/lit/ - Literature

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7vJ2UFbeXA

Who are some poets or novelists with a style clearly influenced by opiates?

>>10235073
>say bro is baudrillard really that involved in marxism?
mos def. it's what makes him interesting. because he had an eye for detail and prose like no other. he understood the *psychology* of consumption and this is why he had such a hard time being a doctrinaire critic. he knew that, when it comes to *aesthetics* that there is a vast and open terrain that lies *between* use and exchange value: that is, *sign* value. the social worth of a commodity.

and, in particular, what it means to *inhabit a world of signs.* consider *architecture.* one of my favorite JB books is System of Objects for this reason, because he asks these questions: what happens when you shift from *ownership* to *inhabitance?* when you decorate or arrange your living space? this is the magical power of capital: it can create worlds based purely on simulation, on the interplay of signs. capital and aesthetics together become, in his words, a form of *sorcery.*

all of this stuff makes baudrillard interesting. he knows capital is real - no doubt. and that a huge part of its power is that it can make illusions, fantasies, dreams, desires, art &c become real also. but what he's wondering is, in a world in which we really can - maybe even should - imagine, create, design virtually everything,

a) where does reality go, and
b) what do we do afterwards.

marxism grounds most of his work and gives him a place to criticize *from:* he starts with an almost Platonic disbelief in the world and its illusions. and yet, at the same time, he can't find anything else in the world *except* illusions - and, indeed, these illusions are necessarily self-perpetuating. we pay for our fantasies with other fantasies ad infinitum. we consume and produce, produce and consume. based on what? some mysterious desire for happiness, some aesthetic impulse.

he was too honest to deny that capital was just too fascinating to call himself a die-hard ideologue, and yet too perceptive to convince himself that there was an underlying structure to the concept of consumption. hence his own theory: that simulation is this ontological process. it's something people do. especially in the wealthy consumer-oriented, media-saturated, super-liberalizing West in which he lived. we unfold fantasies in all directions, and capital makes these dreams come true. we just don't know why. and maybe we can't say why.

so he was a marxist critic in the sense that capital becomes this master signifier for him. but his critical sensibilities diverge from his political sensibilities. it's not even like you can say he was wrong. where the fuck are we today? trump - captain meme himself - is now the president. we are no closer to understanding consumption today than when we were in his time (unless you take land's view). wealth *still* hypnotizes us.

could hype JB to the moon and back all fucking day. no problemo. not only *because* of the marxism but because of how his writing transformed it and it transformed him.