Jean Baudrillard: The Disappearance of Art and Politics

311 Pages·1992·30.558 MB·English

by  William Stearns, William Chaloupka (eds.)

JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Jean Baudrillard
The Disappearance
of Art and Politics
Edited by
WILLIAM STEARNS
and
WILLIAM CHALOUPKA
© William Stearns and William Chaloupka 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992
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First published 1992 by
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Companies and representatives
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Jean Baudrillard : the clisappearance of art and politics.
1. Culture. Postmodernism
I. Stearns, William II. Chaloupka, William
306.20
ISBN 978-1-349-21846-2 ISBN 978-1-349-21844-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21844-8
8765432
02 01 00 99 98 97 96
This book is dedicated to the
University of Montana community,
whose members so fully encouraged this project.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Contributors X
Introduction: Baudrillard in the Mountains 1
William Stearns and William Chaloupka
PART I MISE-EN SCENE
Transpolitics, Transsexuality, Transaesthetics 9
Jean Baudrillard
What Do Cyborgs Want? (Paris, Suburb
of the Twentieth Century) 27
Ron Silliman
Hyperreal 38
Sylvere Lotringer
America's Century or There's Baudrillard Inside
Every American, Just Struggling to Get Out 43
Arthur and Marilouise Kraker
PART II SIMULATION IN THE AGE OF REAGAN
The Anxiety of Affluence: Baudrillard and Sci-Fi
Movies of the Reagan Era 65
Diane Rubenstein
Twin Nightmares of the Medical Simulacrum:
Jean Baudrillard and David Cronenberg 82
Arthur W. Frank
Postmodernity and the Rumor: Late Capitalism
and the Fetishism of the Commodity /Sign 98
Rosemary J. Coombe
The Invisible Skyline 109
Thomas L. Dumm
vii
viii Contents
PART III FOR(GET) UAUDRILLARD
Baudrillard's Seduction of Foucault 131
Calvin Thomas
Fellow Doctors of Pataphysics: Ubu, Fa us troll,
and Baudrillard 146
Gary A. Genosko
The Artificial and the Real: Reflections
on Baudrillard's America 160
Albert Borgmann
Production and Reflexivity in Marx/Daudrillard's
Re-Processed Capital 177
Andrew Haase
Surprise, Seduction, and Survival: or
Who Was that Woman? 200
Michael Beehler
Jean Baudrillard's Radical Enigma: "'f'I1P Objl~ct's
Fulfillment Without Regard for the SuhjPct" 209
A. Keith Goshorn
PART IV UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA
Revolution and the End of Utopia 233
Jean Baudrillard
The Imaginary and Daily Life 243
Michel Maffesoli
Disappearance of the Word, Appearance of the World 252
Ron Silliman
The Construction and Uses of Social Problems 263
Murray Edelman
PART V CONVERSATION
Baudrillard Shrugs: A Seminar on Terrorism and
the Media, with Sylvere Lotringer and Jean Baudrillard 283
edited by Eric Johnson
Index 303
Acknowledgments
Several people not listed on the cover of this book were essential to
our conference, and to this book. In addition to Michel Valentin (rep
resented here by three new translations), special attention needs to
be directed to Julie Cadell, chair of the University's Art Department;
Fred McGlynn of the Philosophy Department; and Jamil Brownson
of Geography. Along with the editors, they were the organizing
committee which created the idea of the conference, then saw it to
completion. They also helped edit some of the essays in this volume.
This book is their accomplishment too.
Many other people contributed generously. Paul Piper helped in
arranging Silliman's visit. Renee Taaffe designed the conference's
poster; Rhea Blanchard, Administrative Secretary to the Art Depart
ment, conducted the conference's administrative business; Cindy
Linse and Eric Johnson helped in ways innumerable.
Conferences and books like this do not happen without institu
tional support. In the present case, a wide array of organizations
gave financial support to the project. President James Koch of the
University of Montana repeatedly heard our (always last minute)
pleas for funds and he consistently said yes. The speaker series
which included Baudrillard was his innovation, and he pitched
in with additional support at crucial stages. The Faculty Devel
opment Committee of the University funded Sylvere Lotringer's
visit. The Montana Committee for the Humanities funded visits
by Ron Silliman, Arthur and Marilouise Kraker. The Montana Arts
Council, the School of Fine Arts, the Department of Art, the College
of Arts and Sciences, and the Associated Students of the University
of Montana contributed funding to several of the conference events.
In addition, the faculty and student travel funds of several other
universities made it possible for many of our conferees to attend.
To all these organizations, our thanks.
The editors thank The University of Chicago Press for permission
to reproduce a section from Murray Edelman's Constructing the
Political Spectacle(© by The University of Chicago Press).
WILLIAM CHALOUPKA AND WILLIAM STEARNS
ix
List of Contributors
Jean Baudrillard is probably the most provocative contemporary
media analyst and social theorist. His books published in English
include For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, The Mirror
of Production, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, Simulations, Forget
Foucault, The Evil Demon of Images, The Ecstasy of Communication,
America, Cool Memories, and most recently Seduction (St. Martin's
Press). His most recent book published in France is La Transparence
du Mal. Until recently, he was Professor of Sociology at the Univer
sity of Paris X in Nanterre.
Michael Beehler is the author of T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and
the Discourses of Difference (1987), and has published widely on
modem literature and literary theory. His current project is Powers
of Minor Literature, a study of alterity in the writings of Stanislaw
Lem, Samuel Delaney, and Yevgeny Zamiatin. He teaches English
at Montana State University.
Albert Borgmann was educated in Germany and the United
States. He is the author of The Philosophy of Language (1974) and
Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (1984). Since 1970
he has been teaching philosophy at the University of Montana.
Bill Chaloupka teaches political science at the University of
Montana. He has recently completed a manuscript on nuclear
criticism, entitled Knowing Nukes: Postmodernism and Responses to
the Culture of the Atom. His articles have appeared in International
Studies Quarterly, Environmental Ethics, Policy Studies journal, Social
Science journal, and elsewhere.
Rosemary J. Coombe teaches post-structuralist social theory to
law students and explores the postmodem condition in a course on
Intellectual Property law. She holds a joint appointment in Law and
Anthropology at the University of Toronto.
Thomas L. Dumm teaches American politics at Amherst College.
He is the author of Democracy and Punishment (1987) and has recently
completed a volume entitled The American Body Politic (forthcom
ing). He currently is at work on a short study of Michel Foucault,
to be published by Sage Publications as part of a series of books on
philosophy and the problems of modernity, and is editing a work
with Fred Dolan on post-structuralism and the study of American
politics.
X
List of Contributors xi
Murray Edelman was the George Herbert Mead Professor of
Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and is
a leading American theorist of political communications. He is the
author of several books and articles, including The Symbolic Uses of
Politics, The Politics of Symbolic Action, Political Language, and most
recently, Constructing the Political Spectacle.
Arthur W. Frank has published articles in the Canadian Journal
of Political and Social Theory, Theory and Society, Semiotica, Symbolic
Interaction, and elsewhere. He teaches sociological theory and the
sociology of the body and illness at the University of Calgary.
Gary A. Genosko teaches social and political thought at York
University. He has published articles and reviews on semiotics
and post-structuralism in the American Journal of Semiotics, Canadian
Philosophical Reviews and Border/Lines.
A. Keith Goshorn is at the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts,
Emory University. He is currently writing on questions of resistance
and recuperation in postmodern culture.
Andrew Haase is in the Department of Philosophy, State Univer
sity of New York at Stony Brook. Recently his interview with artist
Mark Kostabi appeared in the Panic Encyclopedia.
Eric Johnson is a journalist who specializes in environmental
politics and lives in Missoula, Montana.
Arthur and Marilouise Kraker live in Montreal, are series editors
of CultureTexts (St. Martin's Press and Macmillan), and co-edit the
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory. They edited and
introduced Body Invaders: Panic Sex in America and wrote the
Panic Encyclopedia (with David Cook). Arthur Kroker wrote The
Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper-Aesthetics (with
David Cook), and is the author of Technology and the Canadian
Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant. He teaches political theory at Concordia
University.
Sylvere Lotringer is the General Editor of the influential journal,
Semiotext[e], and co-editor (with Jim Fleming) of the acclaimed
Foreign Agents series, and now the Native Agents series. His
books include Pure War (with Paul Virilio}, Overexposed, and
Antonin Artaud (forthcoming). He edited Foucault Live (1966-84).
He is Professor of French and Comparative Literatures at Columbia
University.
Michel Maffesoli teaches social sciences at the Sorbonne, and is
Directeur du Centre d'Etudes sur I'A ctuel et le Quotidien. His books
include L'Ombre de Dyonisios: Contribution a une Sociologie de l'orgie