Re: [-empyre-] Baudrillard's énoncé...

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

On 3/11/07, Nicholas Ruiz III <editor@intertheory.org> wrote:

> What I like about Jean's take on 'America,' is its
> realness--we are primitive, he sees this well, while
> paradoxically, we are postmodern.  Jean's prognosis of
> this status is terminal: it ends with a paroxystic
> phase of culture, of which we are the vanguard.

I was just reading some quotes I collected from JB's books over the
years. I think i 'get' his remarks on America now that i live in it:

"What do you expect a 'successful' revolution to look like? It is
paradise." (America, p98)

"Ours is a crisis of historical ideals facing up to the impossibility
of their realisation. Theirs is the crisis of an acheived utopia,
confronted with the problem of its duration and permanence."
(America, 77)

"Americans can only imagine and combat an enemy in their own image.
They are at once both missionaries and converts to their own way of
life, which they triumphantly project onto the world."
(TGWDNTP, 37)

"One day they will rebuild Disneyland at Disneyworld."
(Cool Memories II, 42)

The latter touches on his genius for aphorism, a much despised genre,
and another of Canetti's talents. (Although this one owes mere perhaps
to Chamfort)


___________________
McKenzie Wark
http://www.ludiccrew.org