version

Well-known member
"If you want to know everything, after September 11th, Jean had blood in his urine. I said to him, 'You have to get yourself treated!' He was so excited by September 11th, so excited. He could not have prevented it, of course, but he had seen the matrix of world change."
 

craner

Beast of Burden
He was so excited by it he practically admitted that all of his previous work was total bullshit by writing an overexcited essay that said, "the events strike is off!"

Suddenly reality was real again, because Jean had decided it was.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
No one has properly taken down these bums yet, not Sokal, or Eagleton, or Anderson, or Scruton. It can't be that difficult.
 

version

Well-known member
No one has properly taken down these bums yet, not Sokal, or Eagleton, or Anderson, or Scruton. It can't be that difficult.
Maybe they aren't worth taking down? That or it isn't that easy and Sokal etc weren't up to it.
 

version

Well-known member
I find him fun and entertaining, but stuff like the bit at the start of Illusion of the End I mentioned in another thread where he suggests one thing then suggests the complete opposite does make me think of that Art Bollocks essay and the point about avoiding ever coming to a conclusion.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Baudrillard writes in a way that makes everything he says true if youre inclined to read it that way. I like it. As k punk said earlier in this thread its cultural analysis, not science. Its worth can be measured in how much it gets your head whirring.
 

version

Well-known member
Baudrillard writes in a way that makes everything he says true if youre inclined to read it that way. I like it. As k punk said earlier in this thread its cultural analysis, not science. Its worth can be measured in how much it gets your head whirring.
Yeah, that's more or less how I feel about it atm. The same thing Luka said when I asked whether accelerationism was a dead end and he said you should judge a theory on how fun it is.

That being said, maybe I'll eventually lose patience with this stuff. I already get irritated by Deleuzian jargon and I haven't even read the whole of ATP yet.
 

version

Well-known member
NYT: Were you a friend of Susan Sontag?

BAUDRILLARD: We saw each other from time to time, but the last time, it was terrible. She came to a conference in Toronto and blasted me for having denied that reality exists.

Also,

NYT: Some here feel that the study of the humanities at our universities has been damaged by the incursion of deconstruction and other French theories.

BAUDRILLARD: That was the gift of the French. They gave Americans a language they did not need. It was like the Statue of Liberty. Nobody needs French theory.

:ROFLMAO:
 

version

Well-known member
Are you still reading baudrillard @version? Im reading transparency of evil and I dont even think its all that great but its impressive how in touch he is with the stupidity of our culture. think its made me especially grouchy as of late
Not atm. I thought of starting another of his I have lying around, but I'm trying to be a bit more disciplined and not keep starting things on a whim then ending up trying to read a bunch at once.

What don't you like about Transparency of Evil?
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Not atm. I thought of starting another of his I have lying around, but I'm trying to be a bit more disciplined and not keep starting things on a whim then ending up trying to read a bunch at once.

What don't you like about Transparency of Evil?
I like it, some parts are very good. Its just hit and miss. It seems like the aim is to write good paragraphs- concise chunks of salacious, seductive writing with a bow on top, reminds a little of dellilo and his slogan style of writing. Its not so much fitting in a bunch of new ideas as it is rewording just a couple so if you dont like the metaphor and arrangement hes working with at that moment its a bore
 

version

Well-known member
I like it, some parts are very good. Its just hit and miss. It seems like the aim is to write good paragraphs- concise chunks of salacious, seductive writing with a bow on top, reminds a little of dellilo and his slogan style of writing. Its not so much fitting in a bunch of new ideas as it is rewording just a couple so if you dont like the metaphor and arrangement hes working with at that moment its a bore
I increasingly think of him as a writer rather than a philosopher or commentator or whatever else.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
I like that he has no desire to quote or research or provide any sort of data. Hes in the saloon with a pistol in both hands and no particular target
 

version

Well-known member
Apparently he would write really, really quickly; Symbolic Exchange & Death is supposed to be his key work and the one he thought was his best and Lotringer said he fired the thing out in a few months or something.
 

version

Well-known member
He didn't use a computer or watch TV much either. It's funny to think these people held up as prophets of technology, people like DeLillo and Baudrillard, didn't really interact with it too much at all; DeLillo still uses a typewriter, iirc, and doesn't own a computer.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
No one has properly taken down these bums yet, not Sokal, or Eagleton, or Anderson, or Scruton. It can't be that difficult.

What makes you think that the aforementioned people want to fully take them down? Academia is also a fetishised spectacle. To rib on the old moor: Academic understanding is just academic understanding because its thought does not transcends the limits of academic protocol. The sharper and livelier it is, the more incapable is it of comprehending social problems.
 

version

Well-known member
I like that he has no desire to quote or research or provide any sort of data.
I can imagine that killing the books anyway, not because I can think of any specific instances where data would disprove a claim of his, but because of the poetic approach. They feel like they're supposed to zip, to move, and whacking in a load of facts and figures would run counter to that. You can find those elsewhere, if that's what you're looking for.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I can imagine that killing the books anyway, not because I can think of any specific instances where data would disprove a claim of his, but because of the poetic approach. They feel like they're supposed to zip, to move, and whacking in a load of facts and figures would run counter to that. You can find those elsewhere, if that's what you're looking for.

A lot of the poetic approach is rendered in translation.
 
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