Language as Control

[fayefaye]

“That a Gestalt should be capable of formative effects in the organism is attested by a piece of biological experimentation that is itself so alien to the idea of psychical causality that it cannot bring itself to formulate its results in these terms. It nevertheless recognises that it is a necessary condition for the maturation of the gonad of the female pigeon that it should see another member of its species, of either sex; so sufficient in itself is this condition that the desired effect may be obtained merely by placing the individual within reach of the field of reflection of a mirror.”

Is this true? If it is, then there must be some link between self-awareness and sexual maturation. An awareness of separateness, presumably, is the stimulus for the passage from one realm to another. If it is true then it takes me into realms I simply don’t have the capacity to navigate. The reason I am doubtful is that Lacan goes on to mention, believe it or not, the locust (I must admit I did know this earlier when I brought up the subject ):

“Similarly, in the case of the migratory locust, the transition within a generation from the solitary to the gregarious form can be obtained by exposing the individual, at a certain stage, to the exclusively visual action of a similar image, provided it is animated by movements of a style sufficiently close to that characteristic of the species. Such facts are inscribed in an order of homeomorphic identification that would itself fall within the larger question of the meaning of beauty as both formative and erogenic.”

Apart from the fact that I had to look up half those words (anyone seen that great Tony Hancock sketch where he’s reading Bertrand Russell?), I’m not sure that’s true about the locust. I have some memory of reading that it was physical touch on the back legs that triggered the change. Still, the stuff about the pigeons is worth a second thought.

yech, I can see what you mean about reading it (the word homeomorphic sent me to the dictionary, and when I got there I was disgusted to see how unnecessary the use of the word was... to save others the time: n. a correspondence between the points of two geometrical shapes or two spaces in which each element can be paired with one from the other without any remaining (from the Encarta Dictionary in Word ) - ie two things that look the same. 'hey, that locust looks like me.')

Well, I suppose 'intuitively' (I'm pretty sure we've had a discussion about the unstable foundations of this word...) you would think that a pidgeon wouldn't need to see another pidgeon to mature sexually. But there is a simple way to find out. Kidnap a baby pidgeon and keep it as a pet for a while (minus the mirror)

[The Unnamable]

People are in the process of fabricating for us a literary space, as well as judicial, economic, and political spaces, which are completely reactionary, prefabricated, and overwhelming/crushing.'

I wouldn’t argue with that. You like Dylan. What’s really good about that line from ‘Not Dark Yet’ is that he sings, “There's not even room enough to be anywhere”, and not ‘go’ anywhere as would be more usual. That’s how I see the dominant discourses – they don’t leave you anywhere to be. It links in nicely with Baudrillard and ‘the loss of the real’. In Simulacra and Simulation, he sees post-modern culture as having dispensed with everything except signs and signs for which there are no referents at that. All that exists in Baudrillard’s ‘hyperreality’ is surface without depth. The distinction between reality and illusion is eroded and life turns into MTV.

I can understand what he means from an early example of such an idea – in Richard Eyre’s ‘The Ploughman’s Lunch’. Anyone outside of the UK probably won’t know this but a ‘Ploughman’s Lunch’ is a meal popular in English pubs. It often consists of a chunk of granary bread, a lump of cheese, a pickled onion, green salad, occasionally a hard-boiled egg and something called ‘Branston Pickle’, which is a sort of relish, I think. Most people assume this rustic fare is the traditional food of broad-shouldered agricultural workers of the 19th century. It wasn’t. It was ‘thought up’ by ad. men in the 1960s in an attempt to encourage people to buy more food in pubs. Similarly, I mentioned elsewhere on this site that none of the Gospels mention an ox or a donkey and that many 13th century paintings set the scene in a cave. Yet when we think of the Nativity scene, we picture it the way it is on all those Christmas Cards we send or on those inept fridge door drawings done by the children. For all intents and purposes, the only ‘reality’ we have is the most dominantly reproduced one and we aren’t that bothered about whether or not it has any similarity to any actual scene, as long as its consistent with our current version of reality.

Baudrillard goes much further than this but it’s not a bad way to begin thinking about it. There is a useful and fairly short introduction to the idea of simulacra and simulation here - http://www.uta.edu/english/hawk/semiotics/baud.htm
The bit about Pop Music is quite accurate.

One of Baudrillard’s infamous pronouncements was when he said that Disneyland is the ‘real’ America:

“Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the ‘real’ country, all of ‘real’ America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral. Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.”

Virgil, I apologise for any extreme emotions you might be feeling.

[blp]

That’s how I see the dominant discourses – they don’t leave you anywhere to be.

Yes, that's how I feel them.
It's salient that that Deleuze quote comes from the seventies. The entire decade must have been a taking stock for people like him after the failure of the 68 uprising in Paris. The backlash against the sixties that defines so much culture now must already have been gathering a significant head of steam. Cinema, in particular, which was seen as central to the coming revolution during the sixties, changed significantly after 68 in France. Up to that point, Jean Luc Godard, in particular, believed he was making films to bring about a revolution. Not one French film of the seventies is as experimental or challenging as his great films of the late sixties, 'One Plus One', 'La Chinoise' and 'Weekend'. Nevertheless, Godard complained that throughout the sixties all he was doing was rattling his cup against the bars of his cell and that the more angrily he did this, the more he was applauded. He seems in this to be pointing already to the way in which oppositional, revolutionary discourse can be co-opted by the dominant discourse and rendered impotent.

[blp]

Re: Baudrillard. I'm not wrong in thinking that in Plato, Simulacra or the Realm of Simulacra means something rather like Hell, am I?

Based just on what you say, it seems at first glance as if Baudrillard diverges from Lacan and the development of his reasoning in Deleuze & Guattari in suggesting that our alienation from 'the real' is something created by the dominant discourses rather than merely an effect of their being no 'real' to begin with.

I'm just about to leave work, so will return to this later.

[fayefaye]

For all intents and purposes, the only ‘reality’ we have is the most dominantly reproduced one and we aren’t that bothered about whether or not it has any similarity to any actual scene, as long as its consistent with our current version of reality.

Based just on what you say, it seems at first glance as if Baudrillard diverges from Lacan and the development of his reasoning in Deleuze & Guattari in suggesting that our alienation from 'the real' is something created by the dominant discourses rather than merely an effect of their being no 'real' to begin with.

hmm... What is real? If there was a real world, then how could we know it? I think it sounds more like, even if there was a real world, we couldn't differentiate it from an illusion, or from a world presented to us. Reality and simulation have no line drawn down the middle; no means for differentiation.

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but I'm reminded of part of the film He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (nothing special, not particularly worth watching. The book's pretty funny.). Anyway, a character is telling a story about a man who lost his wife. The wife is duplicated, but because she's like a photocopy, he hates her. When the duplicate realises that he hates her, she tries to kill herself, but can't (something about her being like a phoenix, she keeps coming back to life. I wasn't really paying much attention...). When he sees the pain she's going through, he's able to love her for what she is. The fact she wasn't his original wife (sort of like a signifier for his past wife, I suppose) ceases to matter.

In Simulacra and Simulation, he sees post-modern culture as having dispensed with everything except signs and signs for which there are no referents at that. All that exists in Baudrillard’s ‘hyperreality’ is surface without depth. The distinction between reality and illusion is eroded and life turns into MTV

This sounds really interesting. Is it that people can no longer tell between signifier and signified (like, looking at a pretty sky reminds you of a Monet painting and you feel like it should be the other way around) or that there ceases to be a signified at all? (And if so, how can signifieds cease to exist?)

[blp]

This sounds really interesting. Is it that people can no longer tell between signifier and signified (like, looking at a pretty sky reminds you of a Monet painting and you feel like it should be the other way around) or that there ceases to be a signified at all? (And if so, how can signifieds cease to exist?)

I'm not sure about this, Fayefaye, but I think this is all complicated by the fact that the signified is not the thing in itself, but the concept of it, e.g. the signifier 'cow' signifies - means - the concept of cow, which is therefore the signified. The cow in itself is what is referred to and hence is the referrent.

Baudrillard may then be talking about a world devoid of meaningful concepts, but full of appearances that suggest meaning, tricking us into thinking there's something behind them when there isn't.

[The Unnamable]

hmm... What is real? If there was a real world, then how could we know it? I think it sounds more like, even if there was a real world, we couldn't differentiate it from an illusion, or from a world presented to us. Reality and simulation have no line drawn down the middle; no means for differentiation.

I sort of agree with you here. I don’t think whether or not something is ‘real’ is of much relevance to Baudrillard. He is suggesting something more about the nature of the reality we ‘have’.

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but I'm reminded of part of the film He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (nothing special, not particularly worth watching. The book's pretty funny.). Anyway, a character is telling a story about a man who lost his wife. The wife is duplicated, but because she's like a photocopy, he hates her. When the duplicate realises that he hates her, she tries to kill herself, but can't (something about her being like a phoenix, she keeps coming back to life. I wasn't really paying much attention...). When he sees the pain she's going through, he's able to love her for what she is. The fact she wasn't his original wife (sort of like a signifier for his past wife, I suppose) ceases to matter.

I don’t know either the film or the book but I wonder if you’ve ever applied similar thinking to ‘Vertigo’. The exploration is certainly darker in ‘Vertigo’ than what you describe but there are parallels.

This sounds really interesting. Is it that people can no longer tell between signifier and signified (like, looking at a pretty sky reminds you of a Monet painting and you feel like it should be the other way around) or that there ceases to be a signified at all? (And if so, how can signifieds cease to exist?)

It’s a little more complicated but also problematic than that. Baudrillard thinks first of a sign which is a surface indication of an underlying reality or depth. Then he considers what it means if a sign is not a surface indication of depth but simply of more signs. The resulting system is what he calls a simulacrum.
There are four stages to the process by which signs become simply empty.
1. The sign represents a basic reality;
2. The misinterprets or distorts the reality behind it;
3. The sign disguises the fact that there is no reality behind it;
4. The sign bears no relation to reality at all.

The first two are straightforward but the other two are less so. According to Baudrillard, Disneyland is a third order sign – it conceals the fact that there is no reality behind it. (It seems like a second order sign as well to me.) I suppose what he means by this the ‘reality’ of people’s everyday lives is so at odds with what they are being told it is by the all-pervasive signs of a media saturated culture, that one view has to go and the one that goes is the ‘real’ one, where we sweat, defecate, cry, die, are unhappy, in fact, most of the things we don’t do in Disneyland. We have come to believe that ‘real’ life is the one we stare at through our computer screens, are fed by the glass teat of television or see up on the big screens or billboards. It’s a little similar to Althusser’s ‘interpellated’ individual. I have a lot of sympathy with this view. It explains to me how the same person can have many utterly different sets of values while seeing no inconsistency whatsoever.

Take a simple example from Literature. I once did a school assembly using Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ to highlight the problems of world hunger. I ‘modernised’ the language and situation and advocated, as Swift does, eating children as a solution. A few of the other teachers who were present at the assembly complained that my ‘little stunt’ was ‘profoundly offensive and appallingly tasteless.” I was summoned to the Head’s office to explain myself. She was in no mood for taking prisoners. As you can imagine, I have had a number of run-ins with the stupidity and insolence of office, so she was going to make the most of her opportunity. The wonderful thing was however (which I knew when I chose Swift), that she immediately became far less sure of herself when I pointed out that the idea was Swift’s and that the work was considered one of the finest pieces of irony in the English language. It was also a set text at the time, so she was going to look rather stupid chastising me for bringing one of her own students’ set texts to life. Most of the students and teachers were talking about that assembly well into the afternoon (which is unheard of longevity for an act of collective worship ). Why is it that she can thrill over the genius of Shakespeare’s Tragedies while sipping her glass of chardonnay, yet she doesn’t really see human experience as tragic at all? When Lear goes on about ‘unaccommodated man’, we all marvel at his humanity, yet I look away from beggars every day. I have to. Perhaps I am reassured when I read King Lear that in essence, I am nice, I care.

What I find appealing about Baudrillard is less anything he has to say about order of signs and more of what he suggests about this utterly impoverished and crass culture in which I find myself like some confused child plunged into a Hieronymus Bosch landscape.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

The story that the character tells in the film sounds a little like a central part of "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem - filmed in Russia & in Hollywood with George Clooney - but the book beats both films hands down. I recommend the book if you like thoughtful, philosophical sci-fi. In fact, I recommend anything by Lem, especially "The Cyberiad".

[The Unnamable]

Re: Baudrillard. I'm not wrong in thinking that in Plato, Simulacra or the Realm of Simulacra means something rather like Hell, am I?

Sorry, don’t know.

Based just on what you say, it seems at first glance as if Baudrillard diverges from Lacan and the development of his reasoning in Deleuze & Guattari in suggesting that our alienation from 'the real' is something created by the dominant discourses rather than merely an effect of their being no 'real' to begin with.

He might agree with you but I’m not sure he’d see it in those terms. I don’t think ‘alienation’ or ‘dominant discourses’ are where his emphasis lies. He seems unconcerned with whether or not there is any ‘real’ to begin with.

Baudrillard may then be talking about a world devoid of meaningful concepts, but full of appearances that suggest meaning, tricking us into thinking there's something behind them when there isn't.

I think it’s more as I describe it in my response to fayefaye. The telescreens keep telling us that the chocolate ration has gone up by another 10% and we believe it by ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Perhaps this is partly because the telescreens have morphed into many forms and moved into almost every area of our existence. It’s also a case of ‘as long as you’re comfortable, it feels like freedom’. There’s obviously a lot more to him than that, and I just know that your use of the word ‘trickery’ will be like blood to a shark for anyone insistent that theory sees things in terms of conspiracy.

[Virgil]

To pick up where I left off (post # 135), logos, meaning, has as far as I know now three philosophic possibilities: Meaning from forms (Plato), meaning from mimeses (Aristotle, as empiricist), and meaning from language (postmodernists, probably initiated from Nietzsche). Listen I happen to think that the postmodernist thought here is an interesting philosophic permutation of a long held debate.

Certain tenets, however, come out from this. Reality is derived from language. Language is of shifting meaning. The syllogism then follows that reality itself is not fixed. It then follows that the author himself is writing from perspectives he’s not even aware of, and his meaning of his own text is suspect or at least is free to be re-interpreted. We can see why then those that have argued for language as controlling humanity feel so comfortable in the postmodernist camp. What the postmodernist are saying is that all language is ideological, whether it is of the sun rising or the simple exchange of money for a product at a department store.

However, I don’t subscribe to it. I’ll address the nihilism in another post. But let me go through three pertinent examples.

Example #1. Let’s take an example of oppression, slavery. Possibilities: (a) Platonic, the enslaver thought up slavery because the form existed and then acted on it; (b) Aristotelian, the enslaver enslaved and therefore generated the form/concept of slavery; (c) postmodern, the enslaver thought of the word enslave which created the form and then the reality. Which meets the test of reality or even common sense? a or b is probably a matter of preference (and that’s why this debate has been going on for thousands of years), but I tend to side with b because other than mathematics I find it difficult to understand how forms precede the real thing. But c is frankly ridiculous.

Example #2. Let’s take an example from feminism, pornography. Ever since Hugh Heffner created that magazine called Playboy in the 1950’s, each subsequent decade has seen an exponential rise (at least here in the United States) in pornography as measured by its share of the GDP. Now the language of the immorality of pornography has been imbedded into western culture since Moses and the Old Testament. The language of the feminists has dominated the discourse also at least since the 1950’s, where pornography is stated to be a degradation of women (one of the rare times I happen to agree with the feminists) and an objectification of women. Now given all of this language both from the political right (immorality) and the political left (degradation), if the postmodernist were correct, then language should be reducing the number of women going into pornography. But just the opposite is happening. The reality is that once society (power structure, if you will) consented to not physically clamping down (mimesis) on porn, women, men, everyone involved were free to choose.

Example #3. One from personal experience. I’m of Italian-American ethnicity. Nearly every movie, TV show, novel that features Italian-Americans associates them with the mafia. It’s become part of our folklore. Every politician of I-A ethnicity, of whichever political party, is at sometime or other smeared with the association. Nearly every time I introduce (my real name is very Italian sounding) myself across the country, if it catches someone’s attention they will make a joke of it. I’ve just taken a lecture of the American Identity, where the lecturer went through about 40-50 famous Americans from our history across various times and backgrounds; the only one of I-A ethnicity was Al Capone. I’m not complaining but it is a little insulting. When we were children, my friends (also of I-A ethnicity) would play act mobsters, taking on the names of famous mobsters. So, we did absorbed it. However, studies have shown that at most the percentage of I-A who in any way are associated with the mafia is less than 1 %. Let me repeat, less than one percent. Don’t you think that given the bombardment of cultural language/icons/definition that more than one percent would be associated with the mafia? The correlation isn’t there. Language does not define you.

I still have more points to make. Enough for now. Wait for next installment.

[The Unnamable]

Reality is derived from language. Language is of shifting meaning. The syllogism then follows that reality itself is not fixed.

Virgil, do you actually read my posts? When I say that ‘reality is constructed through language’, I try to justify what I’ve said by giving examples or offering an explanation of what some theorists have said. You say ‘reality is derived from language’, but simply say it and then repeat it without dealing with any of the points I raised since the last time you said it. The ‘reasoning’ you offer above begins with a false assumption, which then generates further unsubstantiated assertions. At no point do you dispense with the idea that the world is ‘out there’ and we name it. That’s not how things work. It’s far more complicated. The reason you end up simply reasserting the same position is simply because you are ignoring every question that challenges your assumptions. You say ‘Language is of shifting meaning’ – If by this you mean that the meanings of words and concepts vary according to context, historical period, culture etc., then yes, they do. You then say that it ‘follows that reality is not fixed’, which it isn’t. But I believe that in such a statement you mean some ‘reality’ that exists independently of the human mind – the world ‘out there’. By saying that reality is not fixed, I am not saying that there is a physical world ‘out there’ that is simply like liquid, as if physical objects morph to suit our language as it changes. I am simply saying that without the systems of meaning that we have, our experience of that world out there would be other than it is. The world itself would not change, simply our perception/understanding of it. The most obvious and simplest example of this is our past assumption that the earth is flat. The earth was whatever it is regardless of what we saw it is. Only our ideas changed, the physical earth itself didn’t.

It then follows that the author himself is writing from perspectives he’s not even aware of, and his meaning of his own text is suspect or at least is free to be re-interpreted. We can see why then those that have argued for language as controlling humanity feel so comfortable in the postmodernist camp.

What do you mean ‘suspect’? Do you mean not the right one according to you? Are you saying that texts are not free to be re-interpreted? None of us know what perspectives will be available in the future but I don’t think that’s what you meant. I think you meant that it’s incorrect to assume there can be any meaning in a text that an author did not put there in the very act of producing that text.

What the postmodernist are saying is that all language is ideological, whether it is of the sun rising or the simple exchange of money for a product at a department store.

Yes, all language is ideological to a greater or lesser extent. Once again though, your example makes absolutely clear that you are completely unaware that concepts are constructions. The idea of exchanging money for a product is ideological in a very obvious way. In this case, it is so in a much more conventional sense of the meaning of ideology – Capitalism. Firstly you need to have a system of money in place. Then you have to assign objects a monetary value (which I assume they don’t intrinsically have). Nothing might seem as natural as going into a shop to purchase some goods but it hasn’t always been so and probably isn’t so now for your average Masai warrior.

Example #1. Let’s take an example of oppression, slavery. Possibilities: (a) Platonic, the enslaver thought up slavery because the form existed and then acted on it; (b) Aristotelian, the enslaver enslaved and therefore generated the form/concept of slavery; (c) postmodern, the enslaver thought of the word enslave which created the form and then the reality. Which meets the test of reality or even common sense? a or b is probably a matter of preference (and that’s why this debate has been going on for thousands of years), but I tend to side with b because other than mathematics I find it difficult to understand how forms precede the real thing. But c is frankly ridiculous.

Yet again, you are ascribing to postmodernism thinking of which it is simply not guilty. I have already explained this. No one is saying that someone thought up the word slavery and then decided who would be the first slaves. This is how I see it: At some point in human history, the condition of slavery came into being. However, perhaps at first the ruling ideology saw nothing ‘wrong’ with treating certain people as slaves. They might not have seen them as ‘slaves’ at all (or even as 'people' for that matter). Perhaps the ruling group genuinely believed that such a system was natural and common sense. It’s even possible that they called them slaves but they cannot have applied that word in anything like the sense that we mean it now. So the condition of slavery is in place and then discourses (and I think in the context of language as power, it is better to speak of ‘discourses’) compete for ways of determining what it ‘means’.

Example #2. Let’s take an example from feminism, pornography. Ever since Hugh Heffner created that magazine called Playboy in the 1950’s, each subsequent decade has seen an exponential rise (at least here in the United States) in pornography as measured by its share of the GDP. Now the language of the immorality of pornography has been imbedded into western culture since Moses and the Old Testament. The language of the feminists has dominated the discourse also at least since the 1950’s, where pornography is stated to be a degradation of women (one of the rare times I happen to agree with the feminists) and an objectification of women. Now given all of this language both from the political right (immorality) and the political left (degradation), if the postmodernist were correct, then language should be reducing the number of women going into pornography.

On what basis do you make this astounding assumption? Also, if your criticism of feminist/postmodernist theory is that it doesn’t prevent women from entering porn, then the questions I have are endless. Firstly, if Literature is so enlightening and ennobling, why has it failed so miserably in the case of humanity? Secondly, not all feminists would agree that pornography degrades women. Camille Paglia has a very different view.

But just the opposite is happening.

And you think the explanation for this is the failure of postmodernist thought? You don’t think the fact that the pornography industry generates such enormous profits might be worth considering? Or perhaps the way that women are represented in all forms of media? 80% of women we see on television are between the ages of 18 and 30. Why is that?

Example #3. One from personal experience. I’m of Italian-American ethnicity. Nearly every movie, TV show, novel that features Italian-Americans associates them with the mafia. It’s become part of our folklore. Every politician of I-A ethnicity, of whichever political party, is at sometime or other smeared with the association. Nearly every time I introduce (my real name is very Italian sounding) myself across the country, if it catches someone’s attention they will make a joke of it. I’ve just taken a lecture of the American Identity, where the lecturer went through about 40-50 famous Americans from our history across various times and backgrounds; the only one of I-A ethnicity was Al Capone. I’m not complaining but it is a little insulting. When we were children, my friends (also of I-A ethnicity) would play act mobsters, taking on the names of famous mobsters. So, we did absorbed it. However, studies have shown that at most the percentage of I-A who in any way are associated with the mafia is less than 1 %. Let me repeat, less than one percent. Don’t you think that given the bombardment of cultural language/icons/definition that more than one percent would be associated with the mafia? The correlation isn’t there. Language does not define you.

This is even more astounding! You give a great example of the power of ideology (as well the way it masks its own status as ideology). People’s perceptions of reality (in this case, less than 1%) do not match the ones that our systems of meaning suggest. When most people think of an IA, they think of the person their culture has constructed (and this time you must see that it’s constructed because otherwise how could it be less than 1%?), rather than what you might call the ‘real’ IA. Theory doesn’t claim that watching ‘The Sopranos’ makes us want to join the mafia! It suggests rather that our perceptions of what the mafia is and our assumptions about IAs are dependent on the way things are represented in the relevant available sign systems. If those systems repeatedly reinforce the idea that all IAs are gangsters, it’s hardly surprising that so many people assume that it’s true.

[The Unnamable]

Baudrillard and the loss of the real:
This was sent to me by a very kind German lady. Fans of The Matrix might find it interesting:

"The question is, why would anyone think that selling shoes could be subversive? To understand the answer, it is useful to take a closer look at the first film in the Matrix trilogy. Lots has been written about the “philosophy of the matrix”, most of it wrong. To understand the first film, one must look very carefully at the scene in which Neo sees the white rabbit. He hands a book to his friend, and on the spine of that book we can see the title: Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard. Many commentators on the film saw the core idea of The Matrix– that the world we live in might be an elaborate illusion, that our brains are simply being fed sensory input by machines, input that tricks us into thinking that we live and interact with a world of physical objects – as simply an updated version of René Descartes’s sceptical “How do you know that you’re not dreaming?” thought experiment. This is a misinterpretation. The Matrix is not intended as a representation of an epistemological dilemma. It is a metaphor for a political idea, one that traces its origins back to the ‘60s. It is an idea that found its highest expression in the work of Guy Debord, unofficial leader of the Situationist International, and his later disciple Jean Baudrillard.

Debord was a radical Marxist, author of The Society of the Spectacle and one of the prime movers behind the Paris 1968 uprising. His thesis was simple. The world that we live in is not real. Consumer capitalism has taken every authentic human experience, transformed it into a commodity and then sold it back to us through advertisement and the mass media. Thus every part of human life has been drawn into “the spectacle”, which itself is nothing but a system of symbols and representations, governed by its own internal logic. “The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image,” Debord wrote. Thus we live in a world of total ideology, in which we are completely alienated from our essential nature. The spectacle is a dream that has become necessary, “the nightmare of imprisoned modern society, which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep.”

(That last bit made me laugh out loud.)

In such a world, the old-fashioned concern for social justice and the abolition of class-based society becomes outmoded. In the society of the spectacle, the new revolutionary must seek two things: “consciousness of desire and the desire for consciousness.” In other words, we must try to discover our own sources of pleasure, independent of the needs that are imposed on us by the system, and we must try to wake up from the nightmare of “the spectacle.” Like Neo, we must choose the red pill. In other words, when it comes to rebellion and political activism, there is no point trying to change little details in the system. What does it matter who is rich and who is poor? Or who has the right to vote and who doesn’t? Or who has access to jobs and opportunities? These are all just ephemera, illusions. If commodities are just images, who cares if some people have more of them, others less? What we need to do is recognize that the entire culture, the entire society, is a waking dream – one we must reject in its entirety.

Of course, this idea is hardly original. It is one of the oldest themes in western civilisation. In The Republic, Plato compared life on earth to a cave, in which prisoners are shackled to the floor, seeing only shadows flickering across the wall from the light of a fire. When one prisoner escapes and makes his way to the surface, he discovers that the world he had been living in was nothing but a web of illusions. He returns to the cave bearing the news, yet finds that his former companions are still embroiled in petty disputes and bickering. He finds it difficult to take these “politics” seriously.

Centuries later, early Christians would appeal to this story as a way of explaining away the execution of Jesus by the Romans. Prior to this event, it had been assumed that the arrival of the Messiah would herald the creation of the kingdom of God here on earth. The death of Jesus obviously put an end to these expectations. Some of his followers therefore chose to reinterpret these events as a sign that the real kingdom of God would be not on this earth, but in the afterlife. They claimed that Jesus had been resurrected in order to convey this news – like Plato’s prisoner returning to the cave. Thus the idea that the world we live in is a veil of illusion is not new. What does change, however, is the popular understanding of what it takes to throw off this illusion. For Plato, there was no question that breaking free would require decades of disciplined study and philosophical reflection. Christians thought that it would be even harder – that death was the only way to gain access to the “real” world beyond. For Debord and the Situationists, on the other hand, the veil of illusion could be pierced much more easily. All that it takes is some slight dissonance, a sign that something’s not right in the world around us. This can be provoked by a work of art, an act of protest or even an article of clothing. In Debord’s view, “disturbances with the lowliest and most ephemeral of origins have eventually disrupted the order of the world."

Nation of Rebels : Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath, Andrew Potter

[fayefaye]

I don’t know either the film or the book but I wonder if you’ve ever applied similar thinking to ‘Vertigo’. The exploration is certainly darker in ‘Vertigo’ than what you describe but there are parallels.

You should really read the book, it's a lot lighter than philosophy and good for a laugh. It's about a guy's experiences living in sharehouses across the East coast of Australia, and all the crazy people he meets. Good point about Vertigo.

Take a simple example from Literature. I once did a school assembly using Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ to highlight the problems of world hunger. I ‘modernised’ the language and situation and advocated, as Swift does, eating children as a solution. A few of the other teachers who were present at the assembly complained that my ‘little stunt’ was ‘profoundly offensive and appallingly tasteless.” I was summoned to the Head’s office to explain myself. She was in no mood for taking prisoners. As you can imagine, I have had a number of run-ins with the stupidity and insolence of office, so she was going to make the most of her opportunity. The wonderful thing was however (which I knew when I chose Swift), that she immediately became far less sure of herself when I pointed out that the idea was Swift’s and that the work was considered one of the finest pieces of irony in the English language. It was also a set text at the time, so she was going to look rather stupid chastising me for bringing one of her own students’ set texts to life.

lol. This really is brilliant.

What I find appealing about Baudrillard is less anything he has to say about order of signs and more of what he suggests about this utterly impoverished and crass culture in which I find myself like some confused child plunged into a Hieronymus Bosch landscape.

hmm... you know, I feel that to survive in this world we have to have some contradictory values, some layer of hypocrisy. This sort of ties in with something you said before about ideology. A while ago, I made a pact with myself only to buy clothes that were made by companies that were signatories to the Homeworkers Code of Practice (the retailer basically agrees that their clothes have been made under good conditions, no exploited outworkers and so on). I wouldn't mind only shopping at the shops which had agreed to this, but the agreement only holds for clothes made in Australia. Now, for those of you who have never shopped in Australia, probably about 99.9% of clothing sold here is made in China, or overseas (clothes made in Australia are very much few and far between. Even Australian souvenirs are typically made in China) Anyway, I didn't buy clothes for about a month, because the realisation dawned on me, that on the off chance I find something that I like, that is affordable, and that fits, it almost certainly won't be made in Australia. So in the end I gave up. It's interesting because I've seen documentaries about how people can change the whole sweatshop-clothing industry thing by no longer shopping at stores that use sweatshops. (One of things that actually caused me to do it) But, in a world where it seems as if they ALL do, the rhetoric of choice is just that - a rhetoric. And the documentaries, which admirably try to empower consumers, only mask the fact that our freedom is to a great extent curtailed. (we are given a choice, but all of the choices are black. we can choose different types of black). They mask the reality, or provide a mask for the absence of a basic reality (absence of freedom and the ability for the free market to correct for failures in the economy. Unless of course, we all stop buying clothes.). So. I'm basically left with values that, whilst I'd like for them to correspond with my behaviour, don't. (Maybe I COULD only buy clothes that were made under good conditions, but I feel like, for all the difference I'd make, it really isn't worth the hassle. Leaving one pissed off fayefaye and one rambling post about the horrors of shopping...)

Also, an echo of the way that ideologies enable some disagreeing voices, which unfortunately seem to have little real impact. *becoming increasingly cynical*

[Virgil]

Virgil, do you actually read my posts? When I say that ‘reality is constructed through language’, I try to justify what I’ve said by giving examples or offering an explanation of what some theorists have said. You say ‘reality is derived from language’, but simply say it and then repeat it without dealing with any of the points I raised since the last time you said it. The ‘reasoning’ you offer above begins with a false assumption, which then generates further unsubstantiated assertions. At no point do you dispense with the idea that the world is ‘out there’ and we name it. That’s not how things work. It’s far more complicated.

"Reality is constructed through language" versus "reality is derived from language." There is no distinction that I can see between those phrases. Of course I know that postmoderns as well as Plato believe that a real world exists. But postmoderns believe that language is the reality.

What do you mean ‘suspect’? Do you mean not the right one according to you? Are you saying that texts are not free to be re-interpreted?

This is a key point to which I aiming for in my upcoming post. Of course they can be re-interpreted. But postmoderns believe that the test itself is unstable and in flux.

In this case, it is so in a much more conventional sense of the meaning of ideology – Capitalism.

Of course I'm completely aware. I'm actually agreeing with you for that case. I'm saying that to a postmodernist, it is no different whether you are talking about the sun rising or an exchange of capital. To a postmodernist, there is no distinction, it is all ideology, which I find rediculous.

This is how I see it: At some point in human history, the condition of slavery came into being. However, perhaps at first the ruling ideology saw nothing ‘wrong’ with treating certain people as slaves. They might not have seen them as ‘slaves’ at all (or even as 'people' for that matter). Perhaps the ruling group genuinely believed that such a system was natural and common sense. It’s even possible that they called them slaves but they cannot have applied that word in anything like the sense that we mean it now. So the condition of slavery is in place and then discourses (and I think in the context of language as power, it is better to speak of ‘discourses’) compete for ways of determining what it ‘means’.

What you are describing here is not postmodernism: logos in your interpretation quoted is not in the signifyer.

Firstly, if Literature is so enlightening and ennobling, why has it failed so miserably in the case of humanity?

I never said it could. I'm the one arguing that language doesn't control, remember?

Secondly, not all feminists would agree that pornography degrades women. Camille Paglia has a very different view.

Paglia is the only one I know who purports this; she's a lone, anomolous voice on this; it's relatively recent and it doesn't explain the fifty years of feminist preaching.

Theory doesn’t claim that watching ‘The Sopranos’ makes us want to join the mafia! It suggests rather that our perceptions of what the mafia is and our assumptions about IAs are dependent on the way things are represented in the relevant available sign systems.

You're very flexible with your theory. When it comes to shaping women's personalities you claim all sorts of subtle connotations of language (which I've claim are trivial) has determined their being: passive, feminine, etc. Read your posts in this whole thread. You, watching the show, doesn't want to make you join the mafia because you're not Italian. I've have know IA who had nothing to do with the mafia, but within the context of a particular discussion had wished that they were.

If those systems repeatedly reinforce the idea that all IAs are gangsters, it’s hardly surprising that so many people assume that it’s true.

Well, you don't live in the United States. I believe there was a study of this. The reality turned out to be less than 1%, but the perception of the general population was in the 30ish percent range.

[fayefaye]

In such a world, the old-fashioned concern for social justice and the abolition of class-based society becomes outmoded. In the society of the spectacle, the new revolutionary must seek two things: “consciousness of desire and the desire for consciousness.” In other words, we must try to discover our own sources of pleasure, independent of the needs that are imposed on us by the system, and we must try to wake up from the nightmare of “the spectacle.” Like Neo, we must choose the red pill. In other words, when it comes to rebellion and political activism, there is no point trying to change little details in the system. What does it matter who is rich and who is poor? Or who has the right to vote and who doesn’t? Or who has access to jobs and opportunities? These are all just ephemera, illusions. If commodities are just images, who cares if some people have more of them, others less? What we need to do is recognize that the entire culture, the entire society, is a waking dream – one we must reject in its entirety.

That was interesting, but I get the feeling that the person who wrote it is already pretty out of touch with reality (or at least, my understanding of it ) How can somebody say something like, 'what does it matter who is rich and who is poor?' unless they have never been poor themselves. For those who have nothing, or next to nothing, and wonder how they're going to survive, having money is pretty damn important. And those denied the status of human beings by the legal system, denied a voice and a right to vote, would probably think that having these rights is really important. Who cares if voting doesn't make a difference, the fact that they weren't allowed to do it had an impact on the way they saw themselves. Imagine being told that you weren't a person.

Commodities... food, water, basic human rights... these things are real. Maybe the argument holds for the middle/upper clases, maybe I just haven't fully understood it.

I think in some ways, some of the other things they wrote ring true. People live in a world where they think a Mercedes is success, that a big, new house, a white picket fence and a four wheel drive, a couch upholstered in Italian silk is a happy, successful life. (Throw in a marriage with kids and you 'have it all') A world where images and marketing intermingle with reality. "This isn't life. This is just STUFF! And it's become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that's just nuts." (American Beauty)