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

[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.