Baudrillard Research Articles

Beyond the Screen #nofilter

This video essay explores the tension between contemporary spectatorship of documentary films and its ethical implications. I use Michael Glawogger's 2011 documentary Whores' Glory as a point of departure to address positions by Jean Baudrillard and Susan Sontag.

Imagining New York City: Literature, Urbanism, and the Visual Arts, 1890–1940The Language of Vision: Photography and Southern Literature in the 1930s and After

Imagining New York City: Literature, Urbanism, and the Visual Arts, 1890–1940The Language of Vision: Photography and Southern Literature in the 1930s and After

Confluences: of war porn and nationalism, at the limits of memory

ABSTRACTThis short article explores the suggestive and complicated genre of ‘war porn’ as first described by Jean Baudrillard in his now-famous essay from Libération. I attempt to situate the genre within the context of South Asia, and specifically of India, to undergird a conversation regarding nationalism and the ways by which violence – its production, mediation, circulation, and subsequent consumption – becomes promulgated, particularly when we consider the violation of others. How does understanding its mediation become central to an understanding of how this violence becomes enacted and how does a discussion about ‘war porn’ facilitate a better comprehension of such conceptual frameworks as nationalism, religious fundamentalism, historical memory, and the problematic construction of the figure of the other – these are some of the queries that will be examined here. Furthermore, I also explore how the virtual mediation of violence participates in the ongoing perpetuation of the violation of others as much as the very real acts of violence themselves.

De(Re)Constructing Narratives in Intellectual Property Law: Transformative Play, Culture Jamming, and Poststructural Disruptions

In his critique of consumption, Jean Baudrillard contends that the consumer no longer relates to a particular object in its specific utility, but to a set of objects in its total signification. Thus, increasingly, when consumers make their purchases, they do not simply select goods and services purely for their functional or utilitarian values, but are buying into the significations of these commodities in the construction of their self-identities. Objects of intellectual property (IP), in particular copyrighted works, trademarks and the celebrity personality, represent far more than a bundle of legal rights. They are invariably associated with a set of cultural narratives and semiotic meanings which are ultimately consumed. A well-known literary or artistic work does much more than simply educate, inform or entertain; it also functions as a signifier of a set of signified meanings. A trademark does not only designate the source or origin of goods. Famous brands like Louis Vuitton, Apple and Nike possess particular configurations of meanings that offer peculiarly powerful affirmations of belonging and recognition in the lives of their customers worldwide. Celebrities, whose identities may be protected against commercial appropriation by the right of publicity, have become common points of reference for millions of individuals who may never interact with one another, but who have, by virtue of their participation in a mediated culture, a shared experience and a collective memory. This essay explores how the encoded narratives in certain objects of IP may be read as polysemous texts that invite playful semiotic recodings, culture jamming and poststructural disruptions. It also suggests how audiences who engage with works of copyright, trademarks and celebrities via such textual signification may avail themselves of a number of legal defences under the current legal regime.

“If you can’t tell, does it matter?” Westworld, the murder of the real, and 21st century schooling

The HBO series, Westworld, challenges our notions about what might be real. As such, the series provides a provoking platform for exploring an oft—neglected topic in contemporary education-the fetishization of technology and the murder of the real in Jean Baudrillard's sense. Current educational systems in Canada and the United States (and elsewhere) depend on an outmoded commitment to a world in which reality is assumed to be unobscured, but Westworld provides a provocative platform to renegotiate this assumption. There are consequences for a world in which simulacra have displaced the real, and these need to be explored in the context of education and beyond.

Authenticity in Contemporary Theatre and Performance: Make it Real by Daniel Schulze

Reviewed by: Authenticity in Contemporary Theatre and Performance: Make it Real by Daniel Schulze Nicole Dietze Authenticity in Contemporary Theatre and Performance: Make it Real. By Daniel Schulze. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017. Cloth $88.00, Paper $39.95, eBook $35.95. 296 pages. In a culture dependent on manufactured objects and mediated experiences, audiences thirst for authenticity. This is the premise of Authenticity in Contemporary Theatre and Performance: Make it Real, which examines contemporary audiences’ desire for truthful experiences and the unconventional methods artists use to deliver those experiences. Schulze argues that the demand for authenticity within the obviously contrived realm of theatrical performance demonstrates that a new “structure of feeling” (a term borrowed from Raymond Williams) is emerging. Schulze engages with theatrical practice by examining productions that either claimed to achieve authenticity or challenged such notions, drawing from his experiences as an audience member to detail a substantial body of productions mounted in the United Kingdom during the last two decades. Paying particular attention to works by Forced Entertainment and Punchdrunk, Schulze connects his from-the-audience field notes with extant theory on authenticity in the theatrical experience. In the first of five chapters, Schulze draws on theories by Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, and Fredric Jameson to firmly establish authenticity as a cultural phenomenon, one which emerged as a concept in Greek antiquity, came into demand during the European Renaissance, and grew into the current post-postmodern structure of feeling evident in British theatre. Through Wolfgang Funk, Robin van den Akker, and Timotheus Vermeulen, Schulze then argues that postmodernism, with its “irony, detachment and pastiche,” is being supplanted by desires for “telos, engagement and closure” (2). He refers to this post-postmodernism as “Metamodernism,” a “shorthand if you will, to describe the current state of affairs” on this side of industrialization (2). The second chapter, on intimate theatre, examines the work of Forced Entertainment, a company that alters the audience-performer relationship through “experimental and non-hierarchical” approaches, including audience involvement (68). Schulze discusses precisely how particular productions have attempted to achieve authenticity. He begins with Forced Entertainment’s 1996 Showtime, which opened with an actor greeting the spectators: “An audience likes to sit in the dark and watch other people do it” (71). Accusations of voyeurism turned the performance into an authentic political event, Schulze claims, with the audience “struggling . . . to find their own, individual place in the system called theatre” (76). He frames this analysis using Jacques Ranciere’s “emancipated spectator” concept, as well as Brechtian and Artaudian theories. He also analyzes Forced Entertainment’s The Coming Storm, Speak Bitterness, and Quizoola!, at times questioning whether their [End Page 116] barrier-breaking and intimacy-invoking strategies provide the truthful experiences audiences seek, or merely well-delivered simulacrums. Drawing largely on Josephine Machon’s work on visceral performance, the chapter on immersive theatre pays particular attention to the work of Punchdrunk, “the game-changing company who’ve done more to catapult [immersive theatre] into the heart of our culture than any other” (166). After introducing the form’s approaches and aesthetic strategies (including non-theatrical playing spaces where audiences interact corporeally with the set, props, and actors), Schulze provides critiques by Alice Jones and Gareth White, who question the use of tactics that destabilize audiences’ boundaries. Schulze then narrates his own experiences at Punchdrunk’s The Masque of the Red Death and The Drowned Man. His accounts illuminate how the productions blurred the boundaries between authenticity and theatricality; for instance, during The Masque, the smell of wax burning caused him “to lose track of theatricalities, such as spotlights or sound emanating from somewhere” (169), effectively immersing him in the performance. The chapter on documentary theatre is similarly well-organized into an introduction of the origins and definitions of “DT,” aesthetic strategies of the genre, and several case studies. Schulze is dubious about DT’s claim to authenticity, despite its source material originating in “the real world” (199). He assesses productions that adhered to the genre’s claims to authenticity by right of facticity (Talking to Terrorists, Stuff Happens, and Black Watch), and contrasts those with productions that challenged notions of authenticity and facticity (Enron, Taking Care of Baby...

Laozi and Truman: A Hyperrealist Perspective

This paper will use the concept of hyperreality to compare the so-called ideal state described by ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi with the world of The Truman Show. The concept of hyperreality is defined by Jean Baudrillard as the generation by models of a real without origin or reality. A hyperreal world is a simulation, or kind of a copy without its original. It is generally accepted, and confirmed by Baudrillard himself, that the world of The Truman Show is hyperreal. In order to compare Laozi’s ideal state with the world of the film, this paper will give a hyperrealist interpretation of the former, which will be only hypothetical, without intending to substitute any other existing interpretations. Laozi imagines that people live simple lives, with few desires and without traveling to other places. If we accept that the ideal state is a hyperreal world, we can make comparison between the two worlds; find out their similarities, as well as differences.

Reworking the postmodern understanding of reality through fantasy in M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water (2006) and Neil Jordan’s Ondine (2009).

In the two feature films Lady in the Water (2006) and Ondine (2009), M. Night Shyamalan and Neil Jordan, respectively, present us with two grounded-in-reality fairy tales whose two male protagonists come in close contact with two mythical water creatures – encounters that positively reshape their perspective on reality through the use of fantasy. Shyamalan relates the story of an emotionally wrecked middle-aged man who rescues a ‘narf’ (a water nymph in an unoriginated ancient bedtime story) from the pool of the dreary building he is superintending, while Jordan follows the ordeal of a struggling Irish fisherman who accidentally fishes a ‘selkie’ (a Celtic seal-like water creature that has the power to assume full human form on land by shedding its seal skin). The two films negotiate the problematic connection between the fantastic and the real, and question the postmodern concept of representations masking an absence of solid reality as proposed by Jean Baudrillard. The paper focuses on tracing the ontological and linguistic role of fantasy in relation to reality and delineates how acts of storytelling and representation can refashion the human psyche’s perception of reality in a postmodern world by analysing the narrative and psychological means by which this relation is constructed in Shyamalan’s and Jordan’s films. The main argument of the paper is to explore how employing metafictional narrative techniques and reworking the psyche’s ties to fantasy can offer the postmodern individual a more enabling understanding of themselves and their reality.

The Digital Griotte: Bessora’s Para/Textual Discourses on Identity Politics and Neocolonialism in Contemporary France

This article examines Bessora’s literary and digital criticism of postcolonial France, particularly in her first novel, 53 cm, and on her website, Tendre peau de vache. Bessora’s use of digital media in particular allows her to chronicle unofficial discourses on immigration, migration, and identity politics in France as alternative textual productions to her printed novels. Since there is a gap in academic studies regarding author websites and their contents, this study aims to start a conversation on the discursive function of an author’s digital textual productions. Following Jean Baudrillard’s theory in The Spirit of Terrorism according to which a terrorist act is successful when it distances itself from the real and exalts itself in the realm of the symbolic, this article argues that Bessora’s digital discourses on the post-Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack effectively denounce the disappearance of the real in French culture in favor of ideals such as the #jesuischarlie movement. From the publication of 53 cm in 1999 to her commentaries on France’s alienation of the lowest socio-economic class in Le Testament de Nicolas (2016), the self-proclaimed griotte’s print and digital productions complement each other and bring the reader closer to an understanding of institutional neocolonialist practices in France.

Seoul: Memory, Reinvention, and the Korean Wave by Ross King

Reviewed by: Seoul: Memory, Reinvention, and the Korean Wave by Ross King Keith Howard (bio) Seoul: Memory, Reinvention, and the Korean Wave by Ross King. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. ISBN 9780824872052. xii + 330 pages. This is an immensely ambitious book, embracing three distinct elements: history, together with both the erasure and reinvention of historical memory; architecture and city planning; contemporary culture, the Korean Wave, and postnationalism. I suspect most of us—including many of those associated with Korean Studies who are cited in the book—would be content to tackle just one of the three, positioning ourselves with historians, urbanists, or cultural theorists, but not attempting to cover all three. King has previously published monographs on cities in Malaysia and Thailand as well as a volume on geography and urban design. Overall, while the thoroughness of his account is to be applauded, those specializing in history or media will find aspects to critique. Throughout, two basic arguments keep returning. The first concerns the dialectical relationship between destruction and creativity, theorized through—or after—Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin, but positioned by the early twentieth century's Japanese colonialization of Korea. The second builds on this, contrasting the local with the hyperspatiality of late capitalism which gives Seoul the aura of just about any modern city, even though its hiding of locality is countered both by Koreans themselves and by a body of scholarship that argues for Korean distinctiveness. Memories are not only founded on choice readings of history, but also rely on invention as well as on the perpetuated claim that Korean culture was undermined and destroyed, primarily by Japanese colonialism. King's focus is Seoul, as the megalopolis at the center of today's South Korea, accounting, including its satellite cities, for more than 40% of the entire population. His initial and concluding chapters add grand theoretical perspectives, of Jean Baudrillard and the end of history, of Michel Foucault and the contingencies created by action, of Benedict Anderson's imagined nations and identities. Seoul offers Kantian conditions of possibility, but it does so (to cite the subtitles of chapter 6) by obliterating the colonial memorial, dreaming antiquity, naturalizing material culture, and transposing reality. The four central chapters explore four themes: history, as the foundation for the state; rapid development under military dictatorship; urban space and its architecture of non-descript boxes; the digitized city where physical and virtual worlds merge. If all of this can be applied to Seoul successfully, then this would be a great book, for use both by specialists and students. But, it is never clear who King is writing for. Is chapter 2, for [End Page 199] example, directed to historians? Hopefully not, since as he telescopes into a few pages the claimed 5000-year history of the peninsula, from proto-kingdoms through a simplified rendering of the Three Kingdoms period, he writes erroneously that the Silla state was situated between Koguryŏ and Paekche, and offers no qualification for its highly controversial "traditional" dates. He makes too much of the nineteenth-century Tonghak movement's religious component, Ch'ŏndogyo, and wrongly states that the Provisional Government in Shanghai—North Korea take note!—coordinated armed resistance to the Japanese through the 1930s. King is on firmer ground as he discusses the architecture of the colonial period, and how Japanese Seoul was modernized following liberation. He balances Korean claims of Japanese erasure and destruction with a grounded, evidenced, reality. Still, coming to the present day, I was struck by his claim in chapter 2 that Seoul is a city of protest like no other (p. 71): those of us who recall the turbulent 1980s think differently. Chapter 4, solidly about architecture and urban planning, is the most inspiring part of the book, discussing the planning and realization of Seoul's satellite cities (from the challenged Songdo near the airport to Paju near the DMZ) peppering the account with Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari. The basic premise is that urban environments have life not because of centralized design and planning, but through unstable assemblage built organically over time. Two other elements suggest a different target audience: general university courses on Korea and/or East Asia. In chapter...

From the “Victorian Revival” to Cultural Cannibalism: Neo-Victorian Project’s Literary Dimension

Neo-Victorian fiction’s ambiguous relationship with the cultural heritage of the XIX century has been problematized by literary scholars in a range of vivid and controversially connotated metaphorical models, i.e. those of the revival, resurrection, family romance, ventriloquism, spiritualist seance, collecting antiquities, colonization, adaptive reuse, cannibalism etc. Switching to the further generalization level, one can reattribute one of those possible models of the Victorian metanarrative’s reception by a Postmodern consciousness to either of the two of the most influential concepts of the Postmodern historiosophy: that of the fetishization of the history by Jean Baudrillard and that of the cannibalization of the history by Fredric Jamieson. A set of transitive metaphorical models linking the two opposites has been also identified, i.e. those of «historical fake» and «legitimate devouring».By building up a diachronic sequence of the above-listed metaphorical models emerging within the Neo-Victorian critical discourse, the shift from reestablishing the living tradition to its posthumous memorialization becomes quite evident, thus signaling about the Victorian heritage’s current cultural status. The analysis of means and tools of the Victorian cultural code’s manifestation within the framework of such subgenres as the Neo-Victorian biofiction and post-colonial fiction explicates the political influence upon the reception of Neo-Victorianism as a cultural phenomenon, thus moving the imaginary fetishism vs consumption borderline from the high/low culture opposition to the liberal/conservative dichotomy.

Becoming large groups: from crowd and public to powerful and spectacular mass movements

In this article, the author examines different theories and approaches to mass movements in the historical process and their impact on the condition of Western culture. In the short introduction, the main historical, cultural and philosophical origins of the mass movements from antiquity to present time are described. This paper examines the question why the social and cultural influence of the man of mass is difficult to predict. To answer this question, the author demonstrates the continuing transition from the psychology of the crowd to the structure of mass instinct and collective interaction. The first part exposes general psychological characteristics of the mob according to the ideas of Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931). Le Bon describes masses as emotional, irresponsible, uncritical and conservative, although marks heroism and sacrifice as their positive manifestations. In the second part, the author reflects upon the perspective of Gabriel Tard (1843–1904) on this problem. Tard’s term “public opinion” deals with the representatives who – while living in separation – participate in the mass communication. In the third part, attestations of the mass such as humility, conformism and obsession are investigated based on the ideas of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). The next point of the article is devoted to Jose Ortega y Gasset’s (1883–1955) concept of the revolt of masses. Ortega captures the ambivalence of masses who express the power ambition and indifference to culture. From the point of view of Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), masses become terrible, self-satisfied, atomized, unstructured and anonymous. However, Elias Canetti (1905–1994) defines masses as compressed and scattered, closed and open, fast and slow. Yet different parameters of the masses one can find in Siegfried Kracauer’s (1889–1966) writing – namely aesthetics, technicism, ritual. Finally, in the last part, the author appeals to Jean Baudrillard’s (1929–2007) approach to the problem who declares that masses became silent and indistinct.Article received 10.09.2018

Entertainment Politics as a Modernist Project in a Baudrillard World

AbstractAs “post-truth” was Oxford Dictionaries’ 2016 word of the year, late-night comedians were featured on Time magazine’s cover bearing the tagline “The Seriously Partisan Politics of Late-Night Comedy.” This article attempts to frame what is going on in theoretical and philosophical terms. By a “Baudrillard World,” we mean the post-truth era that was first announced by theorists such as Jean Baudrillard. By a modernist project, we mean that the late night comedians are making various rhetorical moves to reassert a commitment to truth incompletely secured by conventional, cool-style journalism. We identify a number of offenses against truth that the late night comedians counter in an attempt to rescue not just particular facts but the very notion of truth.

Dispositivi della visione e falsificazione del reale ne La invención de Morel di Adolfo Bioy Casares

The essay focuses on the relationship between images, desire and reality in La invencion de Morel (1940) by Adolfo Bioy Casares. The novel prefigures the evolution of contemporary society, where images proliferate outside the screens, transforming the whole reality into a virtual, widespread screen: the fictive penetrates into the real and the real into the fictive, to the point that defining borders among them become impossible. Far from being mere forms of representation, images become man’s rivals: they can seduce human beings, replace them, and even kill them. In Bioy’s novel, images are the ambiguous “simulacra”—in Jean Baudrillard’s terms—of a disrupting “dissimulation of reality”.

The relationship between taste and status conspicuous consumption

This research starts with the analysis of conspicuous consumption as a specific means to emphasize one’s social status. As far back as the end of the 19th century Thorstein Veblen developed a theory about a specific class who was characterized by nonproductive activities and specific surrounding - servants, clothing, which is not suitable for work, luxurious furniture. Since that idea was examined many times in various researches during the last century, it appears to be interesting to compare it with the concept of taste, which one cannot help appealing to while choosing anything, especially something that shows one’s status.The article draws attention to the peculiarities of taste development and its role in choosing possessions according to class preferences. In addition, it emphasizes the importance of the correspondence between possessions and their owner’s status as it guarantees to create a true impression about their social status. That idea has been marked out due to Jean Baudrillard’s researches which defined the dependence of home furniture upon income and belonging to a certain class. The question arises as to what role ‘pure’ taste plays in taste of a whole class. The taste typology by Pierre Bourdieu (the tastes of luxury and the tastes of necessity) enables to analyze the social aspect of taste, in particular the way the taste of a certain social group develops under pressure of existing social preferences and stereotypes as well as the way it impacts on the choice of purchases.The author concludes that a need may be considered a basis for both kinds of tastes. Whereas in the first case a need is an obvious component of taste development, in the second one it is more difficult to prove that a need to leave an impression on someone is as severe as a need to live.

The Appearance of Truth – The Truth of Appearance Steen Steensen Blicher: Præsten I Vejlby

Abstract The paper discusses a piece by one of the most outstanding Danish short story writers of the 19th century, structured around the convential elements of detective stories. Relying on Jean Baudrillard’s simulacra theory, it attempts to demonstrate the process of how the intriguer Morten Bruus, by a successful use of make-believe, manages to incriminate a pastor, Søren Qvist, in a murder although he is innocent. Bruus’s manipulative strategy prevails in the end: he succeeds at deceiving both his environment and the judge presiding in the case, and the accused is executed. The truth is revealed only twenty years later when Niels Bruus, long thought to be dead, returns. Drawing on Derrida’s legal philosophy, the analysis seeks to expose the problematic nature of justice on earth, and it shows by revisiting certain ideas of Kierkegaard that even in the shadow of death, steadfast faith in divine justice can get us over our fears and the eternal uncertainty deriving from the essence of human existence.

Objetos domésticos e sua dinâmica afetiva em narrativas portuguesas contemporâneas

Este artigo analisa a dinâmica afetiva dos objetos domésticos em diferentes narrativas do escritor português contemporâneo António Lobo Antunes a partir de algumas das formulações de Deleuze e Guattari sobre “liso” e “estriado”, de Abraham Moles sobre o “kitsch” e de Jean Baudrillard sobre o “sistema dos objetos”. A análise das obras literárias (Que farei quando tudo arde?, Exortação aos crocodilos, O meu nome é legião, Eu hei-de amar uma pedra e Que cavalos são aqueles que fazem sombra no mar?) indica que, na insuficiência ou ausência de afeto humano, esses objetos domésticos, ora convertidos em “objetos de estima”, ocupam nessas ficções o lugar desse outro ausente que nunca responde às demandas afetivas e de atenção das personagens.

Драгоценности Рюриковичей по памятникам письменности (элементы одежды)

The aim of the article is to present the names of the valuables in testaments of the Russian great and appanage princes of the 14th-16th century. Special attention has been paid to clothing terminology (names of textiles, colours and dyes, individual garments, clothing details). Lexicographical and etymological data, as well as a semantic classification of dress and clothing detail names are provided. According to Jean Baudrillard, far from the primary status of an object being a pragmatic one, it is the sign exchange value which is fundamental. Thereupon, the attempt to present the social meaning and the unconscious discourse of the valuables mentioned in the testaments of the Rurik dynasty members is also made in this article.

Is Pomo dead?

Without any question, the concepts of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Jean Baudrillard in the fields of the philosophy of language and social theory lie in a distant pa...

The Catch of the Hyperreal: Yossarian and the Ideological Vicissitudes of Hyperreality

Hyperreality is a key term in Jean Baudrillard’s cultural theory, designating a phase in the development of image where it “masks the absence of a profound reality.” The ambiance of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) closely corresponds to Baudrillard’s notion of the hyperreal as images persist to precede reality in the fictional world of the novel. Since for Baudrillard each order of simulacra produces a certain mode of ideological discourse that impacts the perception of reality, it is plausible that the characters of this fictional context should be ideologically impacted by the hyperreal discourse. From this vantage point it is possible to have a new critical assessment of Yossarian’s (protagonist) antiheroic stance and study the role of the “business of illusion,” whose ideological edifice is based on the discourse of the hyperreal, on his antiheroic stance and actions. By drawing on Baudrillard’s cultural theory this paper aims to read Heller’s novel as a postmodern allegory of rebellion against the hyperreality of the twentieth-century American life and trace its relevance to modern-day U.S.