Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
Additional services and information for Philosophy & Social Criticism can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://psc.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://psc.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations: http://psc.sagepub.com/content/24/6/47.refs.html
Anthony King
A
critique of Baudrillards
hyperreality:towards a
sociology of postmodernism
Abstract
48
key texts in which Baudrillard first starts using the concept of the
hyperreal systematically and in which he defines (after a fashion) what
he means by the term are to be found in Fatal Strategies and Simulacra
and Simulation.
abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or
the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being,
or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origm or
Today
1994a:
1)
The real does not efface itself in favour of the imaginary; it effaces itself in
favour of the more real than real: the hyperreal. The truer than true: this is
simulation. (Baudrillard, 1990b: 11)
49
quotations reveal, hyperreality emerges at the multinational (postmodern) stage of capitalism after the mirror stage of industrial capitalism.2 In modern, industrial capitalism, cultural representations - our
knowledge and construction of reality - were linked to an independent
reality. The maps, doubles, mirrors and concepts which Baudrillard uses
as metaphors of the kind of knowledge typical of industrial capitalism
all reflect an exterior reality. They may have been inadequate to that
reality but they were based on it.
Hyperreality is a moment of profound cultural transformation in
which our cultural representations are no longer related to an independent reality and this new culture is linked by Baudrillard to the emergence and dominance of the television as a means of communication.3
For Baudrillard, the technological development of the television marks
a fundamental ontological transformation in culture; television culture
is of a different order from that of all previous societies.
For information and the media
be
compared
not so
More
The
1994a: 28)
This programme was hyperreal then because it tried to be realer than
real; it denied that it was a representation of family life, claiming,
50
instead, that
accept the screen image as the truth, as the direct and unmediated
reality and therefore demands that the actual reality (the Louds family
as they live) is not relevant - that this family does not exist outside the
television image.
Baudrillards discussion of the film The China Syndrome makes a
similar point. This film is based on the imaginary scenario of a leak at a
nuclear power plant. It becomes hyperreal for Baudrillard because the
film preceded a real leak which occurred at Harrisburg.
to
But The Cbina Syndrome is also not the original prototype of Harrisburg,
is not the simulacrum of which the other would be the real: there are
only simulacra, and Harrisburg is a sort of second-order simulacrum.
(Baudrillard, 1994a: 55)
one
Now,
the opposing
poles
can
be described
as
analogous
In the process of molecular control, which goes from the DNA nucleus to
the substance that it informs, there is no longer the traversal of an effect,
of an energy, of a determination, of a message. (Baudrillard, 1994a: 31)
51
nothing separates one pole from another anymore, the beginning from
the end; there is a kind of contraction of one over the other, a fantastic telescoping, a collapse of the two traditional poles into each other: implosion
an absorption of the radiating mode of causality, of the differential mode
of determination, with its positive and negative charge - an implosion of
meaning. This is where simulation begins. (Baudrillard, 1994a: 31)
...
The
The
poles
critique of hyperreality
52
riots, wars and massacres as they occur from the comfort of our
living-rooms. However, from these admittedly curious features,
witness
Baudrillard
53
All these methods of communication have to operate
the same interpretative norms, typical of all human interaction, for the very reason that they are all primarily linguistic.
Baudrillards failure to recognize the fundamentally interpretative nature
of television suggests some deeper philosophical and, in particular,
deeper epistemological shortcomings in his theories. The recognition of
Baudrillards epistemological weakness brings us to the second, philosophical strand of the argument against the notion of hyperreality which
will demonstrate that Baudrillards notion of hyperreality is founded in
an unsustainable Cartesianism.
story-telling.
according to
hyperreality rest are Cartesian. Cartesian epistemology set out to establish an apodictic Truth from which Descartes would be able to build a
system of knowledge and a foundation for science. As Descartes writes
in the very first sentence of the First Meditation:
Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had
accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the
whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realised that it was
necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely
and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything
at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last. (Descartes, 1994: 76)
The
peculiar
means
as
demon (1994: 79), whose sole purpose was to deceive him. Positing the
existence of this demon, Descartes concluded:
I shall think that the
sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all
external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he [the demon]
has devised to ensnare my judgement. I shall consider myself as not having
hands or eyes, or flesh or blood, or sense, but as falsely believing that I have
all these things. (Descartes, 1994: 79)
Unless Descartes could find some archimedean point of certainty on
which to base all his other knowledge, he would be reduced to a terrible
existence in an epistemological miasma - a deep whirlpool as he calls
it in the opening paragraph of the Second Meditation (1994: 80). As we
all know, he thought he found that certainty in the Cogito. The demon
54
could deceive Descartes about everything except the fact that Descartes
thought he existed.
The specifics of Descartes method of doubt and the Cogito are not
critical to the discussion of Baudrillards hyperreality but what is crucial
is the epistemological experience which Descartes highlighted as paradigmatic of human cognition. Descartes arrived at the Cogito, via the
method of doubt, from a very particular starting-point. He began with
the solipsistic contemplation of the evidence of his senses, and the
evidence of his eyes in particular.6 Descartes describes himself as sitting
in a room contemplating and gradually questioning the knowledge - in
fact, the vision - which he had of objects external to his own self. Since
these objects - including his own body - were external to his sensation
of them and yet could be known only by sensation, Descartes had no
external standard of verification. Every verification of these objects came
to him via his senses and was, therefore, only another representation and
not the thing itself. Descartes subject was trapped within its own sensations and could be sure of nothing external to those sensations.
This irrevocable subject-object dualism is critical insofar as the
analysis of hyperreality is concerned because it is this premiss that
human cognition is founded on one particular type of sensory experience which is shared by both Baudrillard and Descartes. The ocular
sensation of external material objects is the starting-point for both
theories. Significantly, this ocular starting-point facilitates the descent
into the epistemological void because the concentration of the ocular
immediately suggests that the central problem of human knowledge is
one of representation. The eye projects an image of external reality
which is viewed by the inner eye, but this projection is only a representation of which we can have no external verification (because everything
we see is a representation viewed by the inner eye). This is particularly
problematic in the light of the fact that the eye is so easily deceived.
Baudrillard and Descartes share the same representationalist paradigm
but whereas Descartes sees the mists of nihilism descending the moment
one considers how we might verify the representations we see,
Baudrillard historicizes this moment of doubt to the mid-1970s, arguing that the classic epistemological problem of representation and scepticism emerges for society as the television attains a position of cultural
dominance.
Hyperreality occurs, then, at the moment when the relationship
between the object and the representation is called into doubt. The television screen, from which individuals derived their notion of reality, has
no verifiable or direct connection with the outside world. Baudrillards
television screen replicates Descartes concerns about the inner eye but
instead of this inner eye being located in the brain of the subject, it is,
for Baudrillard, located in the living-room. Since we cannot corroborate
55
the representations the television screen presents of the world, the knowledge which we gain from the screen is open to doubt.
Although Baudrillard is (typically) reticent about clarifying the
Cartesian epistemological origins of hyperreality, he, nevertheless,
reveals in Fatal Strategies that he himself thinks of hyperreality as a
moment of extreme Cartesian doubt, thereby confirming the interpretation I have made above. Three consecutive sections of that work are
titled The Evil Genie of the Social (1990b: 72), The Evil Genie of the
Object (1990b: 81) and The Evil Genie of Passion (1990b: 99). The
use of the term evil genie is significant because it is an alternative (but
comparable) translation of the term malicious demon, which was cited
above, in reference to Descartes hyperbolic doubt in the final paragraph
of the First Meditation. So famous is the evil genie or malicious
demon in Descartes works, that no one who is aware of those writings
could possibly fail to pick up on the reference. In other words,
Baudrillard consciously calls up the epistemic void of the First Meditation in order to define his notion of contemporary hyperreal culture.
Baudrillards notion of hyperreality is Cartesian, therefore, because
it highlights representation as the problem of knowledge. Once representation is prioritized, the issue which immediately comes to the fore is the
question of the connection between the representation and the object.
This inevitably casts doubt on the accuracy and reliability of the reference because the brain has no objective reference outside itself. The step
from that point into an epistemological void, which Descartes discovered, is small because once it has been conceded that we do not have any
objective and independent standard by which to verify the material
world, it becomes easy to doubt the veracity of any of our knowledge
about that world. Baudrillards descent into nihilism follows on logically
from his epistemological construction of culture as the relationship
between the subject and the object, the representation and the thing
itself, the signifier and the signified.
56
epistemological irruption; the freed referent still needs its object but it
just likes to pretend that it is free. Hyperreality is just a form of modern
representation but one which dare not speak its name.
However, it is not just that hyperreality is self-deluded, but it is also
dependent upon a Cartesian epistemological paradigm which is deeply
and seriously flawed. Heideggers Being and Time has been a crucial
of Cartesianhighlight the
unacceptably narrow human experience on which Cartesian epistemology based itself. The Cogito was invented on the back of one very small,
academic experience of the world: the self-conscious contemplation of
the way humans see objects. Not only did Heidegger argue that this
experience was far too narrow and specialized a one on which to found
a total epistemology but the Cogito presupposed (and ignored) the precontemplative relations which humans have with their world (Guignon,
1993: 5). Heidegger famously employed the example of a craftsmans
relation to his hammer to demonstrate the kind of pre-contemplative
experience which undercut Descartes argument of the priority of the
Cogito (1967: 98). The craftsman does not learn about the hammer in
the way that Descartes envisages the rational creation of the external
world by the Cogito but rather he learns to use the hammer in a practical way.
philosophical
resource
for
highlighting
the
inadequacies
The less
was to
we
we
just
seize hold of
stare at
it
For Heidegger, the crucial point about Descartes ocular metaphor is that
it foregrounds representation as the fundamental epistemological problem ; if the eye is taken as emblematic of the epistemological process then
the philosopher must worry about how we can be sure that our vision
is an accurate representation of reality. For Heidegger, these aporia are
the unnecessary result of Descartes ignoring a more primordial fact of
the human condition: that we are always already thrown into the
world, before we can begin to contemplate that world.
When Descartes said Cogito ergo sum [I think therefore I am], he
entirely ignored the second clause - the sum, the I am. Heideggers
philosophy was devoted to highlighting the sum of the Cogito and to
defining the nature of that sum - the ontology of human existence
(Gelven, 1970: 180; Steiner, 1978: 25, 86; Habermas, 1993: 187-8).
Although it is unnecessary to go into the specific and highly complex
ways in which Heidegger laid out this ontology, an outline of his general
ontological project and method is illuminating as it suggests a means by
which we might overcome the aporia of the Cartesian paradigm. I follow
many contemporary philosophers such as Gadamer, Derrida and Rorty
57
58
tations
can
be
seen as
1982: 92)
The importance of the post-Heideggerian tradition is that the representations of which it speaks do not have a separate ontological existence
from what they represent. In the linguistic tradition, words and statements have meaning only insofar as they are embedded in a historically
produced language game. We can never therefore finally establish an
objective truth of a statement because none exists. Statements have
meaning only in relation to other statements. The task of the philosopher
is to gain the best understanding of that statement by relating it to others
in a hermeneutic fashion - to see how things hang together. The philosopher, following Heidegger (but without the metaphysical overtones),
must proceed by a dialectical, interpretative process of relating the whole
(the language game) to the part (the statement). The irretrievable
hermeneutic condition in which humans find themselves8 renders
searches for objective truth pointless but it also renders nihilism equally
inappropriate. Although words and statements are not grounded in
some prior reality, they are thoroughly embedded in a historically
produced language game in which words and statements have to submit
59
60
61
The
62
Conclusion
63
only are these intellectuals disillusioned but they are also self-deluded
for they nostalgically lament the loss of modern (Cartesian) certainties,
which were always untenable, even as they revel in the void which was
always the other side of rationalism. Hyperreality, therefore, signifies
and uncritically embodies postmodernism but it does not analyse the
particular cultural forms which recent developments have taken. Despite
Baudrillards demands for the end of dialectics (1994a: 161, 162), his
own theory (and epistemological postmodernism more generally) fails
for the very reason that it is not dialectical enough.
UK
Notes
to Alison Assiter, Stan Clark, Gerard Delanty, Mike Gane
and Ronnie Munck for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Acknowledgements
Baudrillard
uses
hyperreality emerges.
3 Baudrillard also argues that Disneyland constitutes hyperreality and in this
he parallels Ecos discussion of American culture (1987). There is no room
to discuss the example of Disneyland here. Suffice it to say that Baudrillards
belief that it is hyperreal reflects the wider failings of that concept.
4 In response to hyperreality, Baudrillard rejects traditional academic (dialectical) critique and adopts terroristic strategies. These cannot be discussed
here.
5 This argument echoes Williams criticisms of
technological
determinism
(1985: 129-51).
6 This section draws on Rortys criticisms of the very specific model with
which Descartes operates and which Rorty variously calls the ocular
metaphor (1989: 31), the mirror of nature (1989: 37, 123), or the glassy
essence
Gadamer has
64
Although I use Lashs term cultural paradigm, I mean the term in the
broader anthropological sense in which Douglas, for instance, uses it (1969)
refer to the cultural categories and classifications that inform social
practices, relations and individual identities in a society. Furthermore,
although Lash does employ the definition of postmodernism forwarded here
(as the transgression of the cultural categories of modernity (e.g. Lash,
to
provide
some
at
certain
moments
most
1989: 242).
12
Callinicos (1991), Bauman (1987: 2, 1988: 223) and Harvey (1991: 38)
have argued that the nihilism of postmodern sociology is related to the
political disenfranchisement and disillusionment of intellectuals since the
1960s.
Bibliography
Baudrillard, J. ( 1975) The Mirror of Production. St Louis, KS: Telos.
Baudrillard, J. (1981) For a Critique of a Political Economy of the Sign. St Louis,
KS: Telos.
M. Poster.
Michigan Press.
65
Baudrillard, J. (1994b) The Illusion of the End. Cambridge: Polity.
Bauman, Z. (1987) Legislators and Interpreters. Cambridge: Polity.
Bauman, Z. (1988) Is there a Postmodern Sociology?, Theory, Culture and
Society 5(2-3) (June): 217-36.
Bauman, Z. (1992) Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge.
Bell, D. (1979) The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
. London:
Heinemann.
and Praxis
. Oxford: Blackwell.
. Cambridge: Polity.
Callinicos, A. (1991) Against Postmodernism
Collins, J. (1989) Uncommon Cultures. London: Routledge.
Kellner,
D.
66
B.
(1985)
Sociology of Contemporary
Report
Cultural
on
Knowledge.
Change.
Oxford:
Blackwell.
Harvester
Wheatsheaf.
Rojek, C. and Turner, B., eds (1993) Forget Baudrillard? London: Routledge.
Rorty, R. (1982) Consequences of Pragmatism
. Brighton, Sx: Harvester Press.
Rorty, R. (1989) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rorty, R. (1993a) Heidegger, Contingency and Pragmatism, in H. Dreyfus and
H. Hall (eds) Heidegger: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rorty, R. (1993b) Wittgenstein, Heidegger and the Reification of Language, in
C. Guignon (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger
. Cambridge:
Turner,