simulacra that are productive, productivist, founded on energy, force, its materializationSo here we have a splash of terms that are esoteric-sounding, and these terms are all piled up on top of one another, as if at some point the pile is going to make sense. Either that or Baudrillard is trying to sound smart. Or maybe he's a bad writer. Or maybe he's been badly translated. Either way, I am not really sure what I could get out of this. I feel like the computer that wrote "The Policeman's Beard" could write this.
by the machine and in the whole system of production - a Promethean aim of a
continuous globalization and expansion, of an indefinite liberation of energy (desire
belongs to the Utopias related to this order of simulacra);
Maybe it's because I don't have a graduate education. But wait--even though Barthes was difficult for me, I was able to get something out of it (even though I feel he could've written his argument much more succinctly-- for example, this website reduces his essay to seven propositions). And I have managed to be able to read Heidegger, Sartre, and Kant before. Yes, it's difficult, but once I've gotten to the core of their terminology, I've been able to read them. But with Baudrillard, I don't even have that. Just a big cannon that shoots esoteric terms that hope to mean something.
So why did I decide to write this post? Because when I was reading Baudrillard, I was struggling with the terms, and did what I did with Barthes: looked him up in Wikipedia to see if they explained his ideas there. One heading talked about criticisms of Baudrillard. And can you imagine my relief when I read this:
He fails to define key terms, such as the code; his writing style is hyperbolic and declarative, often lacking sustained, systematic analysis when it is appropriate; he totalizes his insights, refusing to qualify or delimit his claims...
And then I found this quote by a critic of Baudrillard, Dennis Dutton:
Some writers in their manner and stance intentionally provoke challenge and criticism from their readers. Others just invite you to think. Baudrillard's hyperprose demands only that you grunt wide-eyed or bewildered assent. He yearns to have intellectual influence, but must fend off any serious analysis of his own writing, remaining free to leap from one bombastic assertion to the next, no matter how brazen. Your place is simply to buy his books, adopt his jargon, and drop his name wherever possible.
It was then that I breathed a sigh of relief.
I would really recommend that, before breathing a sigh of (dismissive) relief, we actually try to work through some of the "esoteric" terms. Sometimes we say things are "esoteric" when it just more time than we are used to, to think about them. I'd really like to see us work through this second order of the simulacra, together. It's always easy to simply dismiss theoretical writers for their use of "jargon." But our task, such as it is, is to attempt to grapple with the jargon—if not to understand it fully, at least to do justice to the intellectual struggle of the writer in question.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Rolando, that this essay *is* difficult, and at times the argumentation feels convoluted. But this doesn't mean I can simply dismiss it out of hand. (Also, the easy availability of criticism does not mean that the criticism is necessarily warranted. This is one of the dangers, I think, of internet research.)
So, I'll start, and then I hope someone will pick up where I leave off. Let's stick with the second order of simulacra. How would 2nd order simulacra be "productive, productivist"? This seems to suggest that a simulacrum would not only produce further likeness or images, but would also embody the producing logic in itself. Let's think back to Elle's bagel. (Not Chris's mini bagel.) Elle's bagel was the kind distinguishable by its standardized shape and size—it was a form that is based on a logic of (mass) production. It was "productive" in the sense that it participates in and continues a chain standardized sizes and shapes. Now, its pre-sliced detail (if it was indeed pre-sliced, which I think it was) would be the "productivist" aspect: by being pre-sliced, it carries its productive logic one step further, indicating, as it were, a wider productivist *system* that goes far beyond bagels. It thus assumes and perpetuates a whole epistemological foundation, one that we might call 'productivism'. (Plastic knives, single-serving cream cheese, etc.)
That is my attempt to make the first part of Baudrillard's definition of the second order of simulacra less esoteric, and ground it in the material stuff of everyday life.
Now, someone else (or back to you, Rolando?) take up the next section...
I admit that there's probably a lot to be extracted from this paper, but I just think that Baudrillard could have made it a lot easier for the reader had he taken care to define his terms (in the same way that Barthes, for example, explored the term "text"). I feel like he just mounts a horse and runs away on it without looking back, leaving the reader with very little (and at the same time too much) to work with.
ReplyDeleteI've found that many thinkers "adopt" terms; that is, regardless of what the term actually means, they explore it to an extent that when you're finished reading that philosopher, he has made that word carry many connotations and etc. And I find that cool! (I don't want people to get the impression, from my previous post, that I hate academic writing. I do think, though, that it must be reined) For example, how Heidegger uses "Dasein," how Sartre used "ego," .... And Zizek has great ideas that are relatively easy to understand! From this I would get that philosophy is in many ways an exploration of words...
But Baudrillard starts off with simulacra and simply rolls on, and I feel like I have no context whatsoever to work with. How does science fiction come into the picture? Baudrillard says that science fiction belongs to the second order. Why? Well, Baudrillard says it does, so I guess it does. And that's what's frustrating for me.
But I'll try.
The definition of the second order of simulacra continues:
...founded on energy, force, its materialization
by the machine and in the whole system of production - a Promethean aim of a
continuous globalization and expansion, of an indefinite liberation of energy (desire
belongs to the Utopias related to this order of simulacra);
By the use of the word "Promethean" and the terms "globalization and expansion," I understand that progress must be linked somehow to the notion of the second simulacra. (It gets confusing again, though, when he says that it aims at a "liberation of energy" when it is also "founded in energy." I don't know what to make of that). Then he talks about desire; so is this about a desire for progress? And if science fiction belongs to the second simulacra, what does that mean...?
I'm going to try to ground this somehow. So here's a video of a New York Times reporter talking to a robot (a simulation of human). To what order of simulacra does this robot belong? It is a simulation, after all, modeled on human behavior.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvcQCJpZJH8&feature=player_embedded
Maybe this and the bagel example could help to put the whole theory into perspective?
Well, I believe that this robot example would be of the third order of Simulacra. On one level it is robotic, "of mechanics, metallurgy, etc.," and, thus, would seem to be of the second order of Simulacra. However, the second order is the realm of production(specifically, mass production). The robot is an attempt to reproduce a "ghost," a soul, a Subject, or maybe even better, it attempts to reproduce individual pieces of Guattari's “components of subjectification”[The Three Ecologies] For example, people vocalize while thinking during a conversation, “ugh, hmm, etc.,” which alerts us to their thinking process(like the physical “tells” that people develop while bluffing). By taking on this “component” and all, theoretically, other aspects of subjectification the robot will, functionally, become a Subject. At that point the robot will have reached the point where, “there is no more fiction.” It will not mimic a person nor will it become a person. It will be it's own subject, hyperreal and completely independent of our own subjectivity.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest concern with Boudrillard's essay is not the delineation of his ideas, though this most definitely feels more convoluted than it really is, but instead where he starts. “There is no real, there is no imaginary except at a certain distance.” I feel as if this is not fully defined or explained. Does anyone have any thoughts on why this is, or if it really is at all?
I agree with the last part of Joshua's comment. That sentence he cites for me put me immediately into Lacanian discourse; however, the way Baudrillard uses the terms does not fit with Lacan. A great exercise would be to rewrite this essay in a shorter easier to understand form.
ReplyDeleteActually I think a great exercise would be to rewrite this essay in a longer form!
ReplyDeleteWhen Baudrillard says "there is no real, there is no imaginary except at a certain distance" I wonder if he is referring to the same shift that Benjamin hinted at in his discussion of the surgeon vs. the magician. Benjamin's point, in part, is that film brings things "closer" -- the distance (both time and space) between things is able to be diminished by the film (because of cutting, zooming, etc.). I wonder if Baudrillard sees this diminished status of distance as having fully arrived: and thus there is no clear sense of 'real' and 'imaginary' because *both* required "a certain distance." Rather, now there is the "hyperreal" -- isn't this why many people think it is irrelevant to wonder whether online relationships are 'real' or not? The question itself no longer applies if we are in fact only concerned with the third order of simulacra.
In his book "The Ecological Thought,"
Tim Morton describes "the mesh" as something that, once grasped, makes 'distance' seem like an illusion -- because everything is interconnected both vastly and in detail. I wonder if Morton's idea of the mesh is consistent with the third order of simulacra, and with the beginning of Baudrillard's essay: we are all too aware of this obliteration of distance -- just look at the screen of your computer or iPad or phone right now, how many things are presented at hand, and how 'distance' appears only as a problem to be (quickly) solved, not something to be maintained...