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Spencer Coates

1. Author: Jean Baudrillard(1929-2007)1. Described as post-modernist theorist2. Born in France3.

Like Foucault, most of his English works are translated from French4. I read Simulations; comprised of two essays; The Precession of Simulacra and The Ordersof Simulacra

5. These essays were the inspiration for theMatrix movies (though they were simulacra ofBaudrillard himself)

1. Perhaps a better example would be South Park's Imaginationland6. Other notable works: The System of Objects, On Nihilism, The Implosion of Meaning in the

Media7. Baudrillard, essentially, argues that we have lost contact with the "real" in various ways,

that we have nothing left but a continuing fascination with its disappearance.1. In Objects the symbolic and iconic value of an object often supersedes its use2. In Mirror of Production; in precapitalist societies, where sexual rituals of the

pornographic sort do not exist, sexuality in istself does not exist (LB k?)

1. Baudrillard: It is always the same; once you are liberated, you are forced to askwho you are

3. In Consumer Society: Baudrillard writes: "Our society thinks itself and speaks itselfas a consumer society. As much as it consumes anything, it consumes itselfas consumer

society, as idea. Advertising is the triumphal paean to that idea"4. Simulacra is most famous work

8. Baudrillard's language: What do you get if you cross a post-modernist with a Mafioso?Someone wholl make you an offer you cant understand!

1. Confusng as hell; is it intentional?1. Baudrillard: The form of my language is almost more important than what I have to

say within it. Language has to be synchronous with the fragmentary nature of reality.With its viral, fractal quality, thats the essence of the thing! Its not a question of

ideas there are already too many ideas! (WTF? Synchronous? Fractal?)2. Many postmodernists, including Baudrillard, argue that language is disconnected from

reality; an overabundance of symbols that creates a linguistic hyperreality in-and-of-itself.

1. Richard Hanley: Post-modernists tend to have a fundamentally different view oflanguage and other representation, a view inherited from structuralism in linguistics.

Representations, they say, only ever refer or apply to other representations, so thatlanguage (and thought) is literally cut off from the real world. No matter how hard

you try to refer to the non-representational, you cant do it.3. Philosophy, under Baudrillard, stretches beyond the confines of analytic knowledge and

approaches something of an aesthetic quality; to rely on the limitations of thesimulacrum of language is to miss the experience inhibited by the intellectual barriers of

the language itself(i.e. The self-referentiality of linguistic determinism)2. Simulations(Precession of Simulacra/Orders of Simulacra)

1. Published in French in 1985 (written in 1983), in English in 1996\2. Baudrillard started out analyzing the world in an economic fashion (Consumer Culture,

System of Objects). He discussed much of the works of Marx and the semantics ofproduction.

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3. Simulations represent a shift in Baudrillard's focus from consumerism to socialconstructionism and communication

4. Who knows why Baudrillard does anything?3. Summary

1. Basic thesis: We have reached a point where the simulated (our images, models, ideologies)has moved beyond simply representing parts of reality to actually determining a new reality,

a hyperreality. We have lost all means of distinction between the real and the artificial(this does NOT necessarily mean that there is one!).1. Religion, says Baudrillard, is not the power of the real over the subordinate; rather, the

death of God has given birth to God in the hyperreal2. Baudrillard defines the precession of the simulacra through the successive phases by

which we have identified images:1. The image is a reflection of a basic reality (reality begets image, image begets

reality)2. The image masks and distorts a reality (reality begets image, image screws over

reality)3. The image marks the absence of a reality(reality doesn't beget image, image informs

reality)4. The image is not related to reality(reality doesn't beget image, image is reality)

3. The image creates and informs reality, much like the Matrix. BUT, as Baudrillard says,we we cannot use any means, real or hyperreal, to distinguish the two

1. Baudrillard What we have here is essentially the same misunderstanding as with thesimulation artists in New York in the 80s. These people take the hypothesis of the

virtual as a fact and carry it over to visible realms. But the primary characteristic ofthis universe lies precisely in the inability to use categories of the real to speak

about it.4. The simulacrum is informed much as constructionist phenomona are; the absence or

negation of something denotes its existence within the hyperreal (Mobius Strip)1. The Watergate scandal informed the existence of a political morality by creating a

scandal; the political hypothesis needed facts to embolden its model1. Baudrillard:Facts no longer have any trajectory of their own, they arise at the

intersection of models; a single fact may even be engendered by all the models atonce

2. Baudrillard likens this to proving theatre by anti-theatre, pedagogy by anti-pedagogy

1. Think Foucault: power needs resistance to become power3. Danger time: Is law and order nothing more than a simulation?

1. If we accept it on its scientific face, then probably4. Reification is the weapon of the hyperreal; indicating the biconditional of the

simulated and the reality1. Take your desires as real!

5. Why the simulacrum is not the matrix: there is no overarching source ofhyperreality (think South Park and the killing of Wal-Mart); rather, it is through the

multiplicity of miniaturized codes (like computers, coded in semantics) thatdetermine the validity of the hyperreal

1. Baudrillard: The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matices, memorybanks and command models--and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite

numbers of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measuredagainst some ideal or negative instance. it is nothing more than operational. In

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fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It

is a hyperreal: the produce of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models inhyperspace without atmosphere.

6. Baudrillard:All media and the official news service only exist to maintain theillusion of actuality-of the reality of the stakes, of the objectivity of the facts

7. Orders of Simulacra:1.

The counterfeit1. Pre-modern period(Renaissance to industrial revolution); the image is

recognized as an illusion

2. The production1. Industrial revolution; use value of the simulation begins to equal that of the

real, but knowledge remains of the distinction3. Simulation

1. Today; the representation precedes and informs the real8. Are we human, robots, or some amalgamation of the two?

1. A robot which captures our appearance, sound, smell, sound, taste; if in ran oncapital, how would it be any different than we are?

1. Must have soul; and, as a means of distinction, some means of measuring thesoul

9. Digitality: the 4thwall is always there, but it is not a one-way mirror.1. When we watch movies, the camera questions us as much as we engage it

1. When you watch Schindler's List, you are asked (nay forced) to engage in asimulation; you must feel as if you are there, witnessing the horrors of the

holocaust; to be able to tell the difference indicates that there is very little(I.e. If public opinion is said to inform media, then media does just as much -

--> mobius strip)10.Democracies:

1. Power still restricted, no longer by the Prince, but by the ideology of the state2. Free choice in a democracy is a distortion; there is no escaping the simulacrum

which informs the validity of free choice; hence, like all wide distributions, we,as a free society, are a perfect model, feeding and leeching off of the simulacrum

3. Equilibrium, not unilateralism, ensures the survival of the state/simulacrum1. Baudrillard:Any unitary system, if it wants to survive, must acquire a binary

regulation. This changes nothing as far as monopoly is concerned.11.The World Trade Center Towers?

1. The towering, dualistic nature of the towers is, in itself, a sign through thearchitectural medium; signify the victory of the binary model in competition

with the unregulated, unchallenged underlings4. References

1. (No explicit) Foucault; conctructionist view of the binary source of power much in line withFoucault

2. Karl Marx1. According to Baudrillard, in the postmodern age, we have lost all sense of use-value: "It

is all capital"2. This is produced through, as Jean says, the production and reproduction of the material

and the calculus of capital3. Jorge Luis Borges

1. Fable of the map and the empire: map expanded with the empire, became focus ofempire; empire crumbled, map remained

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4. Ecclesiastes1. The simulacrum is never what hides the truthit is truth that hides the fact that there is

none.

The simulacrum is true.2. Thing is, Ecclesiastes never said that3. SIMULATION ALERT---but how would you know upon reading it?

5.

Thomas Sebeok1. Coined biosemiotics2. DNA is a model, one that extends beyond the boundaries of biiology into the realms of

language, cognition, communication, etc.5. Reflection

1. Personal note: I think that judging Baudrillard's arguments on their semantic validity wouldbe missing the point and, in a way, falling into his trap. If I designate is as a truth, I am

engaging in the same type of symbolic exchange that transforms, or perhaps contaminates,Baudrillard's work (like the Matrix). If I think it false, then I still have assigned a truth value

to it; it is alive, now, brought within the debateable realm of truth, where the aestheticquality of Baudrillard's work is all but lost

2. How to use in debate rounds:1. Be...creative? Baudrillard seemed to succumb to the theme of post-modernism in that he

does not follow a line of argument in which the solution presents itself; hence it is not abinary source of power, and seems impossible to reverse

1. Could prevent contamination of other, premodernist societies, I.e. Protect the thirdworld from LB

1. Trying to liberate the sexuality of the oppressed is, in essence, transformingsex into an object.

2. Baudrillard argued that sexual and racial liberation, freedom of speech, theabolition of class differences - have been smoothly integrated into the "society of

spectacle", where they have become the opposite of what they had originallyrepresented.

1. The greatest example of this is pornography, which ought to representunbridled sexual licence, but which, in reality, is "un-erotic, unexciting,

nothing" - a symptom of the dreary and relentless commodification of timeand experience that characterises our "hyperreal" media world. - Andrew

Hussey2. Baudrillard- porn is sexier than sex (just like obesity is more fat than fat)3. Baudrillard argues that sexual liberation is the wrong avenue for women to

pursue (perhaps men, too), because it brings about it the end of any vestige

of sexuality, bringing all together in a knowable, productive system(Seduction).

1. Baudrillard calls it the scientiziation of sex, and specifically mentions aright to orgasm

2. Baudrillard argued that femininity, in and of itself, is a counter tomasculinity, and the scientization/polarization that is inherent in sexual

dichotomies; the femininity is that which escapes, is unknown3. If sex becomes an kbject, it is the object itself that assumes femiinine

qualities, leaving the person an empty shell; Baudrillard says atransvestite

4. Terminal impacts? As Baudrillard says, Hysteria, Anorexia5. Baudrillard's alternative?

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