Post on 20-Dec-2015
Baudrillard and the
Hyper-real
“Irreality no longer belongs to the dream or the
phantasm . . . But to the hallucinatory resemblance of
the real to itself”
What is real?
Old question—PlatoWriting
Consumer Society
Media Images
Technology
Welcome . . .. . . to the order of the simulacra
Jean Baudrillard
Professor of Sociology at Nanterre1960s-1987
Initially concerned with Media and Consumption
Breaks with Marxism in 1973 (Mirror of Production)
Eventually identified with Postmodernismmis-identified, really
Baudrillard’s antecedents
Karl Marx (1818-1883):
Use Value--utilitarian value
Exchange Value--value of object in exchange
Marcel Mauss (1872-1950):
Symbolic value--The Gift
consumption wasteful
social interactions can not be reduced to utility
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929):
“Conspicuous Consumption”
prestige through wastefulness
Political Economy of Signs
Four Logics of the object:
Practical Operations--use value--utility--instrument
Equivalence--exchange value--the market--commodity
Ambivalence--symbolic exchange--the gift--symbol
Difference--sign value--status--sign
Le Système des objects, 1968La Sociètè de la consommation, 1970For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, 1972
Sign Value
Value is assigned primarily through the logic of the sign
Thus, an object’s relationships to other objects are emphasized
Value of an object is determined through relationships to other objects and not through utility
Implications
Human beings:
Do not search for happiness
Do not search to realize equality
Rather, preoccupied with lifestyles and values
Consumption:
Rarely fulfills basic needs
Does not level or homogenize
Rather, differentiates through a system of signs
Main-frame Main-frame mid 1950s
– Sign up
– ½ hour or so of access, run program
– Computing time often cost $100/hr
– Not an efficient use of expensive time
Batch processing Up until 1960s, main form of optimizing
computer time Punch Cards
– Submit to a receptionist– Programs ran through in “batches”– Collect results
Complex programs could take weeks to debug
Maximize Production
Talking to the Univac
Interface: Cards and Key-punch
Machine: Case 1107
IBM 026 Card Punch
http://inventors.about.com/education/inventors/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/cards.html
Transistors Late 1950s, TX-0
– 1956, Lincoln Labs– First general all purpose
programmable transistor computer
– Better access– Paper tape reader– Fanciful, push machine to
the limits» Aesthetic http://www.net.org/html/history/detail/1956-txo.html
DEC
1961, PDP-1 – Designed for interactive use
» IBM conservative in product development» Not for huge number crunching
– Cheap, $120,000– Easy to start– No 15 tons of air conditioning (tubes)– Easy to start up– Easy to program screen
Microchip Microcomputers created to help
liberate the computer from “the high priests” of computing
Can only be done with a technology developed by the “military industrial complex”
Computer as a “package” of transistors
Production and consumption mixed up
Intel 8080, CPU for Altair
“The Code”Symbolic Exchange and Death, 1976
Not Defined--meaning through contextDistinction between production and
reproduction obsolete
Original Reproductions
Production reproduces a “natural” object
The Code 2With binary data, however . . .
The
code
The “natural” has been by passed
What is the distinction
between the copy and the original?
Hyper-realityIn the age of the copy of the copy, or the
“simulacrum,” there is no difference between the real and the representation
“everything becomes undecideable”nature/culture, beautiful/ugly, true/false
“At the end of this process of reproducibility, the real is not only that which can be reproduced, but that which
is already reproduce: the hyperreal.”
“The very definition of real is that of which it is possible to provide an equivalent reproduction.”
“A kind of unintentional parody hovers over everything, a tactical simulation, a consummate aesthetic enjoyment, is attached to the indefinable play of reading and the rules of the game. Travelling signs, media, fashion and models, the blind but brilliant ambience of the simulacrum.”