e book is composed of seven sections ( "Commodities", "N eeds and Consumption in th e Consumer Society ", "Beyond Marxism", "M edia, Simulation and th e End of th e Social", "Th e Postmodern Carnival; Provocations" and "Th e Met aphysical Imaginary ; Beyond Baudrillard") . - - ( 1994 ) Baudrillard: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Basil Blackwell . A coll ection of fourt een critical essays, which vary from "survey"-type approach es to a more critical engageme nt. Essays cover subj ects such as commodification, critical th eory and technoculture, semiotics, cyb ernetics , fashion , m edia culture, symbolic exchange, hyp erreality, simulation, modernism , postrnodernism , feminism and cultural politics. Th ere is a clear and useful introduction by Douglas Kelln er, which is very critical of Mike Gane's readings of Baudrillard . This is a good place to start thinking not only about th e critical issu es in Baudrillard's work but also th e conflicting int erpretations of his work . Levin , Charles (1996) Jean Baudrillard: A Study in Cult ural Metaphysics, London : Pr entice Hall. At times complex, this study is broken down int o manag eabl e, short sections, which come under seven main headings ("Introduction: Historical and Cultural Context", "Becoming an Obj ect", "Baudrillard in th e Politics of Th eory", "From History to Metaphysics", "Fatal Strategi es", "M et aphysic al Ruins and Modernism" and "Postrnortcmism"). Th er e is an extreme ly useful glossar y of key terms, although th e entr y on th e potlatch is weak . Pefanis , Julian ( 199 I) Het eroloqv and the Postmodern: Bataille, Baudrillard, and Lyotard, Durham and London : Duke Univ ersity Pr ess. An excellent, critical account of Baudrillard (see espe cially chapter 4 , "Theories of th e Third Order") , whi ch also puts a wide range of contemporary French thinkers into context, showing how th ey relate to - and critique - on e another. Roj ek , Chris and Turner, Bryan S. (cds) (1993) Forpet Baudrillard?, London & N ew York : Routledge.

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An exte nsive coll ection of eight essays, including an excellent analysis and critique of Baudrillard's controversial book Seduction by critic Sadi e Plant (chapter 5), two essays on Ameri ca and a clear exam ination of Baudrillard and politics by Chris Roj ek (chapter 6) . Zurbrugg, Nicholas (ed .) (1997) Jean Baudrillard: Art and Artifact, London : Sage . A coll ection of critical essays including three essays and eight colour photographs by Jean Baudrillard and two int erviews. Th e coll ection is bas ed on a symposium called "Baudrillard in th e Nineti es : Th e Art of Th eory", held at th e Institute of Modern Art, Brisb ane, in 1994. Th ere are essays by Baudrillard critics such as Butl er, Genosko and Patton, as well as a useful critical bibliography by Richard G. Smith.

WORKS CITED

Ardagh, John (1977) The New France: A Society in Transition 1945 -1977, London: Pengu in. Bataille, Georges ( 1985) Visions of Excess: Selected Writing s, 1927-1939, trans. Allan Stoek l, Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M . Leslie, Jr, Minneapolis: University of Minneso ta Press. Baudr illar d, Jean ( 1975) [197 3J The Mirro r ofProduction, trans. Mark Poster, St Louis: Telos. - - (198 1) [19721 For a Critique ofthe Political Economy ofthe Sign, trans. Charles Levin, St Louis: Telos. - - ( 1983a) [197811n the Shadow ofthe Silent Majorities: Or, the End ofthe Social and Other Essays, trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and John Johnston , New York: Semio tex t(e). - - (1983b) [19811 Simulations, trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patt on and Philip Beitchman, New York: Semiote xt(e). - - (1988a) [1986J America, trans. Chris Turn er, London & New York: Verso. - - ( 1988b) [19871 The Ecstasy of Communication, trans. Bernard and Caro line Schutze, New York: Semiotex t(e). - - (1990a) [1987J Cool Memories, trans. Chr is Turn er, London & New York: Ver so. - - ( 1990b) [1983J Fatal Strategies, trans. Philip Beit ch man and W.G.]. Niesluchowski , New York & London : Semio tex t(e) / Pluto. - - (1990c) [1979J Seduction, trans. B. Singer, London: Macm illan. - - ( 1994a) [1981 J Simulacra and Simulation, trans. She ila Faria Glaser, Ann Arbor: Univer sit y of Michigan Press. - - (1994b) [19921 The 1l1usion ofthe End, trans. Chr isTurn er, Cam bri dge : Polity. - - (1995) [19911 The Gulf War Did N ot Take Place, trans. Paul Patt on , Sydney : Power.

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- - (1996 ) [1995J The Perfect Crime, tran s. Chris Turn er, London & New York: Verso. - - ( 1997 ) [19681 The System ofObj ects, tran s. James Benedict , London & New York: Ver so .

- - ( 1998 a) [1976J Symbolic Exchange and Death , tran s. lain Hamilton Grant , London: Sage. - - (1998b) [197°1 The Consumer Society: My ths and Structu res, Lond on: Sage . Benjamin , Walter (1992 ) Illum inations, tran s. Harry Zohn, Lond on: Fontana . - - (1999) The Arcades Project, tran s. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin , Cambr idge, MA & Lond on , England: Har vard Uni ver sity Press. Blackburn , Simon ( 1996 ) Oxford Dictionary ofPhilosophy , O xfor d : O xford Univer sity Pre ss .

Bracken , Chr is (1997 ) The Potlatch Papers: A Colonia l Case History, Chicago & London: Univer sity of Chicago Press. Butler, Rex ( 1999) J ean Baudrillar d:The Defence ofthe Real , Lond on: Sage. Cohen, Rob ert (ed. ) ( 1998 ) Peter Weiss: Marat / Sade, The Investigation, The Shadow ofthe Body ofthe Coachman, New York: Co ntinuum. Co nno r, Steven (1989 ) Postmodernist Cultu re: An Introduction to Theories of th e Conte mporary, O xford : Basil Blackwell. Debord, Guy (1998 ) The Society ofthe Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, New York: Zone Books. Delan y, Paul (ed. ) ( 1994) Va ncouver: Representing the Postm odern City, Vancou ver: Arsenal Pulp Press. Del euze , Gilles ( 1983 ) Nietzsc he and Philosophy , tran s. Hugh Tomlinson , Lond on: Athlon e. Delillo, Don ( 1986 ) [1984J White Noise, London: Picador. - - (1992 ) Mao ll , Lond on: Vintage. Der rida , Jacqu es (1978 ) "Str ucture, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", in Writi ng and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago : University of Chicago Press. Dick , Philip K. ( 1993 ) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Blade Runn er) , London: Harp er Coliins. Emery, Fred (1995) Watergate:The Corruptio n and Fall ofRichard Nixo n, London: Pimlico. Erib on , Didier (199 1) Michel Foucault, trans. Bet, y Win g, Cambridge, Massachu setts: Har vard UP. Ffrench , Patr ick (1995 ) The Time ofTheory: A History ofTel Quel (19 60- 1983), Oxford: Clare ndo n. Fou cault , Michel ( 1974) The Order of Things: An ArchaeoloBJ of the Hum an Sciences, Lond on & New York: Tavistock . - - ( 1979) Disciplin e and Punish: The Birth ofthe Prison, trans. Alan Sher idan, New York: Vintage. Gane, Mike ( 199 1) Baudrill ard: Critical and Fatal Theory, Lond on: Routledge. - - (ed. ) ( 1993) Baudrill ard Live: Selected Interviews, Lond on & New York: Routl edge. Gasche , Rod olphe (1986) The Tain ofthe Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy ofReflection, Cambridge, MA, & London , England: Har vard Univer sity Press. Genosko, Gary ( 1994) Baudrill ard and Signs: Signification Ablaze, Lond on: Routl edge.

Gilb ert, Hel en and Tompkins, Joanne ( 1996 ) Post -Colonial Drama:Theory, Practice, Politi cs, London: Routled ge . Hassan , 1hab ( 1982 ) The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature, Ne w York: Oxford Uni ver sit y Pr ess. Hawk es, Ter en ce ( 1977) Structu ralism and Semiotics , London: Methuen. Hegel , Georg Wilhelm Fri edrich ( 1977) Phenomenology of Spirit, tran s. A. V. Mill er, Oxford: Oxford Uni ver sit y Pr ess. Heid egger, Martin ( 1988) Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, tran s. Par vis Emad and Kenneth Mal y, Bloomingt on & Indianapoli s: Indiana Uni ver sity Pr ess. Hyppolite, Jean ( 197 4 ) Genesis and Structu re of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman, Evanston: Nor thwes tern Uni ver sity Pr ess. Jam eson , Fredric ( 1998) The Cultu ral Turn: Selected Writin gs on the Postm odern, 1938-1 998, London & New York: Ver so. Jen ck s, Charles ( 1987 ) The Language of Post -Modern Architectu re, London: Acad em y Editions. Jenkins, Keith ( 1999) Why History? Ethics and Postmoderniry, London & Ne w York: Routled ge. Kellner, Dougla s ( 1989) j ean Baudrill ard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Bey ond, Ca mb r idge : Polity. - - ( 199 4 ) Baudrillard:A Critica l Reader, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kojeve , Alex andr e ( 1969) Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. J.H. Nicho las, Ne w York: Basic. Lane , Richard ( 1993 ) "T he Double Guide: Through th e Labyrinth with Rob ert Kroetsch" ,journ al ofCommomvealth Literature 29(2 ) : 19- 27. - - ( 1999) "Fract ures : Written Displa cem ents in Cana dian/ U S Literary Rel atio ns", in Deb orah Mad sen (e d .) Post-Colonial Literatures: Expanding the Canon, London: Pluto. Larkin, Maurice ( 199 1) France Since the Popular Front: Government and People 1936-1 986, Oxford: Clare ndon. Lefeb vre , Henri ( 199 1) Critique ofEveryday Life , tran s. John Mo ore, London: Ver so. Levin , Charles ( 1996 ) j ean Baudrillard:A Study in Cultu ral Metaphy sics, London: Pr entice Hall . Luke, Timothy W. ( 199 4 ) "Aes the tic Production and Cult ural Politics: Baudrillard and Co nte m porary Art", in Dougla s Kellner (e d .) Baudrillard: A Critica l Reader, Oxford: Blackwell. Lyotard, [ean-Francois ( 198 4 ) The Postm odern Condi tion: A Report on Knowledge, tran s. G eoff Benningt on and Brian Massumi , Minneapolis: Uni ver sit y of Minnesota Pr ess. Marx , Karl ( 1979) Capita l: A Criti que of Politi cal Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes, Harmondsworth: Pen guin. Mau ss, Ma rcel ( 199 0) The Gift: The Form and Reason Jo r Excha nge in Archaic Societies, London & Ne w York: Routled ge . Morley, David and Robins, Kevin ( 1995 ) Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Lan dscapes and Cult ural Boundaries, London & New York: Routled ge. Morris, Meaghan ( 1998) Too Soon Too Late: History in Popular Cultu re, Bloomington & Indi anapoli s: Indiana Uni ver sit y Pr ess.

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Ne hamas, Alexander ( 1985 ) Nietzsc he: Life as Literature, Cambr idge, MA & Lond on: Harvard Uni ver sit y Press. No r ris, Chr isto phe r ( 1992 ) Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War, London: Lawrenc e and Wi shart. Pefanis, Julian ( 199 1) Heterology and the Postmod ern: Bataill e, Baudrill ard, and Lyotard, Durham , NC and London: Duke Uni ver sit y Pr ess. Pile, Steve and Th rift , Nigel. (eds) ( 1995 ) Mapping th e Subject: Geographies of Cult ural Transformation , London & New York: Rou tl edge . Roda w av, Paul ( 1995 ) "Explor ing the Subject in Hyper-Realit y", in Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift (eds) Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultura l Transformation , London & New York: Rou tledge, pp. 24 1-2 66 . Roj ek , Chr is and Turner, Bryan S. (eds) ( 1993 ) Forget BaudrilI ard?, Lond on & Ne w York: Routledge. Spengler, O swald ( 192 6) The Decline ofthe West , vols. I and 2, Lond on: Geor ge Allen and Unwin . Taylor , Charles ( 1989 ) Hegel, Cambridge : Cambridge Uni ver sit y Pr ess. Weiss, Pet er ( 197 1) Discourse on Vietnam, trans. Geoffr ey Skelto n , London: Calder & Boyer s. Wittgen st ein , Ludwi g ( 1993 ) Philosophical Occasions: 191 2-1 95 I , Indianapolis & Cambridge : Hackett. Zurbrugg, Nicholas (ed .) ( 1997 ) Jean BaudrilIard:Art and Art efact, London: Sage .

INDEX

Adven tures of Hu ckleberry Finn, The 120 All The President's M en 83 Am erica 2,103-120,122,127 Apo calyps e No lV 93-94 baccalaur eat 20-22 Barthes, R . 16, 18, 85 Bataille, G. 4-5, 10, 13-15, 22-23, 25, 48-52,62-63 Baudelair e, C. 105-106 Being and Time 55 Benjamin , W 105-107, 127 Bentham , 1. 89-90 Blade Runner 35 Bonaventure hot el 115- 120 Borges, G. 86 Bracken, C. 52, 55 Brecht, B. 3 British Columbia 36, 49, 52, 55, 57 Brookings Instit ute 83 Butler, R . 59, 61 Carg o Myth 70- 71 CIA 90 Clore Gall ery, London 113 CNN95 ,134 Cohn-Bendit, D. 20-21

Co ld War 28 commodit y fetishism 35-38, 43 Comm unist Manifesto, The II Co nnor, S. 51 Consumer Society, The 15, 39, 65-66, 69, 72, 77 Cool M emories 2, 104, 127 Co ppola, F. 93 Cours de linguistique 15 Critique of Everyday Life 41, 69- 70 Crying of Lot 49, The 85 C THE OR Y I37 cyberne tics 134 Das Kapital II , 66-67, 71 death 11-12, 58-61 ; death masks 109; decay 45-46; images 92; relat ion to fear of real 122; utopi a achieved 119 Debord, G. 83,97,99 Decline of the West, The 119 deconstruction 55-57 Deleuze, G. 10; on nihilism 125-126 DeLillo , D. 85, 121-122 Derr ida..l. 10, 16,55-56,114 de Sade, M . 14 dialectic 10--13, 15, 22, 81 Discipline and Punish 89

154

IN D E X

Dismemberment of Orpheus, The 116 Disneyland 46, 85, 86, 89, 90, 103, 115 Dispatches 119-120 dot.com 68 Du tschke, R . 20 e-commerce 68 Ecrit 17 Eliot, TS. 29 Engels, F. II English Patient, The III Enlightenment 36-3 7, 94 excha nge-value 48, 67-68, 76, 78 Existen tia lism 3, 25 expenditure 14-15, 22, 36, 38-40, 49-52,55, 80 Fatal St rategies 61,123 First Na tio ns, Be 36, 49,52,57, 80 first order simulatio n 86 For a Critique of the Political Economy of the S ign 21,36, 50, 53,65, 74, 77 Ford, G. 84 For d, H . 106 Fordism 105-106, 133 Fouca ult, M. 3, 10, 16-1 8, 23, 83, 89- 90, 97- 98 Fouchet, C. 20 Freud , S. 16,28, 74 Ga ne, M . 3,18,61 ,128 Genesis and St ructure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Sp irit 9 Gift, Thel5 , 48, 51,80 gimwa li 54 gizmo 33-35, 38,41 ,43 Golden Bough, The 37, 47, 58 G raves, M . 113 G ulf War 93-97, 103, 130 Gulf War Did No t Take Place, The 2, 95-97 H aberm as, J. 37 H assan , 1. 116 H egel, G. 4, 9- 14, 17, 25,50, 80, 100 H egelian ism 17 H eidegger, M . 3, 10, 12, 55 Herr, M. 119-1 20 Histoire d'un voyage en la terre de Bresil 58, 60

Hollywood 115 Hu sserl , E. 10 hyperm arket 27, 41-43 hyperreal 2, 30, 33-34,42, 71, 83- 101, 103-104, 122-1 24, 129; hyperreal architecture 118 Hypp olite, J. 9-10 implosion of meaning 2 incest taboo 79 Illusion of the End, The 129-130 In the Shado w of the S ilent Majorities 2 intern et 68, 118, 134, 137 Int roduction to the Reading of Hegel 10 Jean Baudrillard: A rt and A rtefact 136-1 37 Jean Baudrillard: The Def ence of the Real61 Jenck s, C. 113 JFK 122 Joyce, J. 29 Kissinger, H . 91- 92 Kojeve, A. 9 kula 54- 55 Lacan, J. 16-1 7 Le Du c, T 92 Leenh ard t, Mauric e 60 Lefebvre, H . 41, 69- 70 Levi-Stra uss, C. 15, 18, 76, 79,114 Levin, C. 68 Loud fam ily 97- 99 Lyotard, J.-F. 85, 88, 94 Malinowski, B. 54 M ao II 122 Marat, J-P 4 M arat/Sade 3-4 , 13-14 Mar x, K. 4,10-11 ,1 5 Mar xism 3, 10-12, 17, 19, 23, 25, 29, 36,47,65- 82; critique of 55,77- 82 Master/Slave 11-1 3, 50, 80 Mau ss, M . 15,48-49, 51-53,63 , 80 May 1968 18- 25, 51, 92 media 21-23, 71-72, 92, 95, 126 Merleau-Ponty, M . 10 metaph ysics 56

Mirror of Production, The 65-66, 78 mod erni sm 28 Monnet , J 2-3 Monnet Plan 2-3, 17,24 Mrs Dalloway 29 Mus eum of Cont emporary Art , LA 113 Na nterre 18, 20, 21, 23 News Corporation 134 Nietzsche, F. 3, 18, 40, 125 nihilism 125-1 27 Nixon, R . 83-84; administration 91 Norris, C. 127 Notion of Expenditure, The 13,48 Of Grammatology 55 Ondaatj e, M. I II Order of Things, The 17-1 8 panopticon 89-90, 98 Paris, Texas 110, 112 Peirce, C. S. III Pentagon Papers 83 performative kn owledge 85, 100 Phenomenology of Spirit 9, 11-1 2, 80-8 1 Picard, R. 18 Pointe dufuit 3 postcolonialism 57 Postmodern Condition, The 85, 88, 94 postmod erni sm 85; America place of 103-104; and arc hitecture 113; and Bonaventure 115-1 19; and city dweller 107-11 0; compared with att ributes of modernism 116; and cruising 127-1 29; defined via thirdord er simulation 86--91 ; and desert s 110- 112, 114-115; and electronic landscapes 133- 135; and the end 129-1 30; and the G ulf War 95-97; and hyperreal doc umentary; and 1970s 91-92; and performative know ledge 88; rejection of by Hab ermas 37; and rethinking history 135- 136; and simulation 121-1 24; technology key component of 27-28; and techn ologies of detac hment 107- 109; war and film 93-94

post structuralism 17-1 8 pot latch 14-1 5, 35, 39--40, 45, 48-55 , 58,61-63,80 Potlatch Papers, The 52 primitivism 28, 36, 45- 63 Principles of Scientific Mana gement , The 106 Pynchon, T 85 Ram ses II 45--46 Reims I Sartre, J -P. 3, 10, 15, 18 Saussure, F. 15-1 6, 75- 76, III Schop enh a uer, A. 3 second ord er simulation 86, 89, 96, 99, 123 Semiotext(e) Foreign Agent Series 2 semiotics III sign 15-1 6; artificial signs 121-1 24; city as screen of signs 115; critiq ue of politic al economy of signs 66-77; deserts as sign-systems 110-11 2; economy of 50; rep lacing symb olic 58 Silicon Valley 115 simulacra 2 Simulacra and Simulation s 45, 47, 93, 123,1 25 simulation 2, 83- 101, 121-1 22 Simulations 84-87,93,96--100 Society of the Spec tacle 99- 100; key text for ' May 68' 99 Solaris 115 Sony 134 Sorbonne 20 Spaces of Identity 134 Speech and Phenomena 55 Spengler, O. 119 Star Wars (SDI) 28 structura l anthropology 15 structural Marxi sm 66-77 structuralism 15-1 9, 23, 25 symbolic excha nge 15, 22, 35, 47-5 1, 54,60 Symbolic Ex change and Death 57-59, 61,63, 122, 129 system of needs 72, 74 System of Objects, The I, 9, 19, 24, 27-35,40,43,65,77 I N DE X

155

156

IN D E X

Takeyama, Minoru 113 Tasad ay 45-46 Tate G allery 113 Taylorism 105-106 technology 27-43 television war 19, 96 terrorism 123-124 third order simulation 86, 89, 93, 95-96, 97, 99, 100, 123 To The Lighthous e 29 Too Soon Too La te: History in Popular Culture 136 Trobriand Islanders 54 Twain, Mark 120

Vietn am War 19, 85, 91-94,103,119

Ulysses 29 U niversity of California 2 University of Paris X-Nanterre I use-valu e 48, 67-68, 76, 78

Washington Post 90-91 Waste Land, The 29 Watergate 83-85, 90-92, 103 Weiss, P. 3-4,13,19 Wend ers, W. 110, 112 White House, Th e 83 White Noi se 85, 121-122 Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity 135 Wittg enst ein, L. 37,47,58,94 Woodward, B. and Bernst ein, C. 90-91 Woolf, V 29 Work of Art in the Age of M echanical Reproduction 105 World War I 28 World War II 2 Writing and Diff erence 55

Vietnam Discourse 3, 19

Yamashit a, K. 113