It's Deja Vu All Over Again
Saturday, August 30, 2003
In Response to both Jennie and Alexis:
The reason why we should care about what Baurdillard has to say and the reason why you can't just "insert simulation for shadow" rests on one simple fact: for Baudrillard, all simulation rests in code. That is, the supplanting of the real occurs through codes, whether those are simple codes like the written alphabet, or the more complex machine/binary codes of the computing worlds. Were we to sit in Plato's cave, that would be a "real" experience--the shadows themselves are but traces of the real, whereas the simulation bears no relation to "the real" whatsoever.
In computers and writing, this is a first step: understanding code from a theoretical standpoint (and it's just one understanding; there are many others besides Baudrillard--but to simply say you "agree" or "disagree" with his theory doesn't go far enough, for me, in grappling with these ideas). It is what Burke calls our "symbolicity" that makes the simulation possible. Without codes, without the "map of empire," without a myriad of symbol systems, there can be no simulation; the shadow is not a code, and therefore it cannot be a simulation--unless, of course, I set up a Digital Video (DV) camera up in Plato's cave, and allow the "real" experience of the shadows to be collapsed and simulated into digital code, and then show it to several thousand or million people. At that point of dissemination, Plato's cave is simulated: it bears no relation to the real in that sitting chained to the floor in Plato's cave is nothing at all like watching shadows on a monitor somewhere else. Yet we can say at that point that we have "seen" the shadows in Plato's cave; the idea of simulation does not enter our minds at the level of experience.
Let me make one final point, now that everyone hates me. I've read a fair amount of theory in my short and unremarkable lifetime, and what I've learned about theory is this: you have to have two brains, two approaches to getting through things (what manifests itself in rhet/comp as the theory/praxis split). Theory is meant to be thought at a higher level of abstraction than what most of us think/live on a day-to-day basis. Yes, you can list a thousand examples that you have experienced which show where Baudrillard's (or anyone else's) theory breaks down (just as you can list a hundred crappy things that have happened to you, and thus claim to "disprove" the existence of a loving, protective God; or, to "prove" the existence of the Devil)--but that's not the point. The point is to engage theory on its own terms, to look at the deeper structures that make up our realities (e.g. for Baudrillard, codes, symbol systems, and the mass-media[tion] they support) and see what those more abstract concepts can tell us about the way things work. Cynically, you can call this "mental masturbation," but I think that, too, is missing the point: the generation of theory always tends to take ideas and concepts well beyond their logical limits, in the day-to-day world. But if we're all hoping to be comes doctors of philoing our soph, we ought not think that the immediate, the practical, and the lived take precedence or in any way break down theory. If only it were that simple...
While I respect Baudrillard and his attempt to define (or at the very least, understand) the system we exist within, I do not agree with his theory. For as he writes of simulations, what he defines (at one point) as "a real without origin or reality," he suggests that we can only know simulations if we, the reader, the theorizer, the being, look at them from a non-simulated position. Yet, as he continually argues, we are caught in the trap of the simulacra. To a certain degree, his notions seem to be a late-20th century rehashing of the Platonic cave (as someone suggested in class). Insert simulation for shadow.
Perhaps the paradox I see inherent in Baudrillard's argument (much like the paradox of science, I suppose) is that Baudrillard wants us to believe him, wants the reader to see the breathing, living simulation, even as he writes of its death. To paraphrase Baudrillard: facts no longer have a specific trajectory, they are born at the intersection of the model's convergence, meaning that all interpretations are possible and equally valid. Such pluralistic relativity means that Baudrillard disproves his theory as much as he proves it.
I think I understand his points, but I do not see how one can live in the simulated world, on a basic, practical level. He says we speak of oneself through denial. How? I am reminded of the Hegelian dialectic, the continual negating and reshaping of life. Yet, for Baudrillard, some end of history is not the ultimate goal, but the deterrence of that end.
As a person with an affinity for history and historical study, I was upset by his claims that History is out "lost referential, our myth." I do not like this devaluing of history. Baudrillard claims that the age of history was the age of the novel (which I take to be associated with Modernism). However, yet another major Pomo player, Jameson, in direction contradiction, argues that postmodernism is very imbued with history. Jameson writes that Postmodern always views itself in terms of its relation to the past, whereas (according to Jameson) modernism was the ahistorical period. I have to agree with Jameson on this one. I have to believe in the importance of history.
Friday, August 29, 2003
Perhaps this is in response to Karl's claim of Baudrillard's importance to composition instruction - but I just do not get why Baudrillard matters. I'll set myself up as the social pariah (right before I leave for the weekend and can't respond to the idea of others), but who really cares what B has to say and what does it mean for instructors?
The term mental masturbation comes to mind when I read him--his writings remind me of Barthes (who I love) and have me wondering if most of the statements he makes aren't a trial at his theories or an attempt at something (that I have not figured out yet). So the next thing I am wondering is--is he saying that this is the way the world is, or is he saying look what I can think through using the concepts of simulation and simulacra. Whether it works or not in the world or not, I'm playing with my ideas.
It is not that I think he doesn't have great ideas, but I wonder how far they should be taken and in what light. I also think it is partially a game; therfore, I'm not sure what purpose it has for teaching composition. Returning to my original question - why does B matter?
Thursday, August 28, 2003
You're absolutely right, Lu...but what would it even mean to "give up" TV? I have a TV in my apartment, but I only use it to view DVDs and a few VHS tapes--no cable or antenna hookup in sight. Yet whenever I'm at a bar, in a waiting room, or walking through the Union even, TV is everywhere--so even though I've "given up" TV, I'm still immersed in it outside of my immediate living space. And while Baudrillard is certainly interested in popular culture, he's more interested in the theory behind/within/under it's deeper structures of the manipulation of human experience, whether it's print, televisual, Web, or other media. The word "mediation" comes to mind...or, if you read Bolter & Grusin, "Remediation..." We are all the products of and participants in remediation...
FYI: Informal survey.
Meg made this comment that the there is no survey to support Baudrillard’s claims about TV (if I remember correctly). Actually I witnessed an informal survey in a 500-student lecture class where the professor asked the students who would like to give up TV for the rest of their lives for a million dollars. Of the 500 students, only 2 raised their hands. I think we cannot deny that TV has become an almost indispensable part of our culture, or at least popular culture. Baudrillard, it seems to me, is really interested in popular culture.
What Baudrillard has to say about the (hyper)real is of utmost importance to composition instructors teaching digital pedagogies in digital environments. Need proof? Recall (say to like last week) at the way instructors novice and experience bristled at the idea that the institutional structure within introductory composition at Purdue was now going to _demand_ digital components in IC courses. Tired arguments of the primacy of print matter over digital, etc. arrive too late for Baudrillard--the "simulation" of writing in the digital realm (itself a third-order simulacrum; look at the fears of instructors when they confront that ultimate in student-writer simulation: plagiarism) is itself a confirmation of the death of writing in the printed "real"; that is, writing was always already (never anything) more than a technology, a bundle of techniques and tools which, perhaps since the advent of writing courses in the late 19th c. have always been simulated. Instructors have sought after a would-be Beauborg labyrinth for new pedagogies, new management techniques, new classroom spaces--all under the guise of the "real": writing is real, therefore writing instruction must be real.
But to accept Baudrillard's presentation of the precession of simulacra, we can see that all referentials--all traces of the real--have long been effaced, and so students and instructors alike must enter the "cool" environments of referentialess signs, the simulation of all writing and instruction. Our students write Neo's copy of _Simulacra and Simulation_: how ingenious of the machines in the Matrix to simulate the quintessential book on simulation; is it, we wonder, the same as the copy of S and S that we own? But that doesn't matter--in a world of pure simulation (ours or the Matrix), there is no longer any referential in any sign or any group of signs (S and S). The simulation is a hyperreality of discourse, one in which we show canine teeth to students who dare "simulate" our very "real" assignments, whether taking a personal essay assignment and turning it in to a piece of fiction, or out-and-out plagiarism, as in my example before.
The grounding of any sound digital writing pedagogy is a realization of this hyperreal world of computers and writing. Rather than seeing computers as "tools" or "facilitators" of written work (as Sullivan [2001] has pointed out), we need to understand the ways that digital writing shapes our approach to teaching (and writing itself). Baudrillard is a good start.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
The question is, then, can I keep using my pseudonymous blogger id, or do I need to use my real name?
