According to
the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, the fate and condition of modern
advanced societies is that any action tends to become degraded in itself and to
become a spectacle or consumer item, regardless of whether it is true or false.
The avalanche of information and interpretations sent and received are all mere
simulacra of reality.
Modern advanced
society is characterised by a twofold human concentration: physical
concentration in large cities and enormous metropolitan areas, and at the same
time, the telematic connection in large communication networks that potentially
link the entire planet in a single “globalisation”. This extremely intense
double human interaction in modern cities and in the global
"telepolis" or "cosmopolis" of the Internet is essential to
understanding the contemporary human condition, and creates significant
phenomena.
First, the humanist ideal formulated by Terence in ancient Rome: "I am a
man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me," is now more apparent
than ever, even if it is only because nothing human (or which affects other
humans) is not really alien to us, i.e. it does not affect us or leave us
indifferent. From the new pandemics, to the current international economic
crisis, there is a risk (as pointed out by the sociologist Ulrich Beck) of all
sorts of things - however far away they seem – affecting us, and furthermore,
affecting very quickly and with unforeseeable consequences. Whether we like it
or not, we are now more than ever “one humanity”, with no watertight
compartments; we are a “global village” (McLuhan) both telematically and
physically.
However, enormous human concentration in swarming metropoli and in a single
network has not always facilitated understanding between humans, and to an even
lesser extent, the intellection of what could be called "reality",
and the empathetic link with a "truth" that can be drawn from it.
Paradoxically, the globalisation based on telematics, economics, technology and
tourism seems to take us violently farther away from the "world",
"reality" and the "truth of things", rather than bringing
us gradually towards them. This is perhaps the great paradox of an advanced
society focused on communication technologies, the "knowledge
society", of the "post-modern condition" ...
Despite this, Baudrillard did not forget that advanced societies become
"simulacrum societies", fatally captured by dynamics that they cannot
avoid because they establish them (Fatal strategies, 1983). They are
fascinated by the infinite power of seduction (Seduction, 1979) which
enables “domination of the symbolic universe” in a thousand ways, so advanced
societies cannot "fatally" escape, and their truth or reality lie
only in the hope that crosses them and which becomes their great productive
power (Simulacra and Simulation, 1981, and The Illusion of the End,
1992).
Using other terminology, that is what fascinated the French philosopher and
sociologist Jean Baudrillard – the centenary of whose birth falls this year.
Baudrillard was much more radical and consistent than most of his
contemporaries, in emphasising the constant interference of any trace of
"truth" as the main feature of advanced societies. The rapid
circulation of information and the constant clash of the infinite number of
interpretations (as well as deliberate manipulation) tends to make all of them
"simulacra". The distinction between true and false is blurred; as it
is Plato's cave: there are only images among images, opinions among other
opinions, various sources of information, but not “the Truth”.
indeed, Baudrillard insists that in modern advanced societies, anything, "reality"
or "truth" tends to be degraded into either a "spectacle"
or "consumption" or - indistinguishably – both. That is why both
cities and the Internet today are part of the realm of consumption and
spectacle; even culture must be experienced as something
"spectacular" and as a "consumer" process, with its
fashions, its legends, its ephemeral honours, its short moments of glory - as
Warhol pointed out - which are cataleptically forgotten almost as soon as
they are freely conferred.
According to Baudrillard's simulacrum theory, this is the fate and the
condition of today's simulacrum society. It is dominated by the mere semblance
of truth, which also conceals the fact that it is only an appearance, and
thereby diverts attention from the only possible "reality" or
"truth", which is in fact the simulacrum itself. Baudrillard says:
"The simulacrum is never what hides the truth. It is truth that hides the
fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true." The simulacrum – when
one knows what it is – does not lie; it is what it is (in its epiphany,
to put it religious terms). The lie occurs when an attempt is made to pass off
a simulacrum as truth; or in more radical terms; when we are told that there is
truth, and not a simulacrum.
How did Jean Baudrillard comes to such radical and nihilistic conclusions? By
theorising on the fact that advanced societies are increasingly prone to the
experience of the simulacrum, in that they are simulacrum societies. However,
he also drew the most extreme and nihilistic conclusions from the rich,
subversive and highly philosophical generation to which he belonged. They were
all born around eighty years ago, in the roaring but disreputable 1920s, which
were affected by the Wall Street crash of 1929 and "the incubation of the
snake's egg" of Nazism and the Stalinist gulag, which led tragically to
the Spanish Civil War.
It was a very similar period to today: there was a "camouflaged" but
relatively long-standing and chronic social crisis, which burst spectacularly
into public consciousness with a sharp economic decline, and international
events such as the attack on the Twin Towers; after that, a general panic
seemed to be willing to sacrifice everything in exchange for
"security", "economic recovery" ... or a believable
simulacrum of them.
Masters of
thought of radical youth
These experiences
made a profound impression (despite their very varied attitudes) on the
generation of Jean Baudrillard (1939-2007). Among those closest to him were the
great analysts of the modern condition (who were slightly older): Jean-François
Lyotard (1924-1998), Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
and the North American Andy Warhol (1928-1987), as well as those who were a
little younger: Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) and
Guy Debond (1931-1994).
Significantly, they have all died relatively recently, but they also are still
some of the most commonly cited analysts in criticism of advanced society, mass
culture, the modern condition..., and they continue to be "masters of
thought" among radical youth.
Two years after his death, Jean Baudrillard is apparently even more forgotten,
despite the fact that after a very long and dark period, he embodied the most
radical, iconoclastic and nihilistic criticism. Baudrillard had chosen the role
– as difficult as it is appreciated and occupied in the French cultural world –
of becoming the radical “critics' critic”. Baudrillard took note of the
analyses of his generation, which were already highly radical, in order to draw
even more radical conclusions from them. He insisted on creating a
"suspicion" about the many suspects of his generation (which was
indeed encouraged at the time) and based on them. This was by no means easy; if
it was already difficult to assimilate the criticisms of thinkers such as
Lyotard, Warhol, Debond and Foucault, and the hyperbolic radicalisations of
Baudrillard seemed ridiculous.
Furthermore, Baudrillard came from a poor family, operated on the edges of the French
intellectual world, and his education was apparently more eclectic than it was
robust. He mixed up literary, semiotic, structuralist , and Marxist studies,
communication theory, and even pataphysics and the theatre of the absurd
(Alfred Jerry) and Antonin Artaud's theatre of cruelty. However, Baudrillard
managed to embody the model of the outsider who carves a central niche in
intellectual debate by means of daring and controversy.
He became well known by means of attacking the great names of his generation,
denouncing them as fellow travellers who had not gone far enough, or as
inconsequential critics who ended up trembling and backing down before the
logic of their own thought. As an alter ego of Nietzsche, albeit more mundane
and less solitary, Baudrillard's general criticism was very similar, nihilistic
and radical. Above all, he adapted the Nietzschean criticism of the consumer
society and the mass media, which he considered a “simulacrum society” (both
because it is where “the simulacrum emerges” and because in itself it is
nothing more than an immense simulacrum). Baudrillard confronts a radical
“symbolic exchange” which aims to subvert the system by means of the systematic
“radicalisation of all hypotheses” and the imposition of a "meticulous
reversibility" on “models" or “simulacra” (Symbolic exchange and
death, 1976).
In opposition to both the "conservatives" and the
"progressives", Jean Baudrillard became a sociologist in Nanterre,
against the omnipresent and at that time predominant Bourdieu. He took part in
the Situationist International of May '68 with Debond, but went much further
and created a much more comprehensive body of work. Despite being very close to
it, he challenged Marxism by proclaiming that the new basis for social order is
consumption rather than production (The consumer society, 1970, and For
a critique of the political economy of the sign, 1972).
In a spectacular gesture that also foresaw the end of French structuralism (of
which he was a part), he identified and sharply attacked the most radical,
systematic and powerful thinker of the time: Michel Foucault. Baudrillard
became well known as a result of his book Forget Foucault (1977). Once
again, he attempted to outdo the critic (Foucault), by suggesting that the
latter had falsified or abruptly cut short his criticism, and had done so due
to the old idol of the “desire for truth”. Baudrillard condemned Foucault
because the latter still believed - he said - in an absolute "Truth”,
while identifying it with power relations and with the constructive power of
power (no pun intended?).
Significantly, Foucault did not deny this, but instead criticised Baudrillard,
accusing him of polemicising merely for the sake of fame, in a completely
frivolous exercise. In some ways, Foucault is right; but Baudrillard felt that
his thesis had been proven and his critical attack on the most radical critic
who had also prostrated himself before the idol of “Truth” (reconstructed based
on his own private ideology). In any event, the media confirmed Baudrillard's
challenge to the great French intellectual monster of the time, who (like
Derrida) was even recognised in the English-speaking world.
Now Baudrillard seemed to have enough freedom and security to broaden his analysis
to the most varied and unusual aspects of contemporary culture and advanced
societies; in other words: the modern simulacrum society. As a result, like a
new Tocqueville, he faced the major challenge of analysing a leading power (the
United States) and the great metropolis (New York), which are the culmination
of modern society's contradictions and fascinations. In America (1986),
Baudrillard theorised acutely on the world which Andy Warhol (who was only a
year older) enjoyed living in and reflected cleverly and intuitively.
In the North American world, Baudrillard found the most obvious representation
of the threat that is hidden behind more than cities, the physical metropolis
and the "cosmopolis": shunning the simulacrum to end up in "hyperreality".
He therefore suggests that the same fascination or fatal dialectic is behind
the hurried search for bodily perfection and eternal youth, cool fashion and
personal identity and even “knowledge” and “information”..., without worrying
at all whether a simulacrum is only achieved if it is not recognised as such, a
fiction, or even worse, something that has been degraded into mere consumption
and "spectacle".
In a shift towards an increasingly mainstream and publicity-conscious analysis,
Baudrillard insisted that advanced societies are the world of the simulacrum,
by the simulacrum. Only this fact is interesting and worthy of theory, and the
correct method is to acknowledge this. At the height of Baudrillard's
popularity, it was even generally considered that his thought was an influence
on the famous film Matrix (1999). In fact, Baudrillard denies it: his
simulacrum society is not identifiable with the universal deception which
humanity suffers from in the "real and true" Matrix, and the liberation
considered therein is frankly ridiculous.
From reality
to the simulacrum
By now plagued by
a banal interpretation of his simulacrum theory, in 1991 Baudrillard had
published a series of commentaries on the most controversial issues of the day:
the book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Based on a famous aphorism by
Canetti, he considers the inevitable transformation into mere simulacrum of
everything that is shown or disclosed by the mass media and new information
technologies. He comments on the famous CNN “live broadcast” of the bombings of
Baghdad which indeed ended up becoming a type of low-grade computer game (and
even worse, on the old green phosphorescent screens). The aim was to show the
historic event live, by spinning blurred lines of light in the sky, some far
off fire from hypothetical missile strikes ... but without meaning or a
"human event" in the true sense of the word. Death and the dead,
blood and human suffering were totally concealed; life, and above all death had
been reduced to a video game, covered up.
Baudrillard was strongly criticised for this book, which few people read or
which few people looked at beyond the initial pages. He did not pull his
punches in his high-profile analysis of advertising. Criticism of his ideas
became sharper, partly due to his own fault, partly due to the public figure he
had become, and to a large extent because the times were radically changing. It
was a traumatic political era, new formulas of radical nihilism were emerging
over the horizon and many people were tired of post-modern drifts. This all
worked against Baudrillard, who tried - as was natural in him – to radicalise
everything despite his simulacrum theory, which appeared – and in some ways was
– the quintessence of contemporary post-modernism, nihilism, relativism and
cynicism.
The incursion
of evil
Significantly,
when he analysed the attacks of 11 September (where bodies and suffering were
also avoided, and the circulation of photos was not permitted, etc.)
Baudrillard was forced to acknowledge the reality and the evil of international
terrorism.
In an about-turn that surprised many of his followers, he described the attack
as an “absolute event” (The spirit of terrorism, 2002, and Requiem
for the twin towers, 2002). Baudrillard appeared to acknowledge that at
least evil in its pure form – albeit only for a few moments – breaks with the
“simulacrum society” and all the fatal strategies, with an act as momentous as
Auschwitz. For a few moments, Jean Baudrillard returns to Theodor W. Adorno and
Primo Levi.
Despite this, Baudrillard did not forget that advanced societies become
"simulacrum societies", fatally captured by dynamics that they cannot
avoid because they establish them (Fatal strategies, 1983). They are
fascinated by the infinite power of seduction (Seduction, 1979) which
enables “domination of the symbolic universe” in a thousand ways, so advanced
societies cannot "fatally" escape, and their truth or reality lie
only in the hope that crosses them and which becomes their great productive
power (Simulacra and Simulation, 1981, and The Illusion of the End,
1992).
According to Baudrillard, in today's knowledge society this is the source of
the major productive sector, but also of consumption; the centre of all supply
and all demand. We know today – just two years after Baudrillard's death – that
in the great headquarters for manufacturing dreams and stories (the real
Matrix) embodied by Hollywood, that television has become the universal object
of consumption at any time of day, and infinite new sources of simulacra are
being created: practically any citizen can try it with YouTube or Twitter.
The young Danish artist Olafur Eliasson also declares his affinity to
Baudrillard: "What we are witnessing is a shift in the traditional
relationship between reality and representation. We no longer progress from
model to reality, but from model to model while acknowledging that both models
are, in fact, real. As a result of we may work in a very productive manner with
reality experienced as a conglomeration models. Rather than seeing model and
reality as polarised nodes, then our function on the same level. Models
[simulacra] have become coproducers of reality”.
Despite Baudrillard's death, the impact of his simulacrum theory does not
appear to have died with him. As Nietzsche said about nihilism: the most
sinister of all the hosts is here to stay. Apparently, that did not appear to
worry Baudrillard, because as he used to say: if there is a fatal attraction
towards "producing oneself as an illusion", what does "dying as
a reality" matter? We have also mentioned that some apparently “absolute
events” appeared to end this indifference and – even – to create the
possibility of awakening from the fatal sleep, from the seductive and deadly
civilising and omnipresent “strategy” in modern society that was the basis for
Baudrillard's theory: the simulacrum society.
However, if it is possible to wake up ... for how long? To what extent? Is it
also possible to avoid relapsing into other equivalent fallacies - or something
even worse?
("Baudrillard and the Simulacrum Society
" by G. Mayos in Barcelona Metropolis. Revista de información y pensamientos urbanos, 2010).
("Baudrillard and the Simulacrum Society
" by G. Mayos in Barcelona Metropolis. Revista de información y pensamientos urbanos, 2010).
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