Navel-gazing...

[conversant]

... that's the term Jean Baudrillard is searching for in the following excerpt. Navel-gazing.

from A M E R I C A, by Jean Baudrillard (1986)
[Translated in 1988 by Chris Turner from the original in French, Amerique. Excerpt posted here.]

... This is echoed by the other obsession: that of being 'into', hooked in to your own brain. What people are

Comments

Part Three. (Oi!)

[conversant]

To circle back to the passage I first quoted (about word-processing and self-pleasuring academic writing), I'll have to concede that the reason I found it quotable is precisely because its critique is so soft and so generalised. Whatever malaise I was feeling about LJ-writing or about academe or about the general level of intellectual conversation in America (ouch!) resonated easily with his contemptuous views of American education and culture. The point is, and I was only really seeing this at first with regard to academe -- the field for which I might be supposed to be over-sensitive and prone to special pleading -- his argument really is specious because his points are entirely unsupported. He may or may not be broadly correct, but he doesn't do anything to prove that he is correct in his analysis. (Instead, he says "Pish" to analysis as a tatty, old humanist style.)

Thank goodness tomorrow is another day in the library reading 16th mss! No posturing theoreticians (French or otherwise) there, just good old fashioned, pre-Enlightenment sinners and their hypocritical judges. And I'll take that any day!

If you are feeling at all intrigued after all that, here's a link to the Wikipedia entry on Emperor Baudrillard.

Re: Three Parts. (Oi! yourself!)

[black_dog]

A three part response! You know, I would dance on my head, if I thought it would reliably generate three part responses from you. Fascinating stuff, all of it.

On Baudrillard -- I went and looked at the Wikipedia article, and then a longer piece by Douglas Kellner in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which seemed to be a measured take on B, though it subtly and amusingly undercuts the excesses and poses of his later thought. Corrections and supplementations from you, O Scholar! are welcome, but here is my sense of Kellner's evaluation:

Kellner gives B's early work credit as a serious contribution to sociology -- sort of Veblen + Mauss + Galbraith + Barthes, with new attention to the "sign-value" of consumer goods, and to the role of "extravagance, excess and display" in the consumer economy. Certainly a perfectly proper way to pass the time intellectually! Kellner also suggests that at the earliest stage of his work, B was significantly concerned with strategies for opting-out of this system, which sounds like a perfectly legitimate progressive project.

However, by the mid-70's B starts down a creepily Nietzchean path, where he increasingly celebrates this new "aristocratic" form of exchange, which disdains mere rational utility. B starts citing Bataille a lot, and condemns Marxist analysis as old-fashioned and narrow. Kellner has some wonderful moments of sly subversion, including a particularly tasty quote from this time-frame:

Marxism is therefore only a limited petit bourgeois critique, one more step in the banalization of life toward the ‘good use’ of the social! Bataille, to the contrary, sweeps away all this slave dialectic from an aristocratic point of view, that of the master struggling with his death.

Mid-life is tough, I guess. And from there, further reification of the apparently autonomous world of signs gives us the Baudrillard we know and love, the theorist of hyperreality and simulation. B's greatest hits during this period include: an elegy to the "permanent stagnation" represented by the Berlin Wall, which he published with uncanny timing in early 1989; the 1995 polemic The Gulf War Never Happened, and his consulting work on The Matrix.

Kellner gently suggests that this point in B's thought also represents the definitive break between B and the discipline of the academy. It is "difficult" to know, he suggests, "whether Baudrillard's last two decades of work is best read as science fiction or theory." He suggests that B should be seen as a provocateur and "intellectual performer," someone who takes trends in contemporary culture and exaggerates them into cautionary tales about possible futures.

So yeah, I think I'm a little creeped out by him, and your reaction suggests that this may be a sound instinct. I often wonder about the characters, the personal sensibilities, behind some of the more extravagant and nihilistic of the so-called "continental" philosophers. I mean, B's fantasy of an individual absolutely helpless to generate his own meaning seems inconsistent with the idea that someone (perhaps the bug-people from the Matrix?) is actually busy generating these clever and powerful signs. I'm just not sure what kind of abjectness he's enacting, here, you know?

[continued . . . ]

Re: Part Three. (Oi!)

[black_dog]

[ . . . continued]

In my very limited reading of this category of writer, I've also wondered, sometimes, about what seems like a barely repressed sense of nostalgia for an unwholesomely traditional world view that seems to lurk behind this sort of critique of "hyperreality." What, exactly is the loss that was so traumatic, that is being mourned so extravagantly? I can't help imagining it has something to do with the metaphysical certainties of priests and punishing fathers. And this of course can never be admitted outright, so the nostalgia is buried in layers of irony and obscurity, in a lame assertion that the tensions of the earlier, merely "modern" period at least had within them the seeds of a liberating project. But scratch a post-structuralist and I wonder if you won't often find a proto-fascist. I mean, the passage from America reminds me of Marinetti and the Italian futurists, who also liked to just get in a car and drive.

Anyway, these are scattered impressions, and I have to admit they're as "unearned" as anything I jumped on B for saying. But it's sort of interesting to hash through. Well, for me at least -- I may be imposing on your LJ, but I kind of hope you might be engaged by some of it. Which sort of circles us back to the whole idea of blogging, to the idea that it's inherently fun to make the effort to pin down and clarify thoughts and impressions that would otherwise flit into and out of your head, and to sort of send them out into the world and see if they strike any sparks.

(There's an implicit post here, for someone, about the blogosphere as a project that undermines Baudrillard's vision, as a realm where individuals can work and collaborate more pro-actively to create meanings testable against a shared reality. But I am not equal to writing it, and have blown quite enough smoke for one night.)

Anyway, I can definitely see the attraction of Baudrillard for an academic in a weary mood, at a passing moment when the professional manipulation of ideas seems a particularly empty activity. I suppose all professions have those moments. It's nice, as you say, to be called back to real, passionate human beings in all their messiness. And frankly, I would prefer the company of sinners and hypocrites to mere nihilists. :)

The Morning After

[conversant]

I love irony. Especially when it bites my ass.

How utterly appropriate that my little flail at the self-satisfying and ultimately useless gesture of spewing one's thoughts (mine or anyone's) onto a blog should (a) have found someone willing to engage seriously with my ideas and (b) should have made me realise that I hadn't really hoped for the post to attract attention. (I noted with a shudder of shyness that someone commented after being pointed here from some meta-fandom community -- which utterly serves me right for making the post and assuming that it would be ignored!) Most ironic of all is the fact that the event seems both to prove and disprove my point: [my own] blogging is often a gesture mostly meant to put [my] thoughts on a screen because writing them out helps formulate them and then preserves them, and in some cases that's the only hoped-for end or the only imagined end; on the other hand, blogging is public (if haphazardly so) and does on occasion elicit response in the form of serious discussion, which we might suppose is the proper aim of anyone who goes to the trouble of formulating an idea and then putting it into print.

In any case, thank you for the link to Kellner. Next time I straw-man some theorist I will do it with one for whom I have some resources to hand! (In the course of this discussion, we've also managed to illustrate the very uneven terrain of the web as a source of sound and well-written information -- me on the side of "Look at the self-interested websites put out by this guy's fans!" and you on the side of "Let's see if there's not some sounder critique available!")

I would be wholly behind the idea making it my project to undermine Baudrillard through my blogging, except that, like you, that would make for some wearying writing when it's really considerably more fun to blow smoke -- at least on occasion. Do you suppose this post should carry a surgeon general's warning? (I love it when you pop up in my comments, BD. I'm serious about that, at least.)

Re: The Case for Shamelessness

[black_dog]

*shakes head vigorously, in denial* I can't imagine that you have anything to feel bitten-in-the-ass-about, here. And I am terrified now that you will post fewer fascinating things on your LJ!

It's funny, I've continued to poke around Baudrillard-related websites for the past couple hours (I really, really should go to bed) and was just about to post a supplmental note to this thread, along the lines of "reading further . . . obviously I'm not even close to having a clue, here . . . but I guess you've got to start somewhere."

And you know, I really believe that. I think one of the preconditions of good conversation is just being comfortable with the provisional-ness of it, you know? Having the freedom to test and try on and reach for ideas and associations without being under pressure to construct an airtight demonstration of anything. (And also, for that matter, having the freedom to let the conversation peter out, or change direction, without any guilt about that.)

Anyway, it should be me who's embarassed for assuming that further bloviations on my part (after the first round) were strictly necessary. You're right, in this medium it's hard to know when people are in the mood for a back-and-forth and when they just want to let things percolate. Anyway I'm horrified by the thought that anything about my reply created any self-consciousness or (*shudder*) weariness. Sometimes, less is more!

Re: The Case for Shamelessness

[conversant]

Anyway I'm horrified by the thought that anything about my reply created any self-consciousness or (*shudder*) weariness.

No. The weariness came before the post -- and your replies woke me up. I always enjoy talking with you. Really. (Don't shy away from commenting because of anything I've said here! I'd feel bereft if you disappeared.)

No, the shy reaction came when I saw the post that came in via fandomdirectory. I had never considered that this particular something would get mentioned elsewhere and draw anyone new to this journal. My deer in the headlights reaction is a pretty good indication that I had no business lobbing a bomb about the utility of blogging!

I'm not feeling shamefaced anymore. Just amused at myself. And you are perfectly welcome to point and laugh if you like or add more thoughts (once you are awake again) if those thoughts have lingered. The happy accident of this post is that I've found the discussion interesting and have actually given some thought to things beyond the punishment of 16th c prostitutes and vagrants. I am off now to slog through as many more of those records as my eyes will tolerate. (Five hours seems to be the absolute maximum.)

Re: The Case for Shamelessness

[black_dog]

Well, that's good! I was worried, there. And I'll only point and laugh if you promise to do the same at me.

Enjoy your vagrants and prostitutes! And I'll go enjoy my colleagues and coworkers. After I fortify myself with some more tea, anyway. :)

Implicit politics

[conversant]

In my very limited reading of this category of writer, I've also wondered, sometimes, about what seems like a barely repressed sense of nostalgia for an unwholesomely traditional world view that seems to lurk behind this sort of critique of "hyperreality." What, exactly is the loss that was so traumatic, that is being mourned so extravagantly? I can't help imagining it has something to do with the metaphysical certainties of priests and punishing fathers. And this of course can never be admitted outright, so the nostalgia is buried in layers of irony and obscurity, in a lame assertion that the tensions of the earlier, merely "modern" period at least had within them the seeds of a liberating project. But scratch a post-structuralist and I wonder if you won't often find a proto-fascist. I mean, the passage from America reminds me of Marinetti and the Italian futurists, who also liked to just get in a car and drive.

I think you are right on track here, though I wonder if there's not another layer to peel from this onion. I'm not convinced that the nostalgia for a supposed golden age is an honest yearning for return to the ostensibly purer conditions of some conveniently unspecified earlier time: I sense that Baudrillard loves the license to play that "postmodernist methodology" (I'm making that term up) has handed him -- every bit as much as the futurists loved their cars and their machines. (I think that's a wholly apt connection, by the way.)

Re: Implicit politics

[black_dog]

Oh, that makes him seem even more of a carnival barker, doesn't it? So the subtext about a golden age is a part of the performance, a way of playing with the reader's head? Maybe it works by insinuating, in a patronizing way, that the reader, if he dissents, does so because of his own reactionary impulses? Gotta admire the showmanship of it! :)

Re: Implicit politics

[conversant]

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago (like, when he was alive!), Raymond Williams wrote a book called The Country and the City which contains a considerably smarter version of the critique of golden-age mythologising that I turned on Baudrillard. If I remember correctly (and it has been a long time since I read TCatC), Williams's bottom line is a confirmation of your observations: set your inner warning sirens to go off whenever a writer alludes wistfully to a former age when all was well with the world, because (a) that time never existed, and (b) that writer has a sinister, because unconfessed and actively obscured, political agenda with which he means to mislead you. It's a good rule of thumb, though I must admit that it means my inner sirens go off pretty much every time I hear a conservative politician pointing us back to the wonderful days when America was as grrrEAT! as frosted flakes (when children respected their elders and women didn't run for office, you remember it).

Re: Implicit politics

[black_dog]

Have you read Darrin McMahon's Enemies of the Enlightenment? One of the striking points he makes is that the reactionary Catholic program, developed "against" the Revolution, as a return to tradition, is every bit as modern, in the sense of being a consciously constructed, intellectuals' utopia, as anything the Enlightenment writers or revolutionary politicians came up with in the first place. "Tradition" is an amazingly malleable concept!

Speaking of scary utopias, we come to our conservative friends -- Bush's "Ownership Society," the CATO institute's ideas on giving people incentives to think like capitalists and become risk-takers (basically, um, by stripping away their safety net). Has there been a more conscious attempt to re-engineer human nature since Mao Zedong? Freedom is not a dinner party!