Genre: Philosophy
Themes: Post-Structuralism
Content
Baudrillard's cynical examination the "murder of reality" disinters discomfiting problems in our models of world that we would rather bury in a nebulous cloud of unknowing. This is cynical work that radically denies the possibility of any all-embracing epistemology - of any meaning or finality.
He begins his discourse on the "Spectre of Will" with the plausible but unprovable assertion that: "The radical illusion is that of the original crime, by which the world is altered from the beginning, and is never identical to itself, never real. The world exists only through this definitive illusion which is that play of appearances - the very site of the unceasing disappearance of all meaning and all finality." At the very end of the chapter, he acknowledges that this insight is derived apart from the Reason itself, being somehow "deduced" outside of the world's continuity: "There is a continuity of the world, as it has meaning for us, and the continuity of the world as, in secret, it is nothing and means nothing. This latter does not, strictly speaking, exist. It cannot be verified, but can only betray itself, only show through like evil, squint out through appearances."
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| Scene from the movie "Inception" |
None of these ideas are new or difficult, and many have seen the light of day in popular culture, in the form of films such as the "Matrix" and "Inception". However, no one seriously contemplates their possibility or lives their lives with any serious reference to it, outside of religious belief. Certainly we Christians all believe that whatever lies behind the play of "appearances" or phenomena is a benign God rather than a perverse being, or utter randomness. However, for an agnostic like Baudrillard, this is precisely the problem, that of an "unbearable hypothesis" that seems to condemn the search for meaning, the acknowledgment of the futility of discursive methods when approaching questions of ultimate significance. At times, the terminology is outright confusing, if not seems to contain an implicit contradiction: "There will always be more reality, because it is produced and reproduced by simulation, and is itself merely a model of simulation. What within truth is merely truth falls foul of illusion. What within truth exceeds truth is of the order of a higher illusion. Only what exceeds reality can go beyond the illusion of reality." Too many truths, too many realities, too many illusions, and what looks like a blank assertion that denies the possibility of any assertion whatsoever, which to him, is precisely the point! Either a case of circular logic, or a case of pure ex-hypothesi, which is like high treason in Philosophy. Perhaps it is natural that a work that denies the value of clarity itself takes on an elusive character.
Naturally, his work seeks to undermine the assumptions that undergird analytical philosophy, which of course is conducive to the use of the empirical method and rejects the relevance of anything else. One imagines each of Baudrillard's poisonous assertions trailing forward like an endless stream of sappers digging at the foot of a wall protecting a great edifice, in what looks like a sustained attack on the key features in the structuralist understanding. Baudrillard refutes the possibility or even meaningfulness of uncovering a unitary scheme in all branches of human knowledge, although whether this attack constitutes merely a temporary breach in the walls, or will culminate at a lethal thrust into the heart of a citadel that is Analytical Philosophy, is yet unseen. What makes Baudrillard's work unique is his focus on technology and the flow of information, from which example he deduces the arbitrariness, malleability and incoherence of the structures around which we organize our lives. He traces the moral implications of such a "post-structuralist understanding" with the relentless cold-bloodedness of an assassin tracking his victim, and in this respect at least, occasionally takes one or two deft strokes with the lethal keenness of an executioner. "Information is simply the paradoxical confusion of event and the medium, and the political uncertainty which ensues. So we have all become ready-mades. Hypostatized like the bottle-rack, our sterile identities taxidermized, we have become living museum pieces... and condemned by that exact resemblance, to media stupefaction." He rightly suggests that: "At the peak of our technological performance, the irresistible impression remains that something eludes us not because we seem to have lost it, but because we are no longer in a position to see it: that, in effect, it is nto we who are winning out over the world, but the world which is winning out over us."
Style
The Guardian describes Baudrillard, with justification, as a "prophet of the apocalypse, hysterical lyricist of panic, obsessive recounter of the desolation of the postmodern scene and the hottest property on the New York intellectual circuit." Baudrillard exudes the aura of a modern Diogenes, a lunatic in the spell of disturbing truths and fixated on the penumbra of uncertainty that surrounds discursive thought. As one would expect from one of the pioneers of deconstructionism and post-structuralism, Baudrillard is contemptous of the interpretive structures of reality we have erected within our fragile psyches, and takes liberties with all traditional categories of sense and reason, including that of language.
"Truthiness"
It easy to succumb, intellectually, to the domineering verve and muscular verse of Jean Baudrillard, whose thoughts achieve sweet fruition in his seminal work "The Perfect Crime". However, analysed in the cold light of day, Baudrillard's mind is inconsistent, at times utterly obscurantist, at other times keenly logical and discursive, as would befit a philosopher in the French tradition. If the lyrical power and aesthetic potential in his verse is intoxicating, then the chaotic organization of the text makes you wonder if the book was written in a state of inebriation and disorientation similar to that which the Author sought to impose upon his Readers. If you are hoping for more clarity, and a source of practical wisdom, what the Greeks call "prudence", then avoid this book. If you want something that stretches you and unsettles and to engage in act of creative destruction that demolishes old stereotypes and inane categories that you can't quite figure your way out of, then this book is for you. The heavy obscurantism sometimes weighs down on the poetic feel and artistry of his text, which would otherwise shine through very strongly. Like that of many French writers, his in-your-face erudition tends to work in opposition to style rather than facilitating it, and sometimes you detect what might well be signs of careless usage and confounded logic (the French philosophers, after the order of Foucault, make no pretenses about accuracy). His dense vocabulary and heavily ornamented verse would doubtlessly anger proponents of lean prose and sparse verse. Even if you disagree with his radical premises - none of which detract from the kernels of insight scattered throughout the text, you feel compelled to admire the beautiful but disturbing thrall cast by this slim, even innocuous, but densely-packed volume.
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| "The Transparent Simulacrum of the Feigned" by Salvador Dali |
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