tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511650020665753855.post9162976428804055899..comments2023-10-11T01:28:33.394-06:00Comments on Major Philosophy: Experiments in Ontology: Baudrillard and HyperrealityBrent Vizeauhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06887042977164673408noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511650020665753855.post-23396539362034583092012-05-14T21:10:54.625-06:002012-05-14T21:10:54.625-06:00You miss a great deal by dismissing JB so perfunct...You miss a great deal by dismissing JB so perfunctorily, Kip. But I'm inclined to think you deserve to be left there undisturbed. So there, you can "win" this argument, too. I'll stop now, so you can get the lst word in.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511650020665753855.post-56117698862650851202012-02-15T08:33:01.923-07:002012-02-15T08:33:01.923-07:00First, this is not Baudrillard's idea. It'...First, this is not Baudrillard's idea. It's simply a (severely flawed) application of the reductio ad absurdum that has been a standard tool of philosophy since Zeno.<br /><br />What's particularly weak about the Baudrillardian approach is it's own hyperbole, especially in the characteristically faith-based postructuralist abandonment of any, especially general, material component(s) to transcendent idealism. This allows for Baudrillard and other postructuralists to simple-mindedly and categorically abandon the specific materiality upon which his position about the simulated depends, finally resulting in a mere tautology (that the simulated is all simulated) by merely extending simulation, in the absence of any challenge or rebuttal necessary to any defensible philosophy, into infinity both backward and forward while claiming a misused metaphor of "looping back" to mean extension rather than tautological faith in an unproven premise. Baudrillard's idea is a mess.<br /><br />The greater problem is the adherence to mere allegiance that the poststructuralist culture has demanded of its followers. We must quote Baudrillard on a bad version of an idea not his own and pretend that it is both his own and pure. We must quote Derrida on trivialities that have been spoken by better thinkers for a long time. We must hate Freud and love Lacan, even though Freud saved us from caging the insane and Lacan has been used as a cage for the dissident in the academic humanities.<br /><br />Evidence: "Sociologists, tired of the infectivity of language games, are trying to extend the use of postmodern theory into the realm of empirical research."<br /><br />This statement is, first, untrue; the majority of sociology, especially at the academic level, is far more quantified and static (tenets diametrically opposed to postmodern theory)--indeed empirical--than it had been for a century. Second, the statement is ironic, in that "the inefectivity of language games" is a wonderful description of postructuralist discourse, which is governed by precisely those games in the name of jouissance or the "meaninglessness" that controls its loyalties to neo-Kantian idealism and Heideggerian absolution and control.<br /><br />Baudrillard is nothing more than clever. He's really fun to read, and takes old philosophical arguments into late 20th-century application, but that's pretty much it. "Hyperreality" is hyperbolically proposed, intellectual grandstanding, and our job as readers of it is to contextualize and critique it before we begin dispensing credit and signing up for it. Besides, Baudrillard did a fine job of giving lots of credit to himself--another trait of the poststructuralist quasi-philosophical continental subculture.Kiphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04752193905087969688noreply@blogger.com