baudrillard is dead: long live baudrillard
Omar
Over at O & M Nicolai Foss has a nice farewell post on the death of Jean Baudrillard (accompanied by the obligatory joke of whether his death is “real” or simply a simulacrum). Baudrillard had an interesting career, riding the wave of the semiotic Marxism of the 1970s, then creating his own unique brand of cultural criticism based on the emergence of new information, computational and visual technologies (you can think of this latter part as a pessimistic/French version of McLuhan). The emphasis on simulation came not from his encounter with the mass media and advertising as is usually thought, but with the postwar rise of cybernetics, post-Francis/Crick molecular biology and artificial intelligence. This type of neo-Weberian critique of digital rationalization is kept alive today by architect/cultural/art critic Paul Virilio.
Later Baudrillard shifts from this type of “postmodern social theory” to a post-sociological and kind of weird blend of nihilist Left Durkhemianism (based on the work on exchange by Mauss and Durkheim) and Nietzsche (a logical outgrowth of his earlier structural-Marxist critique of the consumer society, since he was trying to revive a form of exchange that had not been conquered by the instrumental rationality of the market) all really inspired by the work of Georges Bataille, minus the pornography.
Through all of that he had a chance to do his own “travel through America” diary (coming up, predictably enough, with a take that is the exact of opposite of de Tocqueville). Instead of the land of democracy, vibrant civic society and entrepreneurial individualism, he finds a dystopia of soulless consumerism run amock, the commodification of everything (including human relations, and sexual pleasure) and the cult of the shiny surface of the commodity-form, enveloped in the glowing rays of advertising. The city that epitomized all of this was of course, Las Vegas (some would argue that this is of course the logical outgrowth of what Alex had observed 200 years earlier).
Unfortunately for Mr. Baudrillard, he probably died a little too late. Had he checked out in the late 1980s or early 1990s (when the postmodern social theory fad hit its height) he probably would be considered a legend. However, this type of social analysis never really recovered from the Sokal hoax, and was (predictably) discredited, along with anybody associated with it (and there were few people more synonymous with the fad than Mr. B).
Even more ironic (in the correct non-Morrissettean sense), the memory of Baudrillard will forever remain with us thanks to a classic product of mass culture (which of course Baudrillard always refused to actually go see in the theaters): I am talking about the Wachowski brothers’ film The Matrix.
It is well known that the early draft of the screen play had direct quotations (spouted by Morpheus) from Baudrillard’s classic Simulacra and Simulation. All that remained after studio editing for high-falluting language that the masses would have a hard time comprehending was the scene in which VR-dealer/hacker Thomas Anderson, has some “customers” drop by in search of some more VR high. The product is hidden in a fake copy of Mr. Baudrillard’s book.
I’m not sure what page that is behind the Benjamins, but it is probably the one that contains the line: “Welcome to the desert of the real” (or did he really say that?).
My experience is that, unfortunately, sociologists tend to ridicule Baudrillard, both for his style and ideas. But he can be an excellent reference point for the many sociologists who take the world for granted, while lacking the theoretical imagination that moves beyond the search for statistical significance. Moreover, arranging things into binary oppositions is something scholars make their living of, such as is modern-postmodern, but more often than not it is exactly this simplifying reasoning that skews social reality with the consequence that, most of the time, maybe, it is sociological reality we are studying, not the social one.
Valerio
March 13, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Bataille without pornography is very Alanic. The Matrix franchise actually deconstruct Baudrillardian thought almost perfectly. Awesome and suggestive initially, completely trivialized and “who cares”-boring when expanded, elaborated and explained.
Dan Karreman
March 14, 2007 at 4:28 am
Valerio, your point about Baudrillard being a potential resource is well-taken. However, it is not clear whether the steep learning curve (or price) that has to be paid to adapt to his style, to navigate thought the thicket of chic pop-nihilist pronouncements, to ignore the useless French-intellectual/anti-Anglo-Saxon posturing, to qualify the sometimes clearly false empirical generalizations (and simplifying binarisms) about contemporary society that he sometimes proffers is worthwhile for most of us.
If by your “statistical significance” comment you mean that we should pay attention to theory and research that is not quantitative or that is “critical” in some manner of mainstream theory and research, I would certainly say that there are lots of resources out there beyond Mr. Baudrillard. However, in order to be part of certain intellectual communities, being familiar with the intellectual contributions of Baudrillard is de rigueur. This already presupposes however, that you are willing to make the above sacrifices and take him seriously as a thinker, which I think could be rewarding, but not for everybody (notice that I kept my jokes at a minimum above).
BTW, I must apologize for deleting your previous comment saying something nice about the blog. We get like a million of comments like that (i.e. “nice blog!”) a day (mostly from people selling products that promise the “simulacrum” of sexual pleasure, pa-tam-pan). So I instinctively got rid of it before noticing that you had made a legitimate comment above. The other sexist comment about calculus (yes, yes, it’s a “joke”; maybe you can try the Laugh Factory) I deleted on purpose.
Omar
March 14, 2007 at 11:57 am
Omar, I do agree with you when it comes to the “thicket” that one has to go through in order to get a sense of what Baudrillard is trying to say. It is true that one has to put a lot of effort into comprehending him without any certainty that a reward will follow. For me there weren’t that many rewards, but I have found very useful his earlier work such as “Consumer Society” which is a marvelous piece of structuralist critique. His later work, say from late 1970s, is hard to grasp and very demanding, and anyone without a special interest in “pure” theory might stop a moment or two to think whether it’s worth it. But in its extremity, later Baudrillard has been at times thought provoking and inspiring. I guess what I am trying to say is that people often dismiss Baudrillard after only a few lines of his most recent books, not giving him the benefit of the doubt, and trying to learn more about his ideas.
I would just like to add one more thing. When talking to Douglas Kellner, one of the most popular “interpreters” of Baudrillard, I realized that his ideas are sometimes much more comprehensible when being retold by someone else. Also, the many interviews that Baudrillard gave are an excellent resource for anyone interested in getting a clearer picture of what he was trying to say in his books. Unfortunately, reading of his books needs to be assisted by other sources of information. And this includes a wide background in French and German social thought. Baudrillard was not a writer for a novice. Basically, although trained as sociologist, he has been doing hardcore philosophy the last twenty years or so. That’s also one of the reasons sociologists have found it difficult to relate to his work.
Not to make this long post any longer, I just want to add one brief remark. I would be careful when putting things into terms like “French-intellectual/anti-Anglo-Saxon posturing”. Usually people tend to make such judgments without any intimate knowledge of relevant writings. (I am not suggesting you did this too). Sociologists probably want to see immediate applicability of theory and have it empirically checked before using it (nothing wrong in that!). Once this is not possible immediately, most will leave the book aside, say it’s useless and move on. The thing is that these authors (Derrida, Butler, Spivak, Baudrillard…) do theory, while sociologist, well, do sociology. Nothing wrong in either, but we should be more tolerant towards something we don’t understand. And I’m not saying I am. There have been numerous times when I would throw away a book, frustrated by the bizzare, and incomprehensible ideas.
Don’t worry about deleting the comment. But I am glad you read it. I have been reading this blog ever since Brayden closed his blog, but this is the first time I commented. Certainly not the last. Good work. (I hope nobody wrote a sexist comment under my name, because it wasn’t me.)
Valerio
March 14, 2007 at 5:09 pm
the anglo-centrism here is breathtaking. just doing your bit for empire, huh?
pdant
March 15, 2007 at 12:36 pm
pdant(ic) says: “the anglo-centrism here is breathtaking. just doing your bit for empire, huh?”
Which one is that the British or the American? According to star historian Niall Ferguson, the Americans don’t have much of a stomach to actually get one going.
However pdant(ic) unsurprisingly manages to miss the point, in your haste to make your own grand posturing as a knowledge political “radical.” Baudrillard will ultimately go down as a secondary figure in the history of recent theory precisely because of his own ultimately limiting and unremitting Franco-centrism. While being Franco-centric during the heyday of structuralism (1950s-1960s) may have been an advantage it became more and more limiting after the structuralist bubble burst (1970s). Consider the sorry state of the American humanities today, safeguarding as holy texts a group of French theorists that have been considered passe in France for more than twenty years now (uber-historian of French academia Francois Dosse has the story of the rise and fall of the French theory intelligentsia here and here ).
At the level of theory today, if I had a choice between Anglo-centrism and Franco-centrism, I pick the former in a heartbeat. Not surprisingly, what has reinvigorated French Academic life since the early 1980s has been precisely a decline in the earlier Franco-centrism of the structuralist period, and a re-engagement with non-French intellectual sources primarily Anglo-Saxon (Analytic philosophy, rational action theory, post-positivist philosophy of science, pragmatism, etc.) but also German (Habermas, neo-Kantianism and the Weberian legacy). This has resulted in such Anglo-French movements as the new social studies of science (Callon, Latour, etc.) and the new economic sociology of conventions which is also an Imperial (British/American)-French movement, etc. Habermas of course was a pioneer in this regard. In the 1970s, when Lacan, Derrida and Foucault were all of the rage, he was already discovering such “imperial” intellectual resources as Austin, Mead, Searle, Dewey and Pierce. Francois Dosse has that story here. You of course can ignore all of that and go on reading increasingly dead French theorists who had their best ideas in 1965.
Omar
March 15, 2007 at 1:21 pm
pdant: pwned.
Kieran
March 15, 2007 at 2:29 pm
“However pdant(ic) unsurprisingly manages to miss the point, in your haste to make your own grand posturing as a knowledge political “radical.”
The body is barely cold, you dance on the grave waving the flag and munching on freedom fries, and I am ‘posturing’? I wasn’t aware that there was another ‘point’ to your posts, so I will grant that I may have managed to ‘miss’ it.
“At the level of theory today, if I had a choice between Anglo-centrism and Franco-centrism, I pick the former in a heartbeat.”
So you grant my ‘point’? Why all the bluster then?
pdant
March 16, 2007 at 12:43 pm
“Unfortunately for Mr. Baudrillard, he probably died a little too late. Had he checked out in the late 1980s or early 1990s (when the postmodern social theory fad hit its height) he probably would be considered a legend. However, this type of social analysis never really recovered from the Sokal hoax, and was (predictably) discredited, along with anybody associated with it (and there were few people more synonymous with the fad than Mr. B).”
Pdant pointed decicively to the Anglo-American centricism of the discussion at orgtheory where some of the contributions basically danced on his grave.Obviously, our American friends need quite a bit more irritation coming from leading Intellectuals in Old Europe to develop a deeper understanding in their position in present world society and learn about the traps of the specific rationality that caught them in a war with iraq which now, let me put it moderately, turns out to be increasingly inconvenient. So much for the Matrix. The empire strikes back, and culture matters (point 4 to Fabio’s post: “what economists should learn from sociology” – fill it up guys, the list is still lightyears away from being complete).
tina
March 18, 2007 at 9:27 am
Et tu Tina? There is a long, very long and torturous path from the “critique of instrumental reason” to the “specific rationality” (or lack thereof) that led to the War in Iraq. In fact that path is so circuitous that it leads very smart people to say very silly things (or get lost in the Forest of simplifying binarisms like Hansel and Gretel).
I doubt that Mr. Baudrillard as an atheist, nihilist, Nietschean-Bataillean fan of the excess would have been very worried about lowly American Assistant Professors “dancing on his grave.” So why all of the “moral outrage” fuss? To me the interesting thing is not the “outrage” of people daring to criticize Baudrillard after he dies, but the opportunity that it offers to some (like Mr. Pdant or even yourself and not some abstract and ill-defined group of “American” and “European” intellectuals) to make their knowledge-political move and reveal your position in world society (or the world intellectual field as I like to call it).
The old Anglo-French divide in the intellectual field (which to repeat does not make sense in the current situation as it is a creature of the 1960s and is therefore meaningless today) simply comes to be a sign that demarcates those intellectual producers that occupy dominated positions in the knowledge-production field and which therefore hang on to (whatever they perceive as) “radical,” “left-bank” positions (however irrelevant or outdated) in this field, which then tend to get loosely “translated” (to use a term favored by that contemporary Anglo-French monstrosity Michael Callon) into positions (and oppositions) in other fields such as politics or geopolitics (so you hate Baudrillard; therefore you must be a gas guzzling, non-Western people hating, pro-war conservative, huh?).
Pdant therefore rather than “decisively” pointing to anything meaningful, just made one of those brainless and decontextualized inferences translating the oppositions of the intellectual field at one earlier state (1960s) as he or she (mis)understands them, to the oppositions of the political field today. I am surprised that you think that this is a legitimate move, but then again I am sure you have your own knowledge-political reasons for falling into this trap.
Omar
March 18, 2007 at 12:40 pm
To begin with the long and very tortuous path with led to Iraq and affects us, too, the diagnosis and problem solving strategies are determined by commonly shared cognitive backgrounds (cultural) of how to tackle a very complex issue and also by the historical paths (which by the way we share by membership in Postwar-II democracies, university education etc.). I could explain it more thoroughly using a neoparsonian action-theory-based theoretical framework, but to make it short and put it in idealtypical terms, the cognitive approach following the American cultural pattern will lead to specific strength and weaknesses in a very pragmatic approach tending to underemphasize the complexity of the situation (e.g. set up a roadmap, divide the big problem into many little problems, define targets and milestones for each one, develop and realize a solution for each of the little problems, then put the big picture back together and hopefully you have solved the big and very complex problem) and the cognitive approach orientated toward the German cultural pattern will lead to strengths and weaknesses of an academic rather unpragmatic approach tending to overemphasize complexity of the situation (e.g. choose a rather systemic approach, analyze systemic interdependencies and potential unintended consequences of possible action and therefore rather act too slow or do too little about it). Speaking of terrorism, we are confronted with an extremely complex phenomenon since terrorism operates on a global scale within informal, highly informational networked structures, since terrorism makes use of fuzzy logic action (thus leading to confusion and helplessness), also plays on Luhmann’s functional systems keyboard (economic, political/military, law, religion, science system and the complex interplay of the functional systems through the mechanisms of generalized media of interaction), it also gains its dynamics from being an ideology, and since all that is not enough, terrorism turns the present day society’s operating mechanisms, technological and media capacities against us using technology and the operating mechanisms of media getting forced to broadcast and direct public attention to the terrorist networks ideology, operating system. Thus, the terrorist use of media can be interpreted as an example of pathologic learning and perverse use, and Baudrillard – among others – contributed to analyzing the mechanisms by which the media get played on such that their services gets turned in a direction directly opposite to their intentions by “creating media events” in the most perverse sense such that they must cover them. That’s one of the reasons why I find that Jean Baudrillard should have deserved better in your blog. [BTW: the ‘fuzzy logic’ idea stems from Thomas Kron, the ‘modern society idea’ stems from Matthias Junge. These were just two contributions at the ‘sociological analysis of terrorism’ in Düsseldorf last June, and the book predicted for may 2007].
And the second reason is how societies deal with their intellectuals when they develop and express critical thought, however alarming it may be, what climate is created for them and if a person and his or her lifework is honoured or dismissed. There was a 12-year long period until 1945 when it was impossible to live and work in Germany for intellectuals in general and for sociologists in particular; England and the United States were better places to flee to than the neighboring countries, so that many sociologists went to the United States. I find it a bit scary to think about the degree to which the climate must have changed since 9/11 that the tendency to put colleagues in a friends-environment into a potential-sympathism-with-the-terrorists-box can become so strong.
tina
March 19, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Unfortunately Francophiles have to somewhat hide in this climate when so many are still angry at France for not supporting the Iraq mess. Honestly “freedom fries”?
Learn to speak french
June 24, 2007 at 5:46 am