Re: [-empyre-] A view from "Baudrillard and the Media"

[Nicholas Ruiz III <editor@intertheory.org>]

Yes, Baudrillard readily passed through Sociology, at
least the most widespread emprical version of
it...even as his analyses remained, theoretically
'sociocultural'...

Gerry Coulter has interesting things to say in this
regard:

http://www.ubishops.ca/BaudrillardStudies/vol1_2/coulter.htm


NRIII


--- Aliette <aliette@criticalsecret.org> wrote:

> >From my part, dear Nich, I can't tell nothing on
> Debray and much less on
> Henri-Levy. Not more of Deleuze having not read
> enough his philosophy to
> speak on.
> 
> I hope that William Merrin will honour us to discuss
> with you, but I think
> that he is not yet a subscriber of Empyre. Just a
> passage in Idc for answer
> in a debate that for a part discredited Baudrillard.
> May be can you come,
> William ?
> 
> What interested me in his view concerns more the
> question of a possible
> scientific genealogy of Baudrillard's ideas from a
> part of the proper object
> of Sociology. Because first he was a sociologist.
> The idea of the object as
> corpus of his proper research leaving the question
> of the subject from
> metaphysics and modern phenomenology, can having
> meet both the question of
> the progressive disappearance of the political
> philosophy, and the history
> of proper sociology describing its corpus as object,
> exactly at the French
> sociologist Durkheim.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Durkheim
> 
> Durkheim having definite the question of the corpus
> of research through the
> necessity of the object instead the affect: having
> to "consider the social
> facts as things". What may be a well part of
> Baudrillard to have transfer
> this relevance of sociology to post political
> philosophy as a defy of
> struggle - even his concept of the social "silent
> mass".
> 
> 
> On 14/03/07 18:34, "Nicholas Ruiz III"
> <editor@intertheory.org> probably
> wrote:
> 
> > The reluctance to read work like that of Jean
> > Baudrillard as 'serious' is one of the great
> mysteries
> > of literary consumption.  It seems that for
> reasons
> > which escape me, his work is the bullseye of a
> target
> > that includes Deleuze and Guattari's books, and in
> > general all that is or may be construed as
> > 'postmodern'...
> > 
> > It is interesting that other engaging work, for
> > example, like that of Regis Debray, seems better
> > received, and yet, I would say is every bit as
> related
> > to the 'postmodern,' in terms of its style or
> > mise-en-scene, no?  Further, postmodern literature
> > (fiction) is well-received and sells quite well on
> > both sides of the Atlantic.  Regis is not well
> known
> > in the U.S.-- Random House would rather we warm up
> to
> > Bernard Henri-Levy; perhaps Aliette or William can
> > better inform us, as to Debray's relative
> reception in
> > France or Europe?
> > 
> > Who might deliver us with a reading of the
> academic
> > angst that delivers such a militant aggression
> toward
> > the work of particular theorists or genres of
> thought
> > and writing...?
> > 
> > NRIII
> > 
> > --- Aliette <aliette@criticalsecret.org> wrote:
> > 
> >>> From William Merrin, author of:
> >> 
> >>     "Baudrillard and the Media: A Critical
> >> Introduction"
> >> 
> >> @ Polity Press, UK (Nov 2005)
> >> 
> >> As abstract here an extract from the interactive
> >> review of the book at
> >> amazon.co.uk:
> >> 
> >> " Baudrillard is a much mis-represented figure in
> >> cultural theory. He's
> >> consistently misunderstood by otherwise
> intelligent
> >> people who are either a)
> >> annoyed by his Gallic provocations or b) have a
> >> vested interest in wishing
> >> to safeguard their much more conformist
> assessments
> >> of contemporary life.
> >> 
> >> Merrin does a great job setting the record
> straight.
> >> The book is
> >> comprehensive and stimulating and points out the
> >> various ways in which
> >> Baudrillard's thought adds another dimension to
> the
> >> frequently uncritical
> >> and culturally populist field of Media Studies.
> >> 
> >> If you want to understand in a much more
> >> sophisticated fashion than the
> >> media could ever explain, such issues as the
> >> inability of the West to
> >> understand properly the sensitivities of the
> Islamic
> >> world - this is the
> >> book for you. "
> >> 
> >> ----------
> >> (with his direct allow to repost it from Idc list
> to
> >> Empyre)
> >> 
> >> 
> >> Facing Ken and Nich I think that may be they can
> >> have any interesting and
> >> different view,
> >> 
> >> Aliette 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> /////////////////
> >> First post: 
> >> //////////////
> >> 
> >> I joined this list because a friend had passed
> onto
> >> me the first two
> >> emails regarding Jean Baudrillard. I have to say
> >> that I'm disappointed
> >> by the level of knowledge they display. I would
> >> immediately fail
> >> undergraduates who demonstrated such a lack of
> >> knowledge of his work and
> >> filled the space instead with such poorly
> >> thought-through invective.
> >> 
> >> The first commentator said:
> >> 
> >> 'Thus beguiling, but ultimately fairly dubious,
> >> totalising and
> >> empirically unsupportable, or at least highly
> >> reductive notions about
> >> 'simulacra' and 'simulation' were not only taken
> far
> >> too seriously, but
> >> helped to produce and support cultural phenomena
> >> which were then taken
> >> as evidence of the rightness of Baudrillard's
> ideas'
> >> 
> >> The simulacrum is actually a historical concept,
> >> found explicitly and
> >> implicitly in the theological, anthropological
> and
> >> philosophical
> >> literature. The western tradition repeatedly
> founds
> >> its primary
> >> theologies and philosophies on the attempt to
> reduce
> >> the efficacy of the
> >> image (whether the man-made image, the world as
> >> image of the divine, or
> >> the images that constitute our interior
> knowledge)
> >> and to demonise its
> >> power to assert itself as the full reality. This
> >> 'simulacrum', however,
> >> has always challenged every truth system built
> upon
> >> it, whether idealist
> >> or materialist. To give an example, empiricism
> >> serves as the basis for
> >> science and social science yet its primary
> >> philosophers were aware of
> >> how the images of subjective thought and
> sensation
> >> completely ungrounded
> >> their attempt to turn subjectivity into
> objectivity.
> 
=== message truncated ===


Dr. Nicholas Ruiz III
Editor, Kritikos
http://intertheory.org