Goddamn, I love Baudrillard

[wintermute84]

Mainly because he says things like this:

"Capital in fact has never been linked by a contract to the society it dominates. It is a sorcery of the social relation, and it is a challenge to society and should be responded to as such

Comments

[iblamexianity]

"By an unforeseen twist of events and an irony which no longer belongs to history, it is through the death of the social that socialism will emerge - as it is through the death of God that religions emerge."

So I'm reading this out of context of course, but it appears that, though I would infinitely prefer Baudrillard's take on it, society and religion infinitely reinforce &/or recreate each other and have throughout history. I mean, the Socialists/Communists in China and N. Korea 'killed' gods first thing by outlawing religion to bring about a socialist mentality, and our own gov't utilizes religion to mobilize the anomic populace. (Is anomic even a word? Like anemic but for anomie?) Anyway, it appears to me that these seem to cross lines (death of social --> birth of religion; death of god[s] --> birth of socialist group mentality).

But then again I'm sick as shit and hopped up on all kinds of cold medicines that are making things a little muddy -- besides only reading one sentence out of a zillion page treatise. Set me straight, Prof. Black!

I'd like to claim that the cold medicine has also made me incapable of understanding what Baudrillard means by 'parody' in society as well but methinks that would falsely flatter me.

[wintermute84]

Baudrillard is arguing, essentially, that groups in society construct an opposition in order to gain power. In some cases, they stage the death of something in order to prove that it exists. If God is dead, it means that he had to be alive at somepoint and so he exist(s)/(ed).

In socialist/communist states where they kill religion, a new god rises up in its place: the leader. Consider the Cult of Mao.

Its a long, convoluted argument, but the crux is that there is no difference between a truth and a lie if they have the same effect, if the lie produces the same result as if it were the truth. It doesn't matter whether our government allowed 9/11 to happen, had a hand in it, caused it, because the entire world is too busy trying to ferret out terrorism and bin Laden (Baudrillard has a book/essay on 9/11 out). The N. Korean nuclear crisis is another good example. Our government says has confirmed that they tested a nuke, but if they really didn't, and they just staged an explosion, its too late now: the world has reacted as if it really happened. N. Korea now has the attention of the world.

Or consider the Mongiardo/Bunning fiasco. It didn't matter whether Mongiardo was really gay or not (wouldn't have had an effect on his ability to govern, anyway), but because Bunning put the idea that he was gay out into the severly homophobic voting population, Mongiardo lost the vote outside of Louisville.