Jean Baudrillard

Hiperrealidad y simulacro: La crisis de la modernidad en “El muñeco”, de Virgilio Piñera

by Santiago Juan-Navarro

Forthcoming in Nuevas aproximaciones a la obra de Virgilio Piñera. Ed. Humberto López. Cruz. Madrid: Editorial Hispano Cubana, 2012.

Nietzsche a Wall Street

by daniele balicco

published in "www.leparoleelecose.it"

Nietzsche è stato, insieme a pochi altri pensatori classici, il punto di riferimento filosofico più importante per la... more Nietzsche è stato, insieme a pochi altri pensatori classici, il punto di riferimento filosofico più importante per la cultura teorica del secondo Novecento occidentale. Ma se è vero che i nomi dei filosofi sono poco più che metonimie, dove momentaneamente si cristallizzano e transitano flussi collettivi di pensiero , molto probabilmente non lo è stato per caso. La tradizione interpretativa francese che lo ha progressivamente trasformato in un polo magnetico generatore di vita teorica, di modelli esistenziali, di pratiche estetiche e di radicalismo politico, ha segnato a fondo gli ultimi tre decenni del Novecento e l’atmosfera teorica che ancora respiriamo. Il corpus di queste letture ha costruito un’egemonia. In questo scritto provo a ricostruirne le mosse teoriche fondamentali e la sua successiva metamorfosi statunitense.

Like a Kid in a Candy Shop: Truth and Discourse in DeLillo’s White Noise

by Beau Wuthrich

During the Enlightenment Period of the 19th Century, Immanuel Kant rejected the belief in the ability of the human... more During the Enlightenment Period of the 19th Century, Immanuel Kant rejected the belief in the ability of the human mind to understand the universe in its entirety with his Critique of Pure Reason. Kant’s claim was that human perception was in fact a unity of manifolds which determinately synthesized experience, binding the human subject into time, space and causality and separating him or her from the ontological, or “real” world. For Kant, there were aspects of the universe entirely indecipherable to and unintelligible by human subjects. Kant termed this transcendental spirit numen. In his breakout novel, White Noise, Don DeLillo explores Kant’s numen and the role it plays in the postmodern age. The perceptions of DeLillo’s characters reflect a certain detachment from and estrangement to the world of the objective. In this era, it is the signs and symbols man has created for himself which transcend and override the ontological cosmos and in effect replace it, attaining a higher order of valence for the individual. For DeLillo’s protagonist, Jack Gladney, the antithesis of this world of Baudrillardian simulacra is the abyss, death, the intangible and unsignafiable state of human consciousness. Death is a state of non-existence, hostile and intangible to the psyche; in other words, the perfect historical expression of Kant’s undetected numen or, as allegorized by Jack’s son Heinrich via scientific narrative, the invisible “neutrinos [that] go right through the earth” (DeLillo, 34), imperceptible “waves and radiation” (38). DeLillo’s novel gestures toward the authoritative systems and structures erected to barricade humanity against death: the abstract and discursive institutions Mark Conroy describes as the “master narratives of cultural transmission in Jack Gladney's universe: the familial, the civic, the humanist and the religious” (“From Tombstone to Tabloid.” 97), or, to use a more concrete example, the psychically-invested dams against death, the Pyramids of Giza or the Great Wall of China invested in by their dead erectors (DeLillo, 159). The rising question relates to the actual nature of truth and whether there truly is a Real-Real to go back to.

Meeting God in the Sound: The Seductive Dimension of U2’s Future Hymns

by Deane Galbraith

in Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now. Ed. Mike Grimshaw. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

How have U2 achieved popular and economic success in a music industry which, on the face of it, is not terribly... more How have U2 achieved popular and economic success in a music industry which, on the face of it, is not terribly receptive towards pop-stars who like to write hymns and - as on their U2 360 tour - build cathedrals? This paper examines the role played by U2’s emphasis on the formal, mystical, and experiential aspects of their music, and how that emphasis coincides with a religious trend which since at least the 1960s can be located throughout the arts, popular music, and—in a perhaps surprising association—charismatic and evangelical Christianity. To do so, the paper concentrates on the manner in which the sonic fabric of U2's 2009 album No Line On The Horizon is subtly interwoven with Christian hymns, in ways that are suggestive, evocative, and usually highly ambiguous. When—as often in U2 songs—the song’s seductive form takes priority over the production of content, and evocation takes precedence over precise meaning, U2 manage to open up a space for what, to many listeners affected by a prevalent neo-Romanticism, will count as a spiritual experience.

Encuentros íntimos

by Natalia Velázquez Luna

Ensayo para estética y filosofía del arte en el que se tratan tres categorías estéticas encontradas en la pornografía:... more Ensayo para estética y filosofía del arte en el que se tratan tres categorías estéticas encontradas en la pornografía: lo obsceno, lo erótico y lo decadente.

Paroxytonic Postmodernity in Don DeLillo's Underworld.

by Zuzanna Ladyga

In publication. An article in Polish about technological discourse in Don DeLillo's _Underworld_

Semiotica y signo del objeto

by Diana Monroy-García

Documento de trabajo sobre teoría del signo en Jean Baudrillard

En este escrito retomaré sólo la etapa translingüística,  y específicamente el apartado “el objeto como parte de... more En este escrito retomaré sólo la etapa translingüística,  y específicamente el apartado “el objeto como parte de un sistema”  en el que Cid Jurado presenta como principal exponente al filósofo francés Jean Baudrillard, reflexión que complementaré haciendo referencia a los textos Crítica de la economía política del signo, y Las estrategias fatales de Baudrillard.

An impossible future: John Perry Barlow's' Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace'

by Aimée Morrison

Joker - en postmoderne udforskning af videnskabelig identitet

by Katrine Lindvig

http://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/studerende-kan-finde-faglig-identitet-ved-familiefesten

- Hvordan skaber studerende fra nye universitetsuddannelser videnskabelig identitet?

Dette spørgsmål er... more - Hvordan skaber studerende fra nye universitetsuddannelser videnskabelig identitet?

Dette spørgsmål er udgangspunktet for denne postmoderne udforskning af, hvordan universitetsstuderende og kandidater i forskellige sammenhænge uden for universitetets officielle rammer, skaber identitet relateret til deres uddannelse. Undersøgelsen bygger på interviews med studerende, kandidater og studieledere fra fagene Performance Design og Sundhedsfremme og Sundhedsstrategier på Roskilde Universitet, og peger på, at videnskabelig identitet ikke er en færdig pakke, som følger med universitetsuddannelsen
- det er noget, der løbende skabes og ændrer sig, på baggrund af de fortællinger, de studerende skaber om deres uddannelse.

Translating the Hyperreal (Or How The Office Came to America, Made Us Laugh, and Tricked Us into Accepting Hegemonic Bureaucracy)

by Brian Ekdale

Co-Authored with Paul Booth. In American Remakes of British Television: Transformations and Mistranslations," Lexington Press, 2011.

The Office stands as one of the most popular “translations” of a British television show to American audiences. The... more The Office stands as one of the most popular “translations” of a British television show to American audiences. The British Office garnered scores of awards during its two year run; the American Office is currently one of the most popular sitcoms on American television and a key component of NBC’s Thursday night. There are many similarities between the two shows. Both use similar styles of humor: an uneasy, passive-aggressive and sometimes horrifyingly uncomfortable (albeit often realistic) humiliation of many of the characters. Additionally, both shows follow the exploits of a socially awkward boss, a subservient and obsequious second-in-command, and a good natured office “drone” who becomes, in a roundabout way, the audience’s hero. Further, both shows utilize a “documentary” style of shooting, so that the characters are aware of the TV crew, and the cameras become characters in their own right.

Yet, tellingly, the translation of the show from Britain to America also leaves much out. By focusing on the characters of Gareth (in the British Office) and Dwight (in the American), we use a reading of Baudrillard’s simulacra to investigate how the documentary-style of the show affects the humor, which in turn sets a symbolic reading of the show. In this paper, we examine the uses of humor in the two shows to describe how both function within a bureaucratic society: namely, we conclude the British version uses a shock-realism to mock the status quo/ hegemonic bureaucracy while the American show uses an ironic wink/wink to the audience to exaggerate the status/quo. But in doing so, the American Office actually reinforces its hegemonic bureaucracy, effectively negating any of the subversiveness of the British version.

Baudrillard: L’accidente e la catastrofe

by antonio caronia

Pubblicato in Liberazione, 8 marzo 2007.

Financial Literacy: Neoliberalism, the Consumer and the Citizen

by Chris Arthur

JEAN BAUDRILLARD VE SİMÜLASYON KURAMI

by M.Yiğit ERSOYDAN

Jean Boudrillard; postmodern dünyanın seyrinin, kapitalist piyasa koşulları ile ne kadar uyumlu geliştiği gerçeğini... more Jean Boudrillard; postmodern dünyanın seyrinin, kapitalist piyasa koşulları ile ne kadar uyumlu geliştiği gerçeğini deşifre edebilmiş en önemli isimlerden biridir. "SİMÜLASYON KURAMI" ile, sanat alanlarını da içine alan NESNELER DÜNYASI" nın kodlarını açıkça ortaya koyan önemli bir düşünürdür. Bugün farkına pek varılmamış olsa da, yakın gelecekte ulaştığı kitle mutlak artacaktır.

The end of the old flesh: beastly bodily becomings as contemporary parable

by JD Taylor

Presented at "The End of..." Conference, University of Kent, 22 January 2012.

In 1981 Gilles Deleuze read in Francis Bacon's paintings a 'zone of the indiscernible' between man and animal. Bacon's... more In 1981 Gilles Deleuze read in Francis Bacon's paintings a 'zone of the indiscernible' between man and animal. Bacon's figures spasm through their wounded architectures, screams erupting as destabilised bodies attempt to escape their figurations. This paper develops this zone of the indiscernible to explore how human flesh has become a medium for representations of the end. In David Cronenberg's Videodrome [1983], a dark psychological conspiracy places the flesh under suspicion of suggestible media-corruption, as Max Renn transcends to abstracted data by orgiastically abandoning the old flesh.

Against the knowing futurism of Videodrome, this paper compares Charles Burns' Black Hole comic-book series [1995-2005], which uses the grotesque contagious corruption of teenage flesh as a dark analogy for growing up and loss of innocence in the haunted spaces of late 20th century  Americana. Overtly Freudian, the rich contrasts of Burns' work introduces the becoming-monstrous and the eruption of contagion which racks modern American anxieties about the ending of the human, most familiar in recent zombie narratives. Taking a parallel track, in both accounts beastly becomings are played out on the flesh to mark internal turmoil whilst offering two directions for a contemporary bestiary of our culture. Whilst Burns offers a pessimistic Quietism and submission to the mysterious disease, Cronenberg's narrative alternatively calls to end the old flesh and embrace the possibilities of cybertechnology. Baudrillardian pessimism is spliced with 'biopunk' subcultures alongside Eugene Thacker's theoretical forays into life as the 'unthinkable' (2010, 2011) to finally ascertain why anxieties over life, technology and the end continue to play on a corrupted flesh. Does power embody itself through a zombified life, or will the skin continue to subvert and revolt against human (and posthuman) machinations?

Notes from underground car-parks: cynicism and the non-places of research

by JD Taylor

Presented at the Unfinished Business: Undoing Cultural Studies conference on 5th June 2011, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Marc Augé's description of the 'non-place' continues to enjoy academic popularity as a description of how paradigmatic... more Marc Augé's description of the 'non-place' continues to enjoy academic popularity as a description of how paradigmatic spaces of neoliberal capitalism – malls, airports, hotels, car-parks and other public sites – deprive users of agency or identity. The term 'negative capitalism' is developed here to explore this problem of negativity increasingly preoccupying cultural studies, of how time, space and agency are negated by the speeds and digitisation of new hand-held technologies, of the continuous labour-precarity of 'non-stop inertia' (Southwell 2011), or a fatalistic denial of even the radical or redemptive possibilities of the future (Fisher 2009). With citizens privatised into customers, and politicians increasingly becoming business agents for hire, a certain cynicism and negativity has become embedded into leading cultural studies research, leading to an almost Fideistic return to a Hegelian Leninism in Zizek, Hallward, Badiou and others.

This paper identifies this trend of negativity within neoliberal capitalism and contemporary responses to it within academic discourse, and considers its effects and significance in a contemporary climate of malaise and resistance. Though the modern non-place reduces workers to a 'solitary contractuality' (Augé 1997), Ballard's recent Kingdom Come (2007) offers a perspective in how non-places satisfy embedded desires for security and social cohesion. Questioning these loaded terms brings contemporary critical theorists into confrontation with popular cultures, where using shopfront churches, urban music and recent TV programmes like Misfits and Benidorm, various possibilities of reclaiming the 'non-place' are considered. Is this negativity instead a symptom of academic isolation from surrounding communities and cultures, an effect itself of increasing demands of academic labour? Or can accounts of the 'non-place' be located in a wider cultural cynicism that passively accedes to the 'rules' of negative capitalism rather than its 'facts' (Virno 2004), criticising socio-economic and cultural phenomena without engaging in any attempt to establish an alternative space or positivity? Finally, a strategy of resisting neoliberal negative capitalism is outlined through a defence of the public, aiming fundamentally to stimulate conversations over how interdisciplinary research can overcome its despair and face the Gorgon, without turning to stone.

The Fourth Estate in the USA and UK: Discourses of truth and power

by Jesse Hearns-Branaman

unpublished PhD thesis

This thesis examines the ways in which political journalists in the USA and UK talk about issues of truth and power as... more This thesis examines the ways in which political journalists in the USA and UK talk about issues of truth and power as it relates to journalism’s role as the Fourth Estate. The theoretical basis comes from a critique of the two major structures underpinning the Fourth Estate, that of epistemology (the study of truth) and ideology (broadly, the study of power and ideas). This involves unpacking and critically examining the ability of news media to convey ‘true’ information and the ideological formations in which the news media production practice is situated. The epistemological theories of Realism, Pragmatism, Antirealism and Hyperrealism will first be elucidated in an in-depth theoretical discussion, focusing on the contributions of Baudrillard. Four major theories of ideology, that of personal ideological bias, chaos, control, and ideology as fetishistic disavowal will be examined, this time focusing on the work of Žižek.
This theoretical discussion is complimented by an analysis of interview questions relating to epistemological concerns and to ideology. The empirical data consists of twenty interviews conducted with political correspondents in the USA and UK. A version of critical discourse analysis is used to examine the ways in which journalists talk about the issues raised by the questions, what is termed their ‘discursive strategies.’ The categories for analysis are grounded in the discursive strategies used by the journalists themselves, examined to elaborate not simply the explicit content, but the deeper implicit meanings inherent in the way they answer.
This provided both an original theoretical discussion and an original set of empirically-derived data. It also allows us to further understand the role of journalism as the Fourth Estate, the types of ‘truth’ it brings to us, the types of ideologies that underpin the news production process via news media professionals, and how the system is maintained despite its inherent contradictions.

The Simulacra, the Simulation and the Subtext: A Literary Criticism of Socrates's Phaedrus & Baudrillard's Precession of the Simulacra

by Elizabeth Sarobhasa

The art of a simulacrum is to feign what one does not possess. The non-existing qualities instead create an... more The art of a simulacrum is to feign what one does not possess. The non-existing qualities instead create an unintended, opposing reaction: a gnomon, a shape or presence defined by its absence (Maus). However, the art of letters defines the knowledge of truth, as a subtext.  Itself, knowledge is defined as “...that has been gained for utilization and common purposes, means, sense... the result of perception and learning and reasoning (i).”  A rational mind can gain knowledge from either a stimuli (the copied experience) or from a written letter device (the subtext). Therefore, it is possible to share knowledge of one aspect of the simulacrum without the subtext, and vice versa. 

"Deconstructing Ostalgia - the National Past between Commodity and Simulacrum in Wolfgang Becker’s Goodbye Lenin! (2003)"

by Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy

Journal of European Studies, June 2011; vol. 41, 2: pp. 161-177.

Using Wolfgang Becker’s film Good Bye Lenin!, this paper analyses the phenomenon of Ostalgia through the lens of Jean... more Using Wolfgang Becker’s film Good Bye Lenin!, this paper analyses the phenomenon of Ostalgia through the lens of Jean Baudrillard’s theories on simulation and simulacra. It argues that Becker’s film deconstructs the nostalgic transformation and commodification of the socialist national past in the post-communist age by exposing the deep collective needs to which this phenomenon responds. Confronted with the ideological dominance of Western ideology after 1989, the characters in the film struggle to render their own past relevant by creating alternative personal and collective narratives hinting at how the core of one’s identity is intrinsically bound to both personal memory and to the collective past that frames this personal memory.

The Egyptian Revolution Did Not Take Place: On Live English Television coverage by Al Jazeera

by Jesse Hearns-Branaman

In this essay I critically examine the Egyptian revolution through my experience watching it via the Al Jazeera... more In this essay I critically examine the Egyptian revolution through my experience watching it via the Al Jazeera English live stream for many hours per day (8 to 12) for most of the days between January 29 and February 12, 2011, intertwining my observations with Daniel Boorstin’s concept of pseudo-events (1961), Jean Baudrillard’s notions of reality TV and the simulacral nature of live television (1978), and Slavoj Žižek’s concepts of objective and subjective violence (2008), all in the spirit of Baudrillard’s seminal series of essays on his experience watching the Gulf War, 'The Gulf War Did Not Take Place' (1991).

Toward a Reconceptualization of Needs in Classrooms: Baudrillard, Critical Pedagogy, and Schooling in The United States

by Zachary Casey

In this paper I review Marx’s (1990) conceptions of use value and exchange value before turning to Baudrillard’s... more In this paper I review Marx’s (1990) conceptions of use value and exchange value before turning to Baudrillard’s (1981) critique of both in the capitalist construction of needs. I then use Baudrillard’s conception of the ‘system of needs’ to identify how this same process works in schools and classrooms. Namely, how students become conceptualized as commodities and how schools as the sites in which these commodities are produced become complicit with capitalist social reproduction. Finally, I take up the pedagogical project of redefining (humanizing) needs in a critical pedagogy that is decidedly anti-capitalist, while accounting for the various structural mechanisms in place in our present school system within the United States that work against such a critical pedagogy.