/lit/ - Literature

>>11879144
but maybe also that our fantasies have become fantasies of domination in this way, i think he would have taken that idea to the moon and back. the predominance of sexuality in advertisement, the disappearance of sex in reality, the ferocity with which sexual harrassment is treated in a completely hyper-sexualized age...he would have been able to write about some of these things, perhaps, in a way that rose above a kind of boilerplate moralism or finger-wagging politics, which is what most of us usually wind up doing. certainly the contestation of the prized moral high ground of being the Good, the Innocent, and the Pure. and perhaps he would have also connected this to our own deep-seated mingled paranoia and fascination with islam also.

he would not have written anything about the intellectual dark web, or peterson. funny also that peterson talks about derrida and foucault but rarely mentions baudrillard (and references to heidegger are rare, but i think i can understand why...he doesn't want to allow himself to be compared any more to a third reich apologist than he already has been), but baudrillard was as keen an observer of the fate of postmodernity as ever there was. he really was a kind of neo-marxist figure, but perhaps he would have noted that marxism has now permeated so deeply into the fabric of academic life that it becomes well and truly hyperreal. the search for the origins of the crime, the way in which people today hold each other hostage in the name of the Good...

maybe he would have been extra-shitty and said, congratulations, this is what the complete cultural reproduction of the world looks like. reality has been rubbed out of existence and replaced with total simulation: this is how it feels to live in the Magic Kingdom and be ruled by rollercoasters, talking mice and theme songs. maybe this is what you wanted all along, the perfect reunion of the sign to the signifier, Artificial Synthetic Walt Disney Time. like a crushing gravity well of weaponized nostalgia, with the dancing brooms sweeping everything along before them, much as he said they would.

there's a book by gilles chatelet called To Live And Think Like Pigs. chatelet mentions deleuze and guattari as two of a very few names who managed to avoid living and thinking like pigs. i think baudrillard deserves that honor as well.