/lit/ - Literature

>>10232352
>critique of reality

reality is a bad term. reality is what he ends up talking about, but it's critique of capital originally, that winds up being a kind of interior critique of theoretical attempts to explain that reality. if mass society is predicated on nothing more than consumption, this applies to the production of theoretical discourse as well, which of course he knows about. the reason his writing is so fucking interesting to read is because he implies himself in it, and brings a little more gallic verve and flair to it than, say, land does: but in the end they both seem to me to be addressing the same ideas.

and in a way, maybe the way baudrillard writes about it is the way to write about it: in a word, almost poetically. everything else seems to miss the point - that is, that there is no point - and becomes less interesting by trying to name or fix or situate one.

seems to make more sense to me to take precisely that cavalier attitude about the whole thing. what we expect from critics is that they ultimately walk this kind of impossible line between investment and detachment, but when you get a sufficiently honest or perceptive guy like baudrillard, you wind up with literature more than theory: people who know themselves too well, perhaps, to be able to say anything directly. maybe based marshall said it best, though.