[-empyre-] while JB knocks out Gingrich, with a left hook, farewell to "Baudrillard Enoncé and the Future of Theory"

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

As even in California, almost last in the solar passage from March  
madness  to April Fools, I  just want to note in passing, a prophetic  
juxtaposition of Baudrillard in 1974 to  Gingrich in 2007. As some  
have noted in the present discussion, Baudrillard was always intent  
on the aleatory, the echo, the indeterminate exchange, but in this  
case, with a certain vengeance.

First, though, heartfelt thanks to all who've contributed this month  
to our tribute to Jean Baudrillard, and to the challenge to live 'the  
future of theory" even though he'd no doubt assure us that this will  
be impossible.  Special thanks for responding with 'yes!' to our  
urgent requests to join us, and for your insights and references as  
always-- Aliette Guibert Certhoux (FR) our Parisian correspondent, - 
empyre- enthusiaste,  and editor of critical secret; and her  
colleague and friend, McKenzie Wark (AU) who holds forth from the New  
School in New York, and whose new book, just out, "Gamer  
Theory" (Harvard Univ Press 2007) is an exciting, and very JB- 
spirited, read.

Thanks too to Nick Ruiz (US) whose scholarship in matters Baudrillard  
is much greater than mine.  Nicholas is also joining the moderating  
team of -empyre- as of this month.


So:  tonight, a friend put me onto today's report on CNN, in which  
the estimable Newt Gingrich, right wing ideologue, currently running  
for US President,  declares:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/31/gingrich.bilingual.ap/index.html

"We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so  
people learn the common language of the country and they learn the  
language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto,"  
Gingrich said.

[Don't you find this idea is especially piquant given the context of  
our current bilingual month! Perhaps we should insist that everyone  
on our list read French in order to be a good citizen of  
BaudrillardiA (or -empyre- is a ghetto). ]

Further details, read on:
> WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich equated  
> bilingual education Saturday with "the language of living in a  
> ghetto" and mocked requirements that ballots be printed in multiple  
> languages.
>
> "The government should quit mandating that various documents be  
> printed in any one of 700 languages depending on who randomly shows  
> up" to vote, said Gingrich, who is considering seeking the  
> Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He made the comments in  
> a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women.
>
> "The American people believe English should be the official  
> language of the government. ... We should replace bilingual  
> education with immersion in English so people learn the common  
> language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity,  
> not the language of living in a ghetto," Gingrich said to cheers  
> from the crowd of more than 100.
>
> "Citizenship requires passing a test on American history in  
> English. If that's true, then we do not have to create ballots in  
> any language except English," he said.
>
> Peter Zamora, co-chair of the Washington-based Hispanic Education  
> Coalition, which supports bilingual education, said, "The tone of  
> his comments were very hateful. Spanish is spoken by many  
> individuals who do not live in the ghetto."
>
> He said research has shown "that bilingual education is the best  
> method of teaching English to non-English speakers."
>
> Spanish-speakers, Zamora said, know they need to learn English.
>
> "There's no resistance to learning English, really, among  
> immigrants, among native-born citizens," he said. "Everyone wants  
> to learn English because it's what you need to thrive in this  
> country."
>
> In the past, Gingrich has supported making English the nation's  
> official language. He's also said all American children should  
> learn English and that other languages should be secondary in schools.
>
> In 1995, for example, he said bilingualism poses "long-term dangers  
> to the fabric of our nation" and that "allowing bilingualism to  
> continue to grow is very dangerous."

 Baudrillard,  twenty five years ago, made an acid comment or two  
about this very kind of image/branding of language and culture on the  
part of the Left in France.  As follows, from "Utopia  
Deferred:" (Semiotexte, 2006, translation by Stuart Kendall):

"As we approach alternation (or the reversability of the Left-Right  
political equation), the contents of these two terms become  
indifferent and aleatory. Left and Right exchange their objectives  
and their politics- and even 'objective' social membership no longer  
matters.....Much more than the political determination, these are the  
tricks of clans at stake, of organic solidarities... the vote is  
recycled as a symbolic practice of kinship and a ritual  of  
recognition.. Before laughing we should ask ourselves if:

"--this is not a collective practice of resistance to the democratic  
'rules of the game'--

"--if it is not already  largely but shamefully the same in  
supposedly 'rational' electorial practices.  Look at petitions in the  
press (an appeal to Christians in favor of X, an appeal to  
intellectuals in favor of Y, an appeal to friends of Israel in favor  
of both, on the front and back of each page,appeals to researchers,  
sports fans, artists, progressives with disabilities, macro-bio- 
geneticists of the Vaucluse, etc.)  The entire market of categorical  
and nominal values puts itself in play to launch appeals to families,  
to 'totemic' affiliations, stimulants for reorganization. But these  
informal groups lack true organic solidarity.  They only translate  
the desire to reorganize around an intermediate authority (two step  
flow of communication) against the total abstraction of the media at  
its height.  At the same time, they show that every 'scene' is ripe  
for 'production' , that all the channels of representation  
intermingle and underscore one another, and that delirium over the  
brand image is general.

""The France that works and thinks"  --L'Humanité 20 May 1974"

"A perfectly repressive and disgusting new myth of the Left was born  
in the last elections. The Left is the 'real' society, the 'vital  
forces of the nation', producers, intellectuals, the youth,  
'workers', urban populations, etc. everything that is best, the  
entire future of France votes Left. On the right, the residue, the  
resigned, the imbeciles, the old men, unfortunate women (the old,  
though there are a lot of them), direty farmers, the lumpen (those  
with the lowest income vote on the Right), the military (except the  
enlightened fringe of modern officers).   In short, all kinds of  
categories that should no longer exist, according to solid historical  
logic.  At the hatch. the old.  They are blocking the road of  
history.  At bottom, all of these people lack a social existence,  
they are not fit for socialism.  There is a hint of genocide in all  
this, of Leftist racism become officially the 'social real,' with the  
whole excuse of the sociological apportionment of categories,  
referring everyone else to non-existence, to dumb and mean non- 
existence.  A new subject of history:  the vital 'forces', the normal  
against the abnormal, the effective and dynamic living being against  
the social wastes.  The Left turns into a caste. At least the  
proletariat recognized the social and historical reality of the  
bourgeoisie, that's why they fought it.  But it was only a class.   
Today, the Left has fashioned a historical shield out of racists and  
discriminatory terms.  It separates everyone else as asocial and  
already outmoded.  That prevents it from posing the question of its  
own non-existence.

"Why doesn't everyone vote on the Left? All the reasons are gathered,  
all the good reasons (even capitalist ones) are on the Left. Would it  
be that a group of people resists somewhere, without knowing it, the  
latent racism of the social rationality that the Left incarnates, the  
rationality that presents itself as social reality, that claims the  
principle of the historical reality for itself, etc.  Hegel and the  
dialectic
in the service of reason, and therefore of social efficacy:  such is  
the Left.

"Are the people stupid?  Can we not give them credit and think that  
they set themselves against this hidden truth of the Left, and not  
because they are stupid, vicious beasts?  Those that the Left  
excludes today as 'non-vital' forces because they don not vote Left  
can feel confirmed in their opinion."

--Jean Baudrillard, 1929-2007


-cm