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

[Brian Holmes <brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr>]

McKenzie Wark wrote:

> 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.

Personally I found the endless repetition of that strategy really 
infuriating, not because I didn't understand the idea of giving the 
world's unreality back to it, not because I didn't have an inkling of 
all the collective projects on the radical left whose failure such 
sublime irony had to make at once palpable, bearable and yet virulent 
still - but instead because the very salable repetition of the same 
gesture just fed the whole complacent 80s moment and created cascades of 
mediocre imitators who made intellectual and cultural life in the 
"postmodern" USA into something very stifling and small and 
narcissistic, even on into the mid and late 90s when there were really a 
lot of things happening in the wide world that were worth paying 
attention to.

What later surprised me and made me, not really forgive, but rather just 
forget Baudrillard's role in all that, was that immediately after 
September 11 he abandoned that single strategy and started talking about 
life again: first what was behind the attack on the Twin Towers, then a 
strong insight into the struggle of the intermittents du spectacle, as 
well as other short but very thoughtful texts, published in the 
newspaper Liberation. I frankly think he wasted most of his time and a 
lot of everyone else's for many years, but the way he was able to give 
that up in the end, after a crucial turning point, was nice, something 
encouraging.

all the best, Brian