Re: Baudrillard

["Ricardo Duchesne" <RDUCHESN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Date sent:      Wed, 14 Jan 1998 00:31:07 +0000
> Send reply to:  pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> From:           James Heartfield <James@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To:             pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:        Re: Baudrillard

Ricardo Duchesne:

>Nothing absurd about Baudrillard's analysis of the Gulf war. >

Hartfield:

> Wouldn't Baudrillard be disappointed with the judgement that his work
> was not absurd?

Yes, because he likes to push things to the extreme. As he says, "I
play out the end of things...It's a game, a provocation." But this
does not make his work foolish, silly, or ridiculous. He wants to take
certain tendencies in our consumer society to their end-point.



> > The war
> >was hardly "real" in that we merely experienced it through a
> >series of entangled simulated images
>
> Mediated is not the same as unreal. 180 000 Iraqis were killed in the
> initial raids. Tens of thousands more have died since as a result of the
> embargo on Iraqi oil, and the shortages of medicine and foodstuffs.


But that's not how we experienced the war; the images had no
relation to the war whatever, yet debated as if they were
authentic by the experts in TV.


> >...Callinicos is not to be
> >trusted on Baudrillard, or any postmodernist; he has yet to outgrow
> >the infantilism  of international revolution.
>
> Does postmodernism aim at maturity? I don't think so. Is it maturity to
> make peace with the United Nations continuing war against the Iraqi
> people, or to pretend that it is all spectacle?

This does not follow. My point was that Callinicos book on
postmodernism - in which he completely dismisses Baudrillard - should
be seen for what it is: a childish response to new reflections about
the world.

ricardo


> Fraternally
> --
> James Heartfield
>