Abstract
Abstract By comparing Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and Baudrillard through the lens of a study of the notion of withdrawal in Heidegger’s tool analysis and “The Question Concerning Technology”, this article explores the extent to which an Object-Oriented Baudrillard is possible, or even necessary. Considering an OOO understanding of Mauss’s gift-exchange, a possible critique of duomining in Baudrillard and a revision of Baudrillard’s understanding of art, the prospects of a new reading of Baudrillard and interpretation of OOO’s genealogy are established. These lines of comparison qualify the role of withdrawal in Baudrillard and symbolic exchange for OOO, and lead towards the conclusion that an Object-Oriented Baudrillard is possible, but may not, conversely, be considered necessary.
Highlights
By comparing Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and Baudrillard through the lens of a study of the notion of withdrawal in Heidegger’s tool analysis and “The Question Concerning Technology”, this article explores the extent to which an Object-Oriented Baudrillard is possible, or even necessary
We have at first two surface-level similarities between Heidegger’s understanding of the practical utility of the tool as always belonging to “a totality of useful things,” where “useful things always are in terms of their belonging to other useful things,” and Baudrillard’s theories of the system of objects and sign-exchange in his earlier philosophy.[2]
It is worth reinstating the prior analysis with the claim that this crucial comparison exists in terms of the analysis of withdrawal and the possibility of reading symbolic exchange as a kind of withdrawal, one where a thing is not exhausted by its sensual effects, but rather is withdrawn or “returns.” This builds on and challenges the initial possible comparison between the system of objects, sign-exchange and Heidegger’s handiness with a more sophisticated comparison with symbolic exchange
Summary
Assessing the possible comparison between Heidegger and the philosophy of Baudrillard, the toolanalysis employed by Heidegger’s Being and Time seems the most valuable place to start, having what Harman considers an “undeniably important place in Heidegger’s philosophy” and being arguably the. Where things are not exchanged in terms of some general equivalent (as in sign-exchange), but rather in terms of a kind of functional act, which exhausts the ritual object and returns the excess to “nature.” We can see this exemplified in how Baudrillard views the “symbolic function” of primitive societies as “articulated not through the law of the Father [...] but from the outset through a collective principle, through the collective movement of exchanges.”[11] There is no pre-existing equivalent or schema under which things can continually exchange and shift without some element that withdraws, and any specific primitive exchange cannot be merely equivalent (identical) to another This specificity mirrors Heidegger’s claim that in the practical role of his tool analysis, “the work to be produced is not just useful for...; production itself is always a using of something for something,” in other words, a specific function within which its sensual effects are exhausted with no remainder.[12] An important exemplar of this can be found in the forms of symbolic giftexchange discussed by Marcel Mauss, and the specific outline of the value of this comparison for Heidegger and OOO will be addressed later. A closer analysis of this will be the primary focus of the few sections and will allow us to develop the speculative outlines of a possible Object-Oriented Baudrillard
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