[-empyre-] hyperreality and war

[Lucia Sommer <sommerlucia@yahoo.com>]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the Jeremy Scahill article, Claire. The
assignment of blame to images rather than the fact of
torture seems symptomatic of the current U.S.
administration's willful confusion of fantasy and
reality, which raises a number of questions for me in
relation to the way the neo-cons are frequently
described as ?anachronistic? (ie., in pursuing a
return to the imperialism of monopoly capitalism and a
cold war model of containment of internal dissent as
opposed to the globalist command of Empire). 

As we see fascist and proto-fascist policy being
pursued by nation-states worldwide (including these
new elaborations of "anti-sedition laws" and other
forms of "security" hysteria) I wonder whether this
kind of disavowal of the distinction between symbolic
and material realms is merely commensurate with
traditional forms of corruption and duplicity and can
simply be considered retrograde, or is it also
symptomatic of the new productivity of the virtual
(what some have theorized as hyperreality)? I've just
begun reading James Der Derian's Virtuous War: Mapping
the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network,
which seems to be addressing some of these questions,
but I'd be interested in any thoughts on this (if it
is of interest to anyone else).

Thanks, and best,

Lucia



---
Lucia Sommer
CAE Defense Fund 
caedefensefund.org
Ph.D. Student
Program in Visual & Cultural Studies
424 Morey Hall | University of Rochester 
Rochester, NY 14627
716-359-3061

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