SPECIAL TOPICS A ROUGH CHRONOLOGY OF JEAN BAUDRILLARD'S THOUGHTS ON THE WORLD (under construction) << BACK TO SPECIAL TOPICS PAGE | HOME | INDEX | CORE | TOPICS | QUIZ | BEYOND

~~k.i.s.s.~~
When you think of Baudrillard, think "simulation". A French intellectual, postmodern critic and most extreme (some would say whacked-out) proponent of postmodernity, Baudrillard looks at how our postmodern world is no longer real, but only a simulation of the real. He articulates his belief about simulations through his ideas on hyperreality, simulacra, and the mass media in our postmodern society (see below).

I.
Baudrillard (and other commentators who concentrate on the media as the main culprits behind postmodernism) would say that the media have become increasingly intense, both in terms of availability (TVs, VCRs, Walkmen, World Wide Web, etc.) and in terms of how culture comes to us.

• a) Baudrillard says that signs that used to represent things are drained of their meaning (hyperreality); the relation between signifying systems and reality can be very confusing (e.g., Waco, Texas).
  
• b) People lost faith in political representation in 1960s, but what about the representation crisis in cultural terms; Baudrillard's hyperreality is an example of this crisis.
  
• c) (From Prof. Diane Gromala, UW School of Communications.) Possibilities opened up by new media technologies hold that culture no longer copies the real but produces it. The real is an effect of television, computer screens, stereo headsets, Virtual Reality goggles, etc. There is no dialectic between image and reality, only signifying practices (as with Borges' famous map story -- see below).

II.
Baudrillard's world history of signs and signification:
a) In primitive symbolic cultures -- no elements of signification.
b) Later cultures began to show evidence of symbolic usage; a certain level of signification applied.
c) Mass society (late 19th century on) is dominated by the primacy of signs over other things.

This primacy of signs leads on to the development of simulation, the process whereby representations of things come to replace the things being represented. In other words, we think that the representations are more important than the "real". (See also the Borges entry to explain this further.)

III.
So, in the world of hyperreality:

1st order: Signs are thought of as reflecting basic reality.
2nd order: Signs mask reality.
3rd order: Signs mask the absence of reality.
4th order: Signs become simulacra - they have no relation to reality; pure simulation.

We therefore arrive at hyperreality at the end of these four stages; the sign replaces reality, or IS reality. For example, Madonna's "prayer" is either a sign masking the absence of reality (in this case, religiousness -- Baudrillard's 3rd order of signification); or it's all sign and no meaning (Baudrillard's 4th sign order). Objects that reach this fourth level of signification are called simulacra. The postmodern phenomenon of Spinal Tap, for example, is that the actors actually formed a band after the movie; a good example of a sign replacing reality (Baudrillard's 4th order of signification). So is the proliferation of bars in America, especially in airports, that look identical to the one in Cheers

Hyperreality also explains why Baudrillard proclaimed that "the Gulf War never happened."

If you accept Baudrillard's extreme position on poststructuralism and postmodernism, you are left with the conclusion that there is no absolute truth; only different versions of things.

IV.
Baudrillard's hypothesis of Mediatization:

a) Mediatization is the general process by which the transmission of symbolic forms becomes increasingly mediated by the technical and institutional apparatus of the media industries (Thompson):
b) Television is the central medium in this process.
c) Acceleration of media saturation has continued (e.g., "in car" entertainment, VCRs, Walkmen.)
d) The process leads to mediated quasi-interaction due to lack of real interaction betwen people.
e) Valorization - the process through which symbolic forms attain value; both symbolic value and economic value.

V.
Baudrillard puts the emphasis on discourse, rhetoric, etc. rather than substance and action. (E.g., The postmodern tendency to change the status of a college by changing its name rather than making substantive changes to courses, facilities, etc.) However, America isn't the only example of this trend, only the most advanced example.
In semiotic terms, signs have been severed from the object, idea, etc. and are now free floating signifiers.

VI.
Baudrillard's Marxian phase, 1970s.
His original belief was in the dominance of the "Consumer Society" of the 1970s (before his switch to postmodern theory), i.e.:

a) People who are well off live under the gaze of 'obedient objects,' and as individuals they become more functional under the objects' influence.
b) Commodities group themselves into systems of objects which is what we come to take seriously.
c) Things that used to make up life (work, leisure, nature, culture) are irreducible and produce anxiety. (They were constants which we can't control. They have been mixed and massaged into the "simple activity of perpetual "shopping".
Jean Baudrillard's views on consumption/shopping: "Man has become the object of science for man only since automobiles have become harder to sell than to manufacture."

In "The Ecstasy of Communication" Baudrillard argues that that the use value of commodities begins to be replaced by a sign value. (At this point, Baudrillard departs from traditional Marxism.)
His Marxian works are still important, however, because he shows that just as society and culture used to be organized around production, they are now organized around consumption. (E.g., "Credit is a disciplinary process which extorts savings and regulates demands" argues Baudrillard).

VII.
Baudrillard and economics.

Influenced strongly by economist John Kenneth Galbraith:

1) Galbraith still believes that some consumer needs are genuine, but Baudrillard goes further: "The systems of needs is the product of the system of production." In other words needs are separate from production but are part of the same process.
2) Baudrillard says that there is no distinction between genuine and fake needs and we should not link needs between one person and one object rather, that production needs consumption.
3) Baudrillard links compulsive shopping to the Protestant work ethic; if mass production is good then mass consumption must also be good. The drive for production must also create a drive for consumption.
4) Most economists believe that some needs are genuine and appropriate but where you draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate consumption is relative.

VIII.
Baudrillard and America:

In this work, Baudrillard uses America as an example of everything he talks about re. the media. For example:
1) Disneyland and America are one and the same. There is no "real" America outside Disneyland; the walls surrounding Disneyland are there to make people think that Disneyland is only a fantasy land, and there is a real America out there.
2) Watergate was presented as an example of the system righting itself, when in fact it's nothing more than Nixon being offered as a scapegoat and patsy to disguise the fact that the system hadn't changed.

More? Oh yes, and by the way, the Gulf War never happened. Baudrillard says so. It only existed in our simulated world, not in reality. (Think about how the abiding image -- or metaphor -- of the Gulf War is a video game, and you might see where he's going with that. More to come.)
11/97