Quite the Contrary

Thank you, Ken Rufo, for contributing to this course so we can better understand Jean Baudrillard. It seems to me like Baudrillard stated a couple things over his lifetime that he later rethought about. Instead of seeing this as a fault, I give a theorist more credit for thinking critically about their own thoughts enough to jump to and from different pools of theories.

I have to agree with Baudrillard in his work Political Economy of the Sign that Marx “goofs up, badly” when he assumes that in the absence of a capitalist regime a laborer will work because he enjoys being useful. Instead of focusing on the production of goods, Baudrillard argues for the focus to be on the consumption. When we have a lack of competition and the laborer works because he enjoys it, all we have left is production. Baudrillard says that capitalism does not care about the production of goods but instead cares about how many goods are being consumed. So if capitalism does care about production at all it is only that production keeps producing so more and more can be consumed.

After Ken mentioned the “L’Esprit du Terrorisme” I decided to read the work. It is easy to point the finger at Baudrillard after reading this text and say he is anti-American – but let’s look at the bigger picture, the man makes some great points. He says that when we think of terrorism, we think of America and Islam because we have a visual confrontation and we are able to make this idea of terrorism concrete. He argues that terrorism is not a clash of cultures, and is not limited to America and Islam.

He focuses on America because of the attack on September 11th and because we are a hegemonic super-power. Baudrillard says that now that we are a single world order, we find ourselves “grappling with antagonistic forces diffused throughout the very heart of the global itself, present in all contemporary convulsions.” For instance, he mentions that if Islam were the super-power, Islam would have a terrorist problem. The attack on September 11th was not so much a personal attack on the United States as much as it was an attack against globalization.

I would like to end my post with the most interesting and thought-provoking quote in “L’Esprit du Terrorisme.” Baudrillard states, “We naively believe that the progress of Good, its climb to power in all areas (science, technique, democracy, rights of man) corresponds to a defeat of Evil. Nobody seems to have understood that Good and Evil climb to power at the same time and in the same move. The triumph of the one does not imply the vanquishing of the other; indeed it is quite the contrary.” I would like to know what people think of this quote, whether they have read Baudrillard’s work, or, more interestingly, they haven’t.