Jean Baudrillard

Lane’s Baudrillard reader is very useful in discussing the key points in Baudrillard’s writing – I am using it mostly for the coverage of Simulations. Nevertheless other sections are relevant, including the discussion boxes on the various themes, some of which are useful revision notes:

STRUCTURALISM

After Ferdinand de Saussure

SIGN = SIGNIFIER + SIGNIFIED = sound image + concept (the lower case items from Lane)

Most importantly, the relationship between the sign (e.g. CAT) and the object (e.g. domestic furry animal) is arbitrary. I note this could be used to explain the development of the meaning of the word NATURE. A sign works because it is part of a system of signs that generates meaning through difference (e.g. CAT is different from DOG). Nature is different from the human environment? These are, it would seem, cultural developments.

POST-STRUCTURALISM

This seems to be more challenging to define, particularly as many proponents – key ones being Derrida, Foucault and Lacan – begin with structuralist arguments and then either develop or reject them. The important issue (as with many post-? arguments such as modernism vs post-modernism) is that structuralism cannot be a self-sufficient model of differences developed by a culture since an operator within the model will be influenced by it and hence unable to fully comprehend the complexity. My Tutor cut to this chase when he defined the main point of post-structuralism as that you cannot be aware of all influences in a complex system.

MODERNISM rejected the past to propose a new, self-contained style

POST-MODERNISM is a hybrid form drawing on styles from different eras – it can step outside itself to reference itself

HYPERREAL

Baudrillard uses simulations to critique a post-modern world. There are 3 levels of simulation:

1. An obvious copy of reality
2. A copy indistinguishable from reality
3. A model that produces a reality of its own – that precedes reality. This is the hyperreal – e.g. virtual reality

WATERGATE

For Baudrillard, the issue here is that the capitalist system is immoral – there are issues even with this beginning however, since later the author will discuss how Baudrillard distances himself from issues of good and evil (vs. Derrida, for example, when discussing the Society of the Spectacle). Perhaps a better word is amoral? That said, Watergate is not a lapse in morality in a moral system, as claimed, but an example of the corruptness of a system (which proceeds to hide behind it by enthusiastically “fixing” it). “An entire culture (the West) is now geared towards deception” (Lane, 2009:94)

Importantly, 3rd order simulations are detached from, not blurred with, reality and hence not subject to good/evil. Baudrillard uses this to associate capitalism with post-modern America. “For Baudrillard America is the place of postmodernism” (Lane, 2009:107). He uses Disneyland as an example of the a third order simulation, a hyperreality – a “real without origin”.

• Having been to Disney I note that the only way to enjoy the (expensive) experience is to give in to it and play along. If you question or fight it, you are sunk! I say this as a way of getting the most out of the experience with children, but we met a number of adults at the parade who came every year without their children – one couple had even snuck out without telling their children where they were going! Disney is certainly providing some sort of escapism – an alternate reality where things are deliberately happy? I believe there is some evidence for positive feedback loops initiated, for example, by smiling.
• On a more technical note, a landscape created from a photograph or previous iteration of itself is not without origin – does this therefore “disqualify” it from the hyperreal?
• A simulation that is indistinguishable from the real – e.g. a person pretending to sneeze – is second-order, not hyperreal. Baudrillard uses the example of feigning illness although of course there are ways that sickness can be diagnosed. If you go to the doctor with a cold they won’t do much for you. If they test you and find it is Covid or Flu, the response may be different if the symptoms are serious.

Baudrillard feels that the city is a form of 3rd order simulation – a mirage in the desert that came before it and will eventually replace it.

FOURTH ORDER SIMULATION occurs as a fractal stage. All points of reference have dissolved and replication is rife. Stable theory is impossible, a complex situation difficult to define and explored by radical thought, themes such as impossible exchange, paradoxical examples and literary techniques such as irony. “Encountered as an avatar in the postmodern world’s second life” (Lane, 2009:133) “The contemporary world of the fourth order is deeply paradoxical, and radical thought opposes the fourth order by pitting the world against itself” (Lane, 2009:135).

I had some very interesting feedback from Richard Dalgleish at a crit session: “I wondered about this digital hut and whether the inside could be an invented space which could be used as a gallery to display the finished project. Kind of a Russian doll, a space of any size and shape which is inside an element of the project but can also contain the project … I found myself thinking of fractals” (email, 19th Feb 2023).

PERFORMATIVE KNOWLEDGE is introduced as the idea that technology drives efficiency but does not lead to something more profound such as a deeper understanding. AI may have a post-technology approach in that it allows the system to step out of itself to help comprehension of complex situations.

Just as with Disneyland, similarly a prison hides the lack of freedom a society. Although perhaps in a structuralist way it defines that freedom by its difference from it?

In all the examples Baudrillard’s point is that they function under an assumption of sovereign rationality. Furthermore Disneyland is a “deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the function of the real” (Lane, 2009:88, Baudrillard, 1983b:25). Disneyland as a fantasy implies outside Disneyland there is a reality, whereas the author’s point is that Disneyland is an example of the hyperreality that is America. “We are no longer in a logic of the passage from virtual to actual but in a hyperrealistic logic of the deterrence of the real by the virtual” (Lane, 2009:94, Baudrillard, 1997:27)

“The hyperreal produces as society of surfaces, performativity” (Lane, 2009:89) – I note this a fair description of what we have!

THE GULF WAR DID NOT TAKE PLACE

One of Baudrillard’s most controversial statements, although perhaps the most clear in the way that it works. We have the example of CNN switching “live” to reporters to find out what is happening in the war – only to discover they are watching CNN to find out.

This therefore becomes a third-order simulation – news is generated by news, “news is producing the ‘reality’ of war” (Lane, 2009:93).

The basic issue is that the American control over the media (in part a consequence of losing the media war in Vietnam) means that very few images exist of the first Gulf War – unless the administration wants them to. In a way this is simply saying that history is written by the victors.

Of course this can be philosophically nuanced: “war in the conventional sense never actually occurred” (Lane, 2009:93) or further still “war is not measured by being waged but by its speculative unfolding in an abstract electronic and informational space” (Baudrillard: 1995:56)

THE IMPORTANCE OF PERSPECTIVE

The example is given of the Loud family documentary, shot as if the cameras are ‘not there’. The viewers are absent and present, at a distance and up close; they enjoy the thrill of this hyperreal situation: hyperreal because they cannot say the one position is real and the other false (both subject positions have been collapsed and distanced at the same time)” (Lane, 2009:96).

There is a lot in the above – for example it can be related to the whole issue of the fourth wall in theatre vs cinema. It can also be related to perspective in landscape – which frames it as accessible and there to be possessed – when collapsed the viewer is living in nature, not regarding from the non-natural. Yet at the same time if perspective is collapsed the situation becomes hyperreal…???

Furthermore Baudrillard used this to make the point that: “television in the case of the Louds for example is no longer a spectacular medium. We are no longer in the Society of the Spectacle which the Situationists talk about” (Baudrillard, 1983:54, p.96)

THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE

Guy Debord (1967), Proposition One: “The whole life of these societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that was once lived has become mere representation” (Lane, 2009:97, Derrida, 1998:1, 17)

But this is experienced through vision only, whereas Baudrillard collapses the distance (defined in a structural way) between viewer and spectacle to propose the hyperreal. Very importantly, note that this hyperreality “isn’t a fake existence …. it is another type of reality, and that is how the subject experiences it” (Lane, 2009:98). Note also that Debord regarded the Society of the Spectacle as evil, whereas Baudrillard stepped back from this (see above).

SEMIOTICS

• Charles Sanders Peirce
• The Science of Signs
• The study of “logical rules or laws of signs and sign-systems” (Lane, 2009:115)
• Parallels with structuralism
• ICON: sign that looks similar to object
• INDEX: sign that has material relationship to object (e.g. smoke to fire)
• SYMBOL: sign that has arbitrary (cultural) relationship to object (e.g. cat to domestic furry animal)

THE GRAND CANYON AND NATURE

About the Grand Canyon Baudrillard said: “the very idea of the millions and hundreds of millions of years that were needed peacefully to ravage the surface of the earth here is a perverse one, since it brings with it an awareness of signs originating long before man appeared” (Lane, 2009:116, Baudrillard 1988a:3)

Again many questions are raised – what is a sign in nature, for example. From my previous essay you could argue that something like the colour red acts as a warning sign – since it is rare – although not all animals see it. But signs are not simply for humans – they existed before semiotics.

“Baudrillard is critiquing the nature/culture binary opposition through which such sublime landscapes are usually interpreted. In his account, nature is already cultured, and culture has to take into account other alien signifying systems” (Lane, 2009:116). This provides a contrast with the Modernist approach of instrumental manipulation of nature for cultural or technological aims in which nature is something that needs to be left behind or overpowered. Post-modernism reincorporates the past into itself as a way of attempting to construct an aesthetically richer experience. Postmodernism is evolution compared to the revolution of Modernism.

INSIDER/OUTSIDER

There is a problem with such analysis, which speaks further to the problem of Baudrillard’s writing, about the post-structural, as an author within the system. If the hyperreal is a realm outside morality, then somebody must define morality. Baudrillard will try to avoid this trap by distancing himself (say from Debord) from judgement over good and evil. Nevertheless it is difficult not to conclude that he advanced himself as some sort of arbiter, in this case over reality itself. “One of the problems of reading Baudrillard … both a postmodern performance, taking the logic of hyperreality to its extreme, and a critique of hyperreality” (Lane, 2009:94-5)

Hence we have a statement that applies quite well to John Fowles writing in The Tree (https://photo515050level3.wordpress.com/2023/02/14/the-tree/): “This contradictory space of thinking (and writing as performance that leads to a fragmentation of ideas) may in itself be seen as part of postmodern existence” (Lane, 2009:95)

To address the issue of the author inside the system, post-structuralist writers have tried a number of strategies. Derrida investigated incest prohibition, one that he argued was both natural and cultural. Baudrillard used travel writing, being part of a landscape and simultaneously just passing through it. There are some parallels here with the role of photographer as insider and outsider, something I have argued before is a position of strength.

THE DISMEMBERMENT OF ORPHEUS (Ihab Hassan, 1982)

Included in the text is a very useful list extracted from Hassan, essentially exploring how post-modernism is the antithesis of modernism.

I should explore the mastery/logos more in conjunction with my embossing idea at Rye. However I need to understand why logos as a superficial sign are not post-modern (note surface in the RH column further down)?

BUENAVENTURE HOTEL

“Structured like a palimpsest in a series of layers”, this forms an architectural introduction to the use of levels e.g. computer games, web page hyperlinks and virtual reality. It is a city within a city – inside are shopping malls, outside the glass walls reflect back downtown LA onto itself. It has its own security – essentially replacing the ineffectual police force in LA where crime is high.

NIHILISM can be defined as an extreme form of rejection of authority, institutions, systems (especial religious) and values. “I am a nihilist” (Lane, 2009:26, Baudrillard, 1994a, 160) – although nihilism is first defined to clarify.

REACTIVE NIHILISM is a rejection of “higher values”.

NEGATIVE NIHILISM begins with the idea that “higher values” reject life, and hence propose appearance over essence. Hence the negative nihilist rejects appearances, and it is from this position that Baudrillard argues.

Lane describes a postmodern world, where nihilism has been “entirely realised” (Baudrillard 1994a, 159) and is simultaneously “impossible” (Lane, 2009:127, Baudrillard 1994a, 161). For me this sounds like quantum theory for philosophers!

TECHNOLOGY RULES THE WORLD

As an example, emails are designed to save time (handwriting, posting/delivering) letters but create a non-functional domain of endless self-justification to wade through every day. Here irony is ascribed to technology by human philosophising, but irony is a human weapon. Greater concerns revolve around weapons or robots controlled by technology – of course it is, at least at the moment, the humans that design the systems and could/should build in controls. This is currently relevant for “decision-making” by driverless cars for example – whose life to risk in a potential crash, for example, the occupant of the bystander. The more dystopian next level, fourth order if you will, has technology replicating itself, perhaps in an evolutionary manner. This is currently the stuff of sci-fi, but we are on the cusp with, for example, 3D printers able to replicate or upgrade themselves. The Creality CR-10 that I used to print the view camera uses an upgraded fan it printed itself, although this process was human-initiated.

ELECTRONIC LANDSCAPES

Lane structures this as a discussion on processes that have become digital or “soft” industries – stock markets, internet shopping, robotic factories – where the process of making has either disappeared to create services or has been taken over by technology. The point is to challenge the reality of these (not if they exist per se, but more the nature of the existence). Of course virtual reality is a more complete (non)-embodiment of the concept.

Lane touches on something that gives me great concern for the future and seems appropriate to the discussion. He quotes Morley and Robins (Spaces of Identity) that “notions of the alien other are being rewritten in terms of cyborgs”. This is perhaps true but short-sighted, in my opinion. As we get closer to developing robots or processes with feelings and/or senses, we must start to consider their rights (as foreseen in Frankenstein?). This may sound odd, but any arguments against this look very much like arguments made against, for example the abolition of slavery. This is no doubt controversial, but if we have “given life” to something to the degree that its responses become indistinguishable from the human, then we should start to consider this – not doing so is the route that leads to the nightmare scenario dreamt up for sci-fi novels and films, where the machine works out its situation is unjust and does something about it.

Interestingly, a counter-argument could be made that the standard Turing test was performative – one of imitating intelligence not having intelligence. For example humans make mistakes – AI can use randomness to try different approaches and learn from “mistakes”, without any qualms. Yet we can see that by going down this route (which has been travelled for example by writers relating it to the performance of gender, particularly relevant given that Turing was persecuted for his homosexuality), we start back with the debate around performative knowledge as discussed above.

At the second level of simulation the computer becomes indistinguishable from the human – we are experiencing this already with chatbots. As we proceed to the next level of the game another threat emerges. While our neglect of the natural may eventually leave us without a reality we have forgotten we are not a necessary part of, our replicants may more quickly decide that we are unfit to inhabit any reality whatsoever!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Lane, R. (2009) Jean Baudrillard. Oxon: Routledge

FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

• Baudrillard on the Web. At: http://intermargins.net/intermargins/TCulturalWorkshop/academia/scholar%20and%20specialist/Baudrillard/Baudrillard%20on%20the%20Web.htm (Accessed 20.2.2023)
• Morley, D. & Robins, K. (1995) Spaces of Identity. UK: Routledge
• Rodaway, P. (1995) Exploring the subject in hyerreality
• Nunes, M. (1995) Jean Baudrillard in Cyberspace: Internet, Virtuality and Postmodernity. Penn State University Press. At: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42946283 (Accessed 20.2.2023)