I had many, many further thoughts on the simulacra phenomenon. About how, ultimately, there really is a parallel between Watergate and Disneyland (long explaination here); about how it’s actually not a phenomenon unique to the “modern” world, but that all empires are built around simulacra; about how “phantasmagoria” is an excellent term for the phenomenon, and that Baudrillard’s failure to cite the ancients – such as Plato’s analogy of the cave in chapter 8 of The Republic – demonstrates a lack of understanding for how human cultures and societies are built, as well as a failure to recognize the non-uniqueness of his situation.

That’s still out of the bit you recommended. I’d still be interested in discussing the idea further.

– Muse

I completely recognize that Mark Felt may, in fact, not be Deep Throat as reported. But this gets into the somewhat paranoid expression Baudrillard has in association with the murder of Kennedy:

“All previous presidents pay and continue to pay for Kennedy’s murder as if they were the ones who suppressed it – which is true phantasmatically, if not in fact. They must efface this defect and complicity with their simulated murder. Because, now it can only be simulated. Presidents Johnson and Ford were both the object of failed assassination attempts which, if they were not staged, were at least perpetrated by simulation…”

Now, obviously not literally stating that the Kennedy assassination was suppressed by the government – in fact, literally points out that this is a phantasmatic truth, rather than an actual truth.

But this goes into “Was Mark Felt Deep Throat?”

The news reported that he was, because he confessed. But although we can construct elaborate conspiracies to model the hypothesis “Mark Felt was not Deep Throat,” a simple possible “Mark Felt was not Deep Throat” was that he had enough info to know who Deep Throat really was, and wanted attention, so he claimed it for himself. Now, rather than being forgotten, he’ll be remembered as Deep Throat.

Does that mean he wasn’t Deep Throat? No, of course not. But drawing all these weird lines from one fact to another in an obscure way only contributes to the paranoia of the simulacrum, which, although not directly stated in the exerpt I read, seems a likely unstated grounding thesis of S&S.

Muse

The Google book only gives up to page 27; I don’t really know what I think of it, honestly.

His writing style seems fixated more on the number of “big” words he can cram in any section of text than actually educating the reader on the dominate themes he wishes to present (although some excellent Scrabble words I now have include “phantasmagoria,” “praxis,” and “panopticon.” On panopticon: you have to wonder about an author who knows that many different synonymns for and adjectives to describe a “prison.”)

Also, I don’t think that his idea of “simulacrum” is well-defined. He seems to mix what are simply lies and misrepresentations with images built for comfort and consumerism, as if these are the same thing. While the whole basic idea behind “Disneyland” and “Watergate” is “untruth,” it still seems, in some sense, a type of equivocation – I’m not sure though, I’m going to have to think on it futher.

On Disneyland being a microcosm simulacrum of the layers of simulacrum in American culture:

First, the dominant theme of this thesis has some fundemental truth to it. Actually, when he went into discussing LA and California in general as a type of super-simulacrum dominated society, I kept thinking of the Steve Martin movie “LA Story” (yay! Kevin’s back in the conversation if he wants to be!!!) Steve Martin is an incredibly smart man, and I think that “LA Story” describes better the themes that Baudrillard is trying to express here. This might predominately be because Martin does it through analogy and story, while Baudrillard attempts to describe directly what we may not have words or ideas yet in our culture to describe in literal, direct format. Martin in LA story describes the malaise of living in a simulacrum society in a very noir-funny way. Also has excellent music.

Second, the obsession of authors, scientists, literary critics, philophers, psychologists and everyone else with “America IS Disneyland” is sometimes astounding. I hit it in “Escape from Freedom.” I hit it in SJ Gould’s books. It’s vaugely referenced in “LA Story,” and even in “Idiocracy.”

Baudrillard seems to careen off into the vaugely paranoid at times, like when he’s describing the political nature of presidental assasinations. Although… in a certain sense, things like Watergate do lead to simulacrum paranoia.

But my problem is that isn’t how I think of “simulacrum” – a symbol means the thing, so to speak, so that the meaning of the thing goes away, or an imitation that’s accepted as reality. In fact, things like Watergate are actually called “gaslighting,” and Disneyland and gaslighting are (maybe?) not the same thing. Maybe it’s an arbitrary value judgement, I don’t know, but I’ll have to think about it more.

Funny thing: he was unknowingly contributing to the associated gaslighting of Watergate by framing his presentation of the story in the way he did – brave, independant reporters, all that. Now that we know who Deep Throat was, that takes on a completely different tone, at least for me. Same with his off-hand comment “as in the army one prefers to take the simulator for a real madman” – well, read Kissinger’s “Necessity for Choice.” Sometimes the army itself would like to be percieved as a madman for tactical advantage! (Although I have a whole secondary analysis of that, and why that looks like a reasonable solution on the surface, it’s actually a long-term failing strategy because of a process I think of as “emotional investment.”)

Anyways, if you’d like to talk about it, I’m sure the university where I work can get a copy on loan from somewhere even though we don’t have any copies at our library, just might take some days or weeks.

In other news, you’re the second to mention Foucault, do you recommend him? Foucault we have tons of here.

Muse

(I kid, of course, and always welcome intelligent discourse. Now give me your lunch money right now.)

It’s hard to pare down Baudrillard in a blog comment, and I don’t really know how heavily you want to get into this. He’s more of a social/media critic than a philosopher as we generally think of them. I’d suggest starting with “Simulacra and Simulation,” which is his most famous and readily available work. Here’s the start of the section of S&S (on Disneyland) that is generally excerpted to identify the cultural transformations he’s talking about: http://goo.gl/ewQWd

He’s a bit obtuse, and writes circularly around the topics instead of pointedly identifying what he means. But he’s a French critic associated with (but, if I recall correctly, resistant to the idea of being considered part of) post-structuralism, so that’s par for the course. If you’re used to that sort of thing, he’s an essential theorist to read. I also like Douglas Kellner’s book on Baudrillard, which hits the high points of some other Baudrillard essays I haven’t read, and positions them within (or alongside, or against, as the case may be) Marxist and post-modern criticism. Also, some background in semiotics (de Saussure, Barthes, Eco), and a reading of Daniel Boorstin’s lighter “The Image: A guide to Pseudo-events in America” would inform a reading of Baudrillard.

The only other issue to mention is that, if you delve too much into Baudrillard, as I find with Foucault as well, it’s easy to feel as though you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and start to disassociate from the world. After all, S&S is sort of saying that we no longer live in a world that we can consider “reality,” and Baudrillard doesn’t really offer a way to cope with that except to notice that it’s going on.

So yeah…is Albany boring or what?

But the layers of simulacrum become much deeper than that – and cause fear and anxiety in people who attempt to distinguish reality and fiction.

For example, do I know you know these things? Or are you a Wiki-mimic?

The Dick’s electric sheep thing is referenced in the Wikipedia article on the concept of simulacrum. That means someone who wants to mimic knowledge – a simulacrum scholar – can do so by simply reading the Wikipedia article on the subject and throwing such analogies out in debate or discussion.

Really absorbing a book or a concept or a philosophy is different. People should have slightly different opinions or analogies derived from the literature and non-fiction that they read.

But distinguishing between the two becomes impossible. Due to factors such as nomothetic personality traits (the fact that most people have over-lapping personality traits), and the commonality of human culture and communication, especially post-globalization, people might just be coming up with the same or parallel ideas on their own.

So for someone who loaths mimicry – simulacrum – thought, it becomes a constant struggle to distinguish between simulacrum behaviors and nomothetic personality behaviors.

What did you think of Baudrillard? Would you recommend him as an author or philosopher? Did you just cover him in a “general” way, such as a larger book that reviews general philosophies?

That’s okay if true; one of my favorite books is “Parallel Myths,” by Bierlein. It’s a very general review, it’s short, and it could be read by just about anyone. But that doesn’t make it excellent; CS Lewis is a genius because he could take incredibly complex concepts and explain them in a language that all people could understand.

– Muse

The simplest example I can think of off the top of my head is that in the local garage where my car currently lays dying, there’s a space heater shaped like a small fireplace with an LCD fire. We’ve lost the real meaning and connection to the fires of our ancestors by replacing them with flickering lightbulbs and pretending it’s fire. By doing so, we construct a new image of fire that replaces the old: how often do you see people represent a picture of a fire with the colors white or blue?

This process might eventually yield what we think of as a sci-fi world (Dick’s electric sheep), but Baudrillard says that level of simulation is all around us even now.

Ok so we aren’t the capital of excitement…sure, but we are far from boring. Though if you want a REALLY good time, travel on over to Fargo North Dakota. I hear it’s as much a cultural destination as that home of all the best European cluture. I’m of course speaking about Yabol Bulgaria…dohn’t ya knowh. While we’re talking irresitable nightlife we can’t forget about Rutland Vermont. What happens in Rutland stays in Rutland.

Yeah, but that doesn’t change that:

(1) A person’s first encounter with the word “simulacrum” is unlikely to be Baudrillard (unless they’re in a college philosophy course).

(2) It’s a sci-fi word, definately, even if I’ve never seen it used there yet. It’s a pretty sci-fi concept, and one that’s easily adapted to science fiction.

Where’d you hear the word, Eric? Have you read Baudrillard?