More of Baudrillard on America. Dans son style délirant, en effet il y a vraiment trop de délire dans son livre, but i guess the name of my blog oblige…
“Like many other aspects of contemporary America, Santa Cruz is part of the post-orgy world, the world left behind after the great social and sexual convulsions. The refugees from the orgy – the orgy of sex, political violence, the Vietnam war, the Woodstock Crusade, and the ethnic and anti-capitalist struggles too, together with the passion for money, the passion for success, hard technologies etc., in short the whole orgy of modernity – are all there, jogging along in their tribalism, which is akin to the electronic tribalism of Silicon Valley. Reduced pace of work, decentralization, air-conditioning, soft technologies. Paradise. But a very slight modification, a change of just a few degrees, would suffice to make it seem like hell.”
it is strange that both of us, in two different parts of the world and perhaps in two different libraries were reading Baudrillard on the same day. i was in the library, sitting on the floor, with several new left reviews nex to me. and started reading short entries by Baudrillard. The one i read was on Europe in the post no-referendum period in France and NL. and as for the piece you cite, he captures in a correct way the dehumanization and the transformation of the social and political or better the absence of the political. yet, he leaves you wandering with a bitter taste in your mouth – his world is grim and ridden by impossibility. it is a view of the past lost and of dissatisfying present. it is a world of someone whose view from above does not see in the current events a potential of struggle and transformation but rather views it as a vertigo of loss and looming catastrophy. not to mention that certain bombastic leftist language annoys me. ups … maybe i have exagerated. a kiss
ah, i’m trying to picture you squatting on the floor of some oxford library, and i like the image. and what a pleasure to know about these reading connections. so why are you reading baudrillard and the new left reviews? what are you looking for?
i admit i’m only reading him because of this book America. a strange reading. yes, the annoying bombastic language. and then knowing beforehand that Chris, the Cultural Studies guy, who goes to Maoist conferences on the Chinese cultural revolution, finds it an idiotic book. i think i agree, not sure though if it’s for the same reasons. Baudrillard makes a number of dismissive comments on American Marxism. Like the following one, still part of his Santa Cruz observations: “The whole place exudes an air of sentimental reconciliation with nature, with sex, with madness and even with history (by way of a carefully corrected, revised Marxism).” i’d guess that Chris would feel addressed and needs to reject, cause how else can one relate to self-righteous identitarian “old world vs. new world” stuff.
i’ll give you an example of where Baudrillard gets really idiotic: “We in Europe possess the art of thinking, of analysing things and reflecting on them. No one disputes our historical subtelty and conceptual imagination. Even the great minds across the Atlantic envy us in this regard. But the resounding truths, the realities of genuinely great moment today are to be found along the Pacific seaboard or in Manhattan. It has to be said that New York and Los Angelos are at the centre of the world, even if we find the idea somehow both exciting and disenchanting. We are a desperately long way behind the stupidity and the mutational character, the naive extravagance and the social, racial, moral, morphological, and architetural excentricity of their society. No one is capable of analysing it, least of all the American intellectuals shut away on their campuses, dramatically cut off from the fabulous concrete mythology developing all around them.”
one of the (many…) moments in the book that i disconnect. yes boy, find yourself a rooster fight somewhere, and leave other people alone, okay? but every now and then a thought or phrase or even half of a sentence says something that rings so true, and i guess that that’s where the bitterness comes in. cause you’re right, there is a very bitter taste in all of this. a piece of truth caught up in this grim landscape with a soundtrack of cynical laughter – this is how reality looks like now, have a good look, better get used to it, enjoy or perish. and how it suffocates there, that little tiny piece of truth. but i’m going on with these readings, and will continue this kind of study while i’m here, cause there is something so suffocating here and i want to understand. (yes, i know that you’d only be surfing here, what a different way to take santa cruz, you’re probably right… but you must know that the water is very very cold). trying to find that potential of struggle and transformation, refusing the view that the political is simply absent, okay, of course, but it’s a tough nut to crack here. in between the liberal progressive image of santa cruz which functions as a kind of brand, the omni-present cult of individualism, the way class is so out of the picture, and a number of other things, it vanishes so quickly…
tell me more about oxford library adventures, will you? i send you love and kisses.