Jean Baudrillard vs. America?

by Paul Austin Murphy (November 2015)

Jean Baudrillard was a well-known French philosopher and sociologist. He died in 2007.

Baudrillard, along with Jean-François Lyotard, more or less invented postmodernism – or at least provided its theoretical underpinnings. Baudrillard also said (amongst other things) that “[r]eality itself is too obvious to be true” and that “truth does not exist” [in Fragments: Cool Memories III].

Christopher Norris, Frederic Jameson and Alex Callinicos – have been particularly critical of Baudrillard’s seemingly “pro-American” stance. Yet until he was 40 (in 1969) Baudrillard was (more or less) a revolutionary Marxist. And it can also be seen that despite the criticism he has got from Marxists/socialists for his “relativism,” “support of the status quo” and “lack of political commitment,” the ghost of Marx still haunted him. Much of what he did, essentially, was to take some of Marx’s theories and ideas in a radically new direction.

What Baudrillard did, then, was substitute certain Marxist variables (i.e., theories and technical terms) and juggle them around a little. Thus Baudrillard kept himself in the Marxist épistème and then played his postmodernist games within it.

Again, it may still seem strange to class Baudrillard as, well, a lapsed Marxist. So just sample this wee diatribe against liberal democracies to be going on with:

                                       *****************************************

Yes, despite the museums, the American Civil War, the abolition of slavery, the fight against the British state, etc., America has no history. Or at least according to a French intellectual, America has no history. But, then again, are you meant to take these oracular pronouncements literally?

Disneyland

It should come as no surprise that this postmodernist ex-revolutionary Marxist believed that America,

“is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence.”

He goes on to say that America is an “[a]norexic culture” and “a culture of disgust, of expulsion, of anthropoemia, of rejection.” A land of “obesity, saturation, overabundance.” Feel that smug hatred underneath the fairytale that Baudrillard actually embraced America and all things American.

So what did Baudrillard think about Americans?

Sinful Poverty: Sinful Wealth

Baudrillard’s take on “consumerism” is also firmly set within a Marxist paradigm. 

This time, instead of “capitalist ideology” integrating classes (which should otherwise be at war with each other), consumerism does that trick instead. Baudrillard believes that to be the case primarily because all classes (from the proletariat to the upper-class) consume pretty much the same things: from Rihanna to microwaves to chat shows.

Even Baudrillard’s notion of the “hyperreal” can be seen as a Marxist construct. Or at least it must have fed off a particularly Marxist way of looking at things.
 
In this instance, instead of the “false consciousness” of the working class being a phenomenon of, well, consciousness</em>; this time false consciousness is found in “what we take to be reality.” This is the ancient philosophical - and then Marxist - distinction between “reality and appearance.” So with Baudrillard’s “hyperreality” we have nothing but “simulations” which people (the working class again?) take to be reality.

And because capitalism is essentially about selling products, everything becomes (or must become) a product – even reality itself. Thus the Gulf War of 1990/1, according Baudrillard, was also a product. It was a “simulation.” “Hyperreal.” The Gulf War simply “did not take place.”
 
Thus the “capitalist Media” gets to work on reality and in so doing it turns reality into hyperreality. A system of “sign-values” which are variously “aesthetisised” for our consumption and enjoyment – even the killings and bombings of the Gulf War.

Conclusion

In the future, Jean Baudrillard may be seen as a true successor to Marx.

 

_____________________________

 

American Thinker, Think-Israel, Liberty GB, Broadside News, Human Events, Faith Freedom, etc.

Paul Austin Murphy’s Poetry.

 

To comment on this article, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish interesting articles such as this, please click here.

If you have enjoyed this article and want to read more by Paul Austin Murphy, please click here.