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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Reality-effects

posted by on March 13 at 14:12 PM

My girl making a white friend in Macy’s:
84db43c440bd.jpg The one concept that I took from Jean Baudrillard (who died early last week at the old age of 77), and I’m sure he got it from elsewhere, as concepts never have an actual origin but are always already from elsewhere, is reality-effects. What this means is that all human experience is mediated—there is no such thing as sense-certainty—and so what really matters is not reality as such but reality-effects: the effects that a human imaginary has on the real. This allows us to read all of human reality as a fiction with real-effects. Political fictions, be they imagined from the right or the left, have real effects. And it’s on the nature of these effects, there type and extent, that one must judge a work political or social fiction. (Fiction can also be understood as ideology.) As for Baudrillard’s concept (or password) of the virtual, it’s of zero use to us because all has always been virtual. What we have never known is that the real does not exist for us as anything but efficacious or inefficacious, strong or weak effects. Also simulacrum, the virtual in its hyper form, such as Disneyland, has been with us from the beginning of human time. In fact, the first persecution of Christians, 68 AD, resulted from a theme park that the emperor Nero wanted to build in a part of Rome he burnt to the ground (the imaginary: the theme park; the reality-effect: the persecution of Christians—the imaginary: the apocalypse; the reality-effect: the persecution of Christians). Simulacrum is the weakest version of Marx’s commodity fetish, Lukacs’ reification, Benjamin’s phantasmagoria, and Debord’s spectacle.

RSS icon Comments

1

Which girl is yours??? ;)

Posted by thecandyqueen | March 13, 2007 2:25 PM
2

Of course reality-effects affect the imaginary, too, to an absurd extent in the case of present-day Christians' refusal to let go of a centuries-old persecution complex. If that mannequin had a hole in its chest so you could see a gore-covered heart, it wouldn't belong in a department store -- it would have to be moved to a church.

Posted by MvB | March 13, 2007 2:51 PM
3

when the hell did the slog turn into a night class at the evergreen state college?

Posted by frederick r | March 13, 2007 3:21 PM
4

zzzzzzzzzzz...

Posted by demolator | March 13, 2007 3:24 PM
5

If you're referring to the Great Fire of Rome, I feel it necessary to point out that there's no evidence that Nero started that fire. He did take advantage of the newly available land in the aftermath, leading to claims that he started the fire or deliberately held back those who were trying to put it out.

It's also more likely that he recited poetry, and didn't play the fiddle, while Rome burned.

Posted by keshmeshi | March 13, 2007 3:26 PM
6

Keshmeshi, it's a bit of a joke, or at least a purposeful, ironic lie. Walt Disney isn't in cryogenic stasis either.

Aside: Let's remember that Baudrillard was originally a Situationist and most of his later philosophy can be taken as sort of a situationist performance, a participation in spectacle, an attempt to make the system collapse into itself by expanding it to its most absurd extremities. His essay on Beaubourg is a pretty good example of this.

Posted by jimmy | March 13, 2007 3:58 PM
7

So in other words, what Baudrillard was trying to say is that the viaduct sucks?

Posted by World Class Cynic | March 13, 2007 4:47 PM
8

Um, dude, she's not making a white friend, she's making a green friend. Either that or my monitor's fried.

Posted by Will in Seattle | March 13, 2007 5:18 PM
9

Your daughter is cute. She got me to read your post. This is the only post I've ever read with your name on it. That's because you're boring. Really boring. Honestly, I don't think I've ever read anyone more boring. It's like you're training to be in the Olympics of Boring. Keep aiming high there, ya little trooper. You're still boring.

Posted by I. Roll | March 13, 2007 6:13 PM
10

Charles, forgive me, but if reality effects are the effects our actions (physical and mental) have on reality, AND if all human experience is mediated, then we can't actually get at the reality effects any more than we can get at the rest of reality. Our access to the reality effects would be mediated like our access to the rest of reality. Why would we have special non-mediated access to just this part of reality? If you grant that we don't, then what's the big deal with reality-effects as an object of study over any other part of reality? If all is mediated then the social and the natural are both elusive yet equally fair game for our attention.
Apologies, haven't read Baudrillard.

Posted by ben | March 13, 2007 8:03 PM
11

Funny, that photo reminded me of the cover of Handsome Boy Modeling School's album, White People.

Posted by wf | March 13, 2007 9:08 PM
12

Charles, dear, what are you on?

Posted by lawrence clark | March 13, 2007 11:09 PM
13

Adorable little girl you've got there. I bet she's got a hell of a vocabulary with you as a daddy too.

Posted by jkjk | March 14, 2007 3:30 AM

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