Baudrillard
First of all, this is not post modernism
Puppets Post Modern
Any who, I’d like to start this post by saying that Ken Rufo’s essay has been the easiest smoothest thing I’ve read since the beginning of the semester. And while I know that theories are complex things, and that giving specific examples to illustrate such complex things tends to simplify (and therefore confuse) our understanding of the theory as a whole; I still appreciate specific examples every once and a while. It’s kind of how I learned in every class I’ve ever had until this one. Any who, I’m glad I’m posting this after our class on Tuesday and our discussion of post modernism in relation to the Matrix, because I started writing this Sunday night and I wasn’t really thinking about it. I’d always wanted to know what the book Neo pulls his virus or program or whatever out of was about, though I’d never bothered to simply look it up. Which doesn’t bother me that much, because if I’d wikipedia’d it years ago knowing nothing about literary theory I would have had no idea what was. I really liked how Baudrillard analyzed critical theories as simply “new systems of exchange” and that they are (allegedly) just inventing new ideas and claiming that they were discovered and that they’ve been there all along. While I have thought this more than once during our discussions of theories, I always thought it was kind of rude to bring it up like that, but knowing that such an approach is actually a pretty legitimate insight, I’m a little proud of myself. Or at least I was until I tried to figure out what simulacra were and I was once again thrown into a horrible cloud of confusion. As Rufo breaks it down
(1) Simulations stand in for reality [and simulations are NOT the same thing as representations, we went over that] (2) Simulations begin to hide the absence of reality, and (3) Simulations produce their own reality, according to Baudrillard’s beliefs. I think my favourite example of this from class, and it helps that today is Halloween, is Salem MA. Salem has become the third stage of these steps, a simulation without an original, a simulacra. Yes, it is true that people who were accused of being witches were killed in Salem a long time ago. However, the actually meaning behind Salem, the idea of what Salem is supposed to be, has become lost to the point where the simulation of Salem has actually become what we think of when we think of Salem. And don’t get confused because people go there in costume pretending to be other people, I don’t mean simulation like that. Also, if anyone else feels like using Salem as an example (I find it quite appropriate) in our group effort to understand what a simulacra really is, please comment on my post so we can all try to figure it out.
Also, I read Borges’ short story about the map, and it helped. A little.
3 comments:
I really liked that part of Ken's post, too! The part where he is talking about how these critical theorists are just inventing new ideas and theories but aren't discovering. In a sense they are only creating illusions, right? They may think that is their reality, or reality in general, but it is only just an illusion.
Ryan, I think that you make a good point about the idea of simplifying postmodernism making an oxymoron of sorts, I think that the idea of theory is to think about how does the text twist and convolute our logic. I found ken's post to be more of a historicist or marxist point of view rather than post modern. Anyway, Nice post.
Brett
I like that Salem example too. Last time I was there, I was tempted to buy all sorts of t-shirts with bats and witches on them. Neither bats nor witches with brooms had anything to do with the witch trials. Halloween has taken over whatever we learned about Salem in history class When I go running about Salem in my costume, the history class part of Salem is completely absent.
But why not the forth stage?
Sigh, I want it to be Halloween again.
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