Jean Baudrillard, 1929-2007

[ded i]

"Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself."
Baudrillard (1988)

Jean Baudrillard was a social theorist best known for his analyses of modes of mediation and technological communication ... (wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard

Kickin link for commentary and postmodern theory:
http://www.ctheory.net/

[xrayzebra]

This was a brilliant, controversial man, whose theories and criticisms were met with both worshipful awe and hateful scorn by various factions. Like any great man who made insightful observations and developed ingenious criticisms, he was loved and hated for his work and his contributions to modern thought.

For the uninitiated, his concept - that the experiences of modern people are so mediated by mass media, so biased and manipulated by symbolic meanings, that we are no longer capable of understanding what is real... that there is in effect no consensual reality - was influential in the development of The Matrix.

If you saw that movie and thought, "Wow, there is some real deep, subversive thinking behind this," you were getting a very diluted, popularized, sci-fi adaptation of one of his ideas. Of course, the movie took his ideas WAY too literally, but the seed of the movie concept was inspired by his theories.

That he would be best remembered for this, or just for his unpopular criticisms and the responses to them is a shame. If you read some of the material I have linked here, remember that his role was to explore communication and understanding at a very deep academic level, not to make policy or anything like that. He was "pushing the envelope." I'd recommend that if you are easily pissed off by ideas that challenge your own beliefs and observations, you should skip it. If you like having your ideas, opinions, and beliefs challenged, he will be an interesting study.

It's radical stuff. Some of it will be entirely discarded in 50 years, but some of it that seems outlandish to us today will be considered fact. Some of it is as preposterous as statements like "man can fly" and "the earth is round" once were, or the belief that lead could be turned to gold. Advanced thinking and theorizing turns up new facts, and it turns up stupid stuff, too. Somebody's got to do it, and this is a guy who did.

wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard)

Scotsman.com, article below (http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=365872007)

Postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard dies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:WikipediaBaudrillard20040612.jpg

PARIS (Reuters) - French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, whose provocative, paradoxical style was reflected in the title of his 1991 work "The Gulf War did not take place", has died, his publisher Galilee said on Wednesday. He was 77.

Well-known in the United States, and reportedly courted by the makers of "The Matrix" who wanted help in their futuristic film trilogy, Baudrillard was usually classified as postmodern. But he did not belong to any clearly defined school.

He had an iconic status in certain sections of the French intelligentsia, illustrated by the left-wing Liberation daily which carried a full front page photograph of Baudrillard on Wednesday, and covered his death over three pages inside.

Baudrillard argued that mass media and modern consumerist society had built up such a complex structure of symbols and simulated experience that it was no longer possible to comprehend reality as it might actually exist.

His dense, allusive style, peppered with expressions such as "hyperreality" and "simulation" was typical of the rarefied world of French cultural theory, but a mordant sense of humour underpinned his criticism.

He said that the 1991 Gulf War had been so artfully and comprehensively filtered and interpreted by television that the event apparently unfolding before the eyes of CNN viewers was a "simulacrum" (another favourite word) rather than an actual war.

His works on cultural theory and consumer society from the 1970s are still widely read and respected, but he attracted more criticism with later works.

These included "America", a high-speed travelogue seeking to lay bare the "banality" of American culture, or articles on September 11, 2001 in which his theoretical reflections seemed to display a lack of sympathy for the victims.

(c) Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world. <OOPS!!!>

[xrayzebra]

Jean Baudrillard: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/baudrillard/)

French theorist Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) was one of the foremost intellectual figures of the present age whose work combines philosophy, social theory, and an idiosyncratic cultural metaphysics that reflects on key events of phenomena of the epoch.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html

If we were able to take as the finest allegory of simulation the Borges tale where the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering the territory (but where, with the decline of the Empire this map becomes frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds still discernible in the deserts - the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction, bearing witness to an imperial pride and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double ends up being confused with the real thing), this fable would then have come full circle for us, and now has nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.

[xrayzebra]

And, Doc M pointed out to me in a PM that there is a whole LOT of stuff in The Matrix that has nothing what-so-ever to do with JB, and which is probably very much in opposition to some/most of his writing.

His important concept, relative to the movie is that of our experience being so mediated and filtered through symbols that we don't really see reality any more... that it is impossible for us to see.

The movie takes it WAY way beyond his ideas in imaging a world where human reality is entirely simulated. The movie has little at all to do with JB. They did supposedly ask him to get involved, but he declined.

[ded i]

"Welcome to the desert of the real." - Morpheus, The Matrix.

Required reading:

http://postmoderndays.blogspot.com/2005/04/baudrillard-and-matrix-trilogy.html

[Rhonda]

Reality is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?

Individual realities.

Separate realities.

Alternate realities.

And so forth.

[ded i]

Rhonda, that is modernism - where everything one sees is different to each viewer - and each person's interpretation of what they are seeing is an accummulation of their life experience and history.

Baudillard is saying something a bit different (something which takes what you posted a step further ) - that is, in this post-modern age or condition nothing is original. Everything we see today is simulacra - that is models or simulations. Everything in today's culture has been modified to the point where there is nothing left of the original - the food we eat, the buildings we live in - the air we breathe ... We use fake "stone" and fake wood - even the pets we love and the animals we eat have been modified. Everything in our world has been replicated and/or modified to a point where the "original" has disappeared - and we live a life where all our interactions are with replacements.
"The simulacrum is true."

[Rhonda]

...nothing is original.


Everything has already been done. We just "modify" it.

[Dr Mabuse]

i would say the concept was first introduced in around 960 BC...

'there is nothing new under the sun'...

Baudrillard's concepts were themselves not original in that aspect...

[Rhonda]

i would say the concept was first introduced in around 960 BC...

'there is nothing new under the sun'...

Baudrillard's concepts were themselves not original in that aspect...

Nothing is original. Not even sin.

Yer turn. Expound...

[xrayzebra]

Well, say what you will... he's dead, anyway. I only posted his name as a transparent attempt to look erudite. I didn't have any new knives or guns to post, so I hadta do something for attention. I shoulda never told Ded i he was dead before posting it, she stole my thunder.

There's nothing new under the sun, it's true.

Certainly the concept that "all is illusion" goes way back in Hindu thought to "maya." It's a fundamentally different thing, but one of my philosophy profs had a story to explain maya. It was an old Hindu tale that is almost like a joke, so read this with your best recollection of an Indian 7-11 clerk's accent:

Haji asked Vishnu, "What is maya?" Vishnu was a bit put off, and said to Haji, take this cup and fetch me a glass of water, and I will tell you what is maya.

Haji went off to fetch the water, but got sidetracked, and was lost. He came upon a house, and sought shelter for the night. There he met a very nice old man who had a beautiful daughter. They put him up for the night. The next morning, Haji was sorry to leave, because the daughter had enchanted him. He asked directions to get back to the river for water and to where he had spoken to Vishnu, and as the old man told him how to get back, he told Haji he needed help chopping wood, and repairing the house, so he Haji helped him.

The old man invited him to stay another night, so he did. The next day there was another reason for him to stay. The old man was so sweet to him, that Haji began to really like him, and the old man liked him. The old man suggested that Haji marry his daughter, so he stayed and married the daughter. They had children, and the old man who Haji came to love as a father died, and they all mourned. They too grew old, and their children gave them grandchildren, and his wife became even more beautiful to him as they grew older together.

They were prosperous, and as happy as anyone could be. Haji completely forgot that he had gone to fetch water for Vishnu until one night a terrible storm came. The wind howled and the rain fell in torrents. A tremendous flood came roaring toward the house, and swept it away, with all his family members screaming, and uprooted trees washing past him. Everything was lost as the water swept him along, and he feared that he would drown as he grabbed for something to hold onto. Just as he decided to relax and let the water draw him down to die, the cup floated up along side him and he grasped it.

The sun came out, and he was standing at Vishnu's feet, holding the cup of water. Haji cried and protested to Vishnu, but Vishnu smiled, and said, Haji, I see you have brought me my cup of water. So, now I will tell you... THAT was maya!

[ded i]

"Postmodern culture is recycled. Religions, myths, and philosophies are increasingly scrambled interpretations of bygone superstitions marketed into kitsch. Even our sins are no longer original.” ~ Deadeye Dick ~ :yesman:

[desmodus]

Well, say what you will... he's dead, anyway. I only posted his name as a transparent attempt to look erudite. I didn't have any new knives or guns to post, so I hadta do something for attention. I shoulda never told Ded i he was dead before posting it, she stole my thunder.

There's nothing new under the sun, it's true.

Certainly the concept that "all is illusion" goes way back in Hindu thought to "maya." It's a fundamentally different thing, but one of my philosophy profs had a story to explain maya. It was an old Hindu tale that is almost like a joke, so read this with your best recollection of an Indian 7-11 clerk's accent:

Haji asked Vishnu, "What is maya?" Vishnu was a bit put off, and said to Haji, take this cup and fetch me a glass of water, and I will tell you what is maya.

Haji went off to fetch the water, but got sidetracked, and was lost. He came upon a house, and sought shelter for the night. There he met a very nice old man who had a beautiful daughter. They put him up for the night. The next morning, Haji was sorry to leave, because the daughter had enchanted him. He asked directions to get back to the river for water and to where he had spoken to Vishnu, and as the old man told him how to get back, he told Haji he needed help chopping wood, and repairing the house, so he Haji helped him.

The old man invited him to stay another night, so he did. The next day there was another reason for him to stay. The old man was so sweet to him, that Haji began to really like him, and the old man liked him. The old man suggested that Haji marry his daughter, so he stayed and married the daughter. They had children, and the old man who Haji came to love as a father died, and they all mourned. They too grew old, and their children gave them grandchildren, and his wife became even more beautiful to him as they grew older together.

They were prosperous, and as happy as anyone could be. Haji completely forgot that he had gone to fetch water for Vishnu until one night a terrible storm came. The wind howled and the rain fell in torrents. A tremendous flood came roaring toward the house, and swept it away, with all his family members screaming, and uprooted trees washing past him. Everything was lost as the water swept him along, and he feared that he would drown as he grabbed for something to hold onto. Just as he decided to relax and let the water draw him down to die, the cup floated up along side him and he grasped it.

The sun came out, and he was standing at Vishnu's feet, holding the cup of water. Haji cried and protested to Vishnu, but Vishnu smiled, and said, Haji, I see you have brought me my cup of water. So, now I will tell you... THAT was maya!

that's a damned good story.

[Dr Mabuse]

well... not to be openly confrontational and just inaugurate disinformation... LOL!!!!

i didn't realize you were so completely religious RR...

i had noticed you subtly defending things in that way...

but man you are a zealot...

and Hindu ideas at that...

i guess the Bhagavad Gita is your bible?...

i have enjoyed reading the various translations...

have you ever read the entire Mahabharata epic?...

wow so xray is very religious in Hindu belief systems...

[ded i]

i would say the concept was first introduced in around 960 BC...

'there is nothing new under the sun'...

Baudrillard's concepts were themselves not original in that aspect...

Baudrillard's concept is that everything under the sun - and the sun itself- is "new" because it has been changed by culture.

Today we cannot look up at that glowing orb without thinking about pictures of the sun's corona - without knowing it is a star - without seeing celestial diagrams from the Science channel, or thinking sunburn causes cancerous lesions, etc. Our postmodern sun is augmented and modified by cultural artifacts. We cannot access the wonder and trepidation which stone age man regarded an eclipse of the sun because "our" sun has become an augmented simulation. It has actually become a different thing altogether than what was perceived by historical humans.

Everything with which we interact is, similarly, simulacrum.

It might seem a small distinction to "there's nothing new under the sun" but Baudrillard's simulacrum occupies a huge place in cultural theory.
It allows a more precise critical discourse regarding what we see, feel, or experience with our augmented senses.

We are no longer human - we are cyborgs - e-humans using technical extentions which let us reach into space and across the globe. We interact with and percieve things which are modified by the culture we inhabit. The reproductions we see of what once was real have become the new "reality."

[Dr Mabuse]

Baudrillard's concept is that everything under the sun - and the sun itself- is "new" because it has been changed by culture.



Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

:)

[Rhonda]

Everything is a mental construct. Theoretically one must be dead to the past to be fully in the present.

The human condition varies from human to human and so one either acknowledges or refuses to acknowledge.

There are those who thrive in "blissful" ignorance.