Re: [-empyre-] Baudrillard and the future of theory

["McKenzie Wark" <mckenzie.wark@gmail.com>]

Christian writes: "Isn't all thought excessive? Isn't that why we
think?" -- channeling the wisdom of marginal notes in library books.
It's a terrific pair of sentences. But quite at odds with the banality
of most written communication in the so-called public sphere,
particularly in English.

I'm reminded of the famous story in the Times Magazine where some
White House official (who of course was unnamed) talked disparagingly
about the 'reality based community', against which he posited the
ability of the Bush White House to make its own reality.

This of course resulted in much poo-pooing from media poohbahs, but
the complacency that settled, in which all were agreed that
jourrnalism was a 'reality based community' as if this were an
inarguable fact seemed to me a supremely Baudrillardian moment.

That review of mine of the Gulf War Did Not Take Place was written
before I read Symbolic Exchange and Death, and hence i did not really
understand the writerly strategy JB employed, there and elsewhere, the
return of the gift of the world unreality to itself, measure for
measure. Hence I was quite wrong to call this strategy 'critical' in
so uncritical a way.