<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><HTML DIR=ltr><HEAD><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"></HEAD><BODY><DIV><FONT face='Arial' color=#000000 size=2>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>I’m still stunned by some of this discussion. I honestly thought that
with the general availability of Baudrillard’s work in translation these days
that a better understanding of his work might exist. Again and again the same
comments keep appearing –Baudrillard offered no hope, he had no programme for
change, he saw no possibility of change, he ignored power/politics/the poor etc.
so what do you expect? All we can do is smile at him and shrug …</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>In fact Baudrillard’s career is best understood as an attempt to develop
both an escalating analysis of the operation of the western semiotic system and
the forms of social control that produce and govern us today and a similarly
escalating analysis of those symbolic forms that he argues shadow the system,
irrupt within it or through it or arise from external sources – his names for
these changed but included the symbolic, symbolic exchange, seduction, reversal,
the fatal, evil, the singularity etc. Baudrillard never gives up hope (in fact
that might be a better critique of his work – his tendency always to find that
glimmer…), and he pursued his hope of something fighting the semiotic in
the form of his work (in his own theoretical methodology – in his writing and
its different strategies), in the content of his work (in his analysis of forms
such as the masses, processes such as terrorism, and events such as the Gulf War
or western globalisation etc.) as well as in practices he favoured (such as
photography). He wasn’t a Marxist and his rejection of the ‘gold standard’,
referential real of the proletariat and their revolution means that a lot of
critics didn’t see what he was doing but he looked for and continually found
modes and processes of reversal. A lot of the reason why many people miss this
in him is because they don’t realise it’s there because they’re too busy
focusing upon the first part of his analysis – of simulation. Too few people
have paid attention to the symbolic, its meaning in his work, its critical
function and its practical efficacy. Just focusing on simulation means you
mistake him for an apolitical, nihilistic celebrant. Marx described capitalism
but it didn't make him a capitalist. Baudrillard may describe simulation
...</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman">I also saw the earlier post which involved a critique of
Baudrillard’s book '<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
/><st1:country-region><st1:place>America'</st1:place></st1:country-region>. It’s
not that important a book in his oeuvre but I do wonder if we’ve been reading
the same book. All that stuff about <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>‘Baudrillard in reality gives vent to the
deep hostility he feels towards the common people. They simply do not exist in
his book’ etc. is hornswoggle. The entire critique advanced in the post is a
typical product of its time – a petty and prett smug assault on what Baudrillard
represents to the writer and their own feelings about his claimed postmodernism
and European and intellectual status etc. rather than what he wrote in that
book.The book itself bears little relation to what's being said about it. Just
go to the chapter ‘The End of US Power?’ and you’ll find a major discussion (see
especially p. 112-13 of the verso translation) of the disenfranchisement of the
poor with the turn to new right political and economic policies in the early
1980s. His critique of this systematic withdrawal of interest from entire
sections of society is superb (‘entire swathes of the population are falling
into oblivion, being totally abandoned…’) and his description of the process as
an ‘ex-communication’ is spot on – reworking a religious concept in the light of
what it means in a communications-based society to develop a powerful
Durkheimian critique of the desocialisation of the poor and the withdrawal of
even that simulation of participation he saw consumerism as offering when he
wrote about it in ‘The Mirror of Production’. Baudrillard didn’t see the common
people…? Nah, people don’t see Baudrillard. </FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"></FONT></FONT> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman">On the day of his funeral, I'll defend him against
all-comers.</FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"></FONT></FONT> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman">William Merrin</FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Dept of Media and Communication Stuides</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>University of Wales, Swansea</FONT></P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>