in any event, baudrillard is hardly the postmodernist i would choose to dig in my heels about, as i tried to hint at. he seems to somehow think of himself as the heir to bataille and the "postmodern" strain opposing that represented by zizek. i know, i know, to a lot of you, fights between baudrillard and zizek seem like dull or even annoying squabbles among relatives, but still.
god forbid i should contribute to beginning another month-long series of threads on habermas (or zizek or baudrillard), but there it is.
j
On Thursday, November 14, 2002, at 07:25 PM, Liza Featherstone wrote:
> OK, I'm all for spiffiness. As much as possible. And I like some bad
> post-modern writing: I just have to be able to discern a thought in
> there
> somewhere. but I'm not feelin' it here. Let's see which is more
> likely...we
> are fascinated by terrorists because we're afraid they're going to
> kill us,
> or because we suffer from a "surfeit of reality?" What is a "surfeit of
> reality" anyway? Isn't reality pretty evenly distributed? He seems to
> mean
> that western countries are disgustingly rich, but the phrases he
> deploys to
> say that don't make any sense!
>
> Liza
>
>> From: Jeffrey Fisher <jfisher at igc.org>
>> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>> Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 19:03:31 -0600
>> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>> Subject: Re: Baudrillard "weighs" in
>>
>> geez, and here i thought lbo-talk was the last refuge of postmodernism
>> . . .
>>
>> <cough>
>>
>> seriously, though, and leaving aside baudrillard's status as
>> essentially [sic] a wannabe bataille, i actually enjoyed his inversion
>> of the "cultural envy" thesis we've heard hacks like friedman bandy
>> about:
>>
>> "The rise of the globalised system has been powered by the furious
>> envy
>> of an indifferent, low-definition culture
>> faced with the reality of high-definition cultures. Envy is what
>> disenchanted systems that have lost their intensity feel in the
>> presence of high-intensity cultures. It is the envy of deconsecrated
>> societies when confronted with sacrificial cultures and structures."
>>
>> i don't know that that virtuosic little maneuver was worth the rest of
>> the article, or that it was especially enlightening, but it was kind
>> of
>> spiffy -- which i suppose is what postmodernism is (supposed to be)
>> all
>> about, anyway . . .
>>
>> j
>>
>> On Thursday, November 14, 2002, at 06:47 PM, Liza Featherstone wrote:
>>
>>> At an (admittedly) quick glance, looks to be the stupidest
>>> terrorism-related
>>> waste of ink I've ever seen. And it's a competitive field. Has this
>>> guy ever
>>> written anything worth reading?
>>>
>>>> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>>>> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>>>> Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 19:34:00 -0500
>>>> To: lbo-talk <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>>>> Subject: Baudrillard "weighs" in
>>>>
>>>> Le Monde diplomatique - November 2002
>>>>
>>>> TERRORISM IS SOCIETY'S CONDEMNATION OF ITSELF
>>>>
>>>> The despair of having everything
>>>> _______________________________________________________
>>>>
>>>> The West's mission is to make the world's wealth of cultures
>>>> interchangeable, and to subordinate them within the global
>>>> order. Our culture, which is bereft of values, revenges
>>>> itself upon the values of other cultures.
>>>>
>>>> by JEAN BAUDRILLARD *
>>>> _______________________________________________________
>>>>
>>>> IS globalisation inevitable? What fervour propels the
>>>> world to embrace such an abstract idea? And what force
>>>> drives us to make that idea a reality so unconditionally?
>>>>
>>>> The universal used to be an idea. Yet when an idea is
>>>> actually realised globally, it commits suicide. With
>>>> humankind as the sole authority of note, occupying the
>>>> empty space left by a dead God, the human species now
>>>> rules unchallenged, though it no longer has any
>>>> overarching goal. Since humanity's enemies have all fled,
>>>> it must generate foes from within its own ranks, while
>>>> showing symptoms of inhumanity.
>>>>
>>>> Hence the violence associated with globalisation, with a
>>>> system that wants to eliminate any manifestation of
>>>> negativity and singularity (including the ultimate
>>>> expression of singularity, death). This is the violence
>>>> of a society in which we are almost forbidden to engage
>>>> in conflict. This violence, in a way, marks an end to
>>>> violence itself, because it yearns for a world free from
>>>> any natural order that might govern the human body or
>>>> sexuality, life or death. It might be more accurate to
>>>> use the word virulence, rather than violence. This
>>>> violence has viral force: it spreads by contagion and
>>>> chain reactions. It gradually destroys our immunity and
>>>> ability to resist.
>>>>
>>>> Globalisation's triumph is not certain yet, though. Faced
>>>> with its homogenising and destabilising effects, hostile
>>>> forces are arising everywhere. But anti-globalisation's
>>>> ever-sharper manifestations - including social and
>>>> political resistance - should be seen as more than just
>>>> outmoded forms of rejection. They are part of an
>>>> agonising revision that focuses on the achievements of
>>>> modernity and "progress", a process that rejects both the
>>>> globalised techno-structure and an ideology that wants to
>>>> make all cultures interchangeable.
>>>>
>>>> Anti-globalisation actions may be violent, abnormal or
>>>> irrational, at least as judged by our enlightened
>>>> philosophy. They may be collective, bringing together
>>>> different ethnic, religious and linguistic groups, or
>>>> they may be individual, including maladjustment and
>>>> neurosis. It would be wrong to denounce
>>>> anti-globalisation forces as populist, antiquated or
>>>> terrorist. Every current event - including Islamic
>>>> hostility to the West - happens in opposition to the
>>>> abstraction that is the concept of universality. Islam is
>>>> now public enemy number one because it has shown the most
>>>> vehement opposition to Western values.
>>>>
>>>> Who or what can thwart the global system? Surely not
>>>> anti-globalisation forces, whose only aim is to slow the
>>>> pace of deregulation; their political influence may be
>>>> considerable but their symbolic impact is nil. The
>>>> protestors' violence is merely another event within the
>>>> system that the system will absorb - while remaining in
>>>> control of the game.
>>>>
>>>> Singularities [unique or unusual identities or
>>>> approaches] could be used to baffle the system. Being
>>>> neither positive nor negative, they do not represent
>>>> alternatives; they are wild cards outside the system.
>>>> They cannot be evaluated by value judgments or through
>>>> principles of political reality; they can correspond to
>>>> either the best or the worst. They are obstacles to
>>>> one-track thinking and dominant modes of thought,
>>>> although they are not the only kind of contrary approach.
>>>> They make up their own games and play by their own rules.
>>>>
>>>> Singularities are not inherently violent. Some can be
>>>> subtle, unique characteristics of language, art, culture
>>>> or the human body. But violent singularities do exist,
>>>> and terrorism is one of them. Violence revenges all the
>>>> varied cultures that disappeared to prepare for the
>>>> investiture of a single global power. This is not really
>>>> a clash of civilisations. Instead, this anthropological
>>>> conflict pits a monolithic universal culture against all
>>>> manifestations of otherness, wherever they may be found.
>>>>
>>>> Global power - as fundamentalist as any religious
>>>> orthodoxy - sees anything different or unorthodox as
>>>> heretical, and the heretics must be made to assume their
>>>> position within the global order or disappear completely.
>>>> The West's mission (we could call it the "former West"
>>>> since it lost its defining values long ago) is to reduce
>>>> a wealth of separate cultures into being interchangeable,
>>>> of equal weight, by any brutal means possible. A culture
>>>> that is bereft of values revenges itself on the values of
>>>> other cultures. Beyond politics and economics, the
>>>> primary aim of warfare (including the conflict in
>>>> Afghanistan) is to normalise savagery and beat
>>>> territories into alignment. Another objective is to
>>>> diminish any zone of resistance, to colonise and tame any
>>>> terrain, geographical or mental
>>>>
>>>> Furious envy
>>>>
>>>> The rise of the globalised system has been powered by the
>>>> furious envy of an indifferent, low-definition culture
>>>> faced with the reality of high-definition cultures. Envy
>>>> is what disenchanted systems that have lost their
>>>> intensity feel in the presence of high-intensity
>>>> cultures. It is the envy of deconsecrated societies when
>>>> confronted with sacrificial cultures and structures.
>>>>
>>>> The global system assesses any resistance as potentially
>>>> terrorist, as in Afghanistan (1). When a territory bans
>>>> democratic liberties such as music, television or women's
>>>> faces, when nations take courses opposed to what we call
>>>> civilisation, the "free" world sees these events as
>>>> indefensible, regardless of what religious principles may
>>>> be at stake.
>>>>
>>>> So to disavow modernity and its pretensions of
>>>> universality is not allowed. Some resistors reject the
>>>> belief that modernity is a force for good or represents
>>>> the natural ideal of our species; others question the
>>>> universality of our mores and values. Even when the
>>>> resistors are described as "fanatics", their contrariness
>>>> remains criminal, according to the received wisdom of the
>>>> West.
>>>>
>>>> This confrontation can only be understood by considering
>>>> symbolic obligations. To understand the hatred the rest
>>>> of the world feels towards the West, we must reverse our
>>>> perspectives. This is not the hatred felt by people from
>>>> whom we have taken everything and to whom we have given
>>>> nothing back. Rather, it is the hatred felt by those to
>>>> whom we have given everything and who can give nothing in
>>>> return. Their hatred stems from humiliation, not from
>>>> dispossession or exploitation. The attacks of 11
>>>> September were a response to this animus, with one kind
>>>> of humiliation begetting another.
>>>>
>>>> The worst thing that can happen to global power is not
>>>> for it to be attacked or destroyed but for it to be
>>>> humiliated. Global power was humiliated on 11 September
>>>> because the terrorists inflicted an injury that could not
>>>> be inflicted on them in return. Reprisals are only
>>>> physical retaliations, whereas global power had suffered
>>>> a symbolic defeat. War can only respond to the
>>>> terrorists' physical aggression, not to the challenge
>>>> they represent. Their defiance can only be addressed by
>>>> vengefully humiliating the "others" (but surely not by
>>>> crushing them with bombs or by locking them up like dogs
>>>> in detention cells in Guantánamo Bay).
>>>>
>>>> There is a fundamental rule that the basis for all
>>>> domination is a total lack of any counterflow to the
>>>> prevailing power. Bestowing a unilateral gift is a
>>>> powerful act. The "good" empire gives without any
>>>> possibility of a return of gifts. This is almost to
>>>> assume God's place or to take on the role of the master
>>>> who ensures his slaves' safety in exchange for their
>>>> labours. (Since work is not a symbolic compensation, the
>>>> only remaining options for the slaves are revolution and
>>>> death.)
>>>>
>>>> But even God allowed humanity to give him the gift of
>>>> sacrifice. Within the traditional order it was always
>>>> possible to repay God, or nature, or another higher
>>>> authority, by sacrifice. This safeguarded the symbolic
>>>> equilibrium between human beings and everything else.
>>>> Today there is no one left to compensate, to whom we
>>>> might repay our symbolic debt. This is the curse of our
>>>> culture: although giving is not impossible, giving back
>>>> is impossible, because sacrifice has had its importance
>>>> and power taken away, and what remains is a caricature of
>>>> sacrifice (like contemporary ideas of victimisation).
>>>>
>>>> So we find ourselves stuck with always being on the
>>>> receiving end, not from God or nature, but from technical
>>>> mechanisms that provide general exchange and
>>>> gratification. Almost everything is given to us. And we
>>>> are entitled to it all. We are like slaves, bondservants
>>>> whose lives have been spared but who are still bound by
>>>> an intractable debt. At some point, though, that
>>>> fundamental rule always applies and any positive transfer
>>>> will be met with a negative reaction.
>>>>
>>>> This is a violent expression of repressed feeling about
>>>> lives in captivity, about sheltered existences, about, in
>>>> fact, having far too much existence. The return to a more
>>>> primitive condition may take the form of violence
>>>> (including terrorism) or the form of denials
>>>> characterised by powerlessness, self-hatred and remorse,
>>>> negative passions, which are a debased form of the
>>>> payback that it is impossible to make.
>>>> The thing we hate within ourselves, the obscure focus of
>>>> our resentment, is our surfeit of reality: our excessive
>>>> power and comfort, our sense of accomplishment. This is
>>>> the fate that Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor had prepared
>>>> for the tamed masses in The Brothers Karamazov ["to
>>>> vanquish freedom and to do so to make men happy"]. It is
>>>> exactly what the terrorists condemn in our culture. Hence
>>>> the endless coverage of - and fascination with -
>>>> terrorism.
>>>>
>>>> Terrorism depends not only on the obvious despair of the
>>>> humiliated, but on the invisible despair of
>>>> globalisation's beneficiaries. It depends on our
>>>> subjugation to the technology integral to our lives, and
>>>> to the crushing effects of virtual reality. We are in
>>>> thrall to networks and programmes, and this dependence
>>>> defines our species, homo sapiens gone global. This
>>>> feeling of invisible despair - our own despair - is
>>>> irreversible because it is the result of the total
>>>> fulfilment of our desires.
>>>>
>>>> If terrorism is really the result of a state of profusion
>>>> without any hope of payback or obligation to sacrifice,
>>>> of the forced resolution of conflicts, then eradicating
>>>> it as if it were an affliction imposed from the outside
>>>> could only be illusory. Terrorism, in its absurdity and
>>>> meaninglessness, is society's verdict on - and
>>>> condemnation of - itself.
>>>> ____________________________________________________
>>>>
>>>> * Philosopher and author of The Spirit of Terrorism and
>>>> Requiem for the Twin Towers (Verso, New York, 2002); The
>>>> Perfect Crime (Verso, 1996) and The Gulf War Did Not Take
>>>> Place (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1995). This
>>>> article also appears in Power Inferno, Galilée, Paris ©
>>>> Éditions Galilée
>>>>
>>>> (1) You could say serious natural disasters are a form of
>>>> terrorism since, although they are technically classified
>>>> as accidents (such as Chernobyl), they may resemble
>>>> terrorism. In India, the Bhopal poison gas tragedy
>>>> (technically an accident) could have been terrorism. Any
>>>> terrorist group could claim responsibility for an
>>>> aviation accident. Irrational events can be attributed to
>>>> anyone or anything, so that, at the limit, we could see
>>>> anything as criminal, even cold weather or an earthquake.
>>>> There is nothing new about this: in the aftermath of the
>>>> 1923 Tokyo earthquake, thousands of Koreans were blamed
>>>> and killed. In a system as integrated as our own,
>>>> everything destabilises; everything seeks to undermine a
>>>> system that lays claim to infallibility. Given what we
>>>> are already undergoing because of the system's rational
>>>> grip, we may wonder if the worst catastrophe is the
>>>> infallibility of the system.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Translated by Luke Sandford
>>>
>>
>