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You Fight Fair |
 For you, a fight is not about proving you’re right. Instead, it’s about discussing and resolving difficult issues. You don’t look for fights, but you don’t avoid them either. You realize that clearing the air is good, when you go about it the right way. |
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You Are a Chimera |
 You are very outgoing and well connected to many people. Incredibly devoted to your family and friends, you find purpose in nurturing others. You are rarely alone, and you do best in the company of others. You are incredibly expressive, and people are sometimes overwhelmed by your strong emotions. |
I never thought of Baudrillard as an outlaw, despite his fascination with perfect crimes.
He may have stood somewhat outside the academic establishment, but in many ways that can only be considered a compliment.
The reality that we have created has overtaken us… and is creating us. To challenge how that happens, to describe it, even to play against it, is not the same thing as being an outlaw. He refused to be pressured into a mindset that had ceased to interest him, and that’s one of the things that made his work so interesting and brilliant.
With his words, he painted a way of actually seeing objective irony and reversibility; his fascination with photographs was no coincidence.
Outside of that, this obituary is nicely done.
From JEAN BAUDRILLARD; ‘Outlaw’ Cultural Theorist By Chris Horrocks, The Independent, March 9th
Jean Baudrillard, the French writer of brilliantly discomfiting books such as Simulacres et Simulation (1981, translated into English as Simulacra and Simulation, 1994), in his many publications challenged and extended the fissures, contradictions, extremes and ironies in culture and society. He dies at a time when his work is perhaps at its least fashionable, but most important.
Born in the year of the Great Depression – or what he saw as the “first great crash in values” – Baudrillard devoted his work to our present, chronic collapse, which for him was more a problem of a dramatic but unnoticed transformation in our relationship to a “new global order”, a world in which the cult of production – of meaning and reality more than economic wealth or consumer objects – had saturated all aspects of life. Baudrillard’s version of our universe is one where codes and signs coercively produce and designate our societies and cultures as simulations that produce our versions of reality.
Jean Baudrillard’s intellectual odyssey found its way through the enclosed but combative Parisian academic community of the 1960s. Myths abound from this period of Baudrillard’s early tenure as an assistant and researcher in the field of sociology. It seems he flourished in this hothouse of new ideas, although, unlike many of his colleagues, he did not seek to affiliate himself with the more direct brands of revolutionary thought – neo-Marxism, Maoism, Situationism – that had swept through the universities and culminated in the events of May 1968. Instead, he worked and published in the margins, under more established figures – Roland Barthes, Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Bourdieu – while not directly associating himself with a movement or discipline. His writings from the period demonstrate a desire to draw together the dominant strands of thought: semiology, poststructuralism and brands of psychoanalysis and anthropology. In works such as the elegantly titled Pour Une Critique de l’economie politique du signe (1972; For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, 1981), the collected essays of La Societe de consommation (1970; The Consumer Society, 1997) and Le Systeme des objets (1968; The System of Objects, 1996), he emerged as an important critic of a world of consumer objects that “quite tyrannically induce categories of people”.
When I interviewed him in 1995 he said, rather melancholically, that he had no more friends in Paris, by which he meant that he had become an “intellectual outlaw” – a thinker detached from the academic establishment. Three publications in the 1970s had forged Baudrillard’s reputation as a thinker beyond the limit of prevailing ideas.
The first, Le Miroir de la production (1973; The Mirror of Production, 1975), took on Karl Marx. In characteristic fashion, Baudrillard saw Marxist thought as part of the problem it sought to theorise: Marx simply universalised or replicated bourgeois notions of the market and capitalist ideology, and effectively fetishised the idea of work. Then Baudrillard delivered the bombshell Oublier Foucault (1977; Forget Foucault, 1987), an assault on one of the most influential writers of that generation. Michel Foucault had chosen not to read the draft Baudrillard sent him, but when it was published he was furious (“Foucault is the last great dinosaur of the classical age,” said Baudrillard).
Baudrillard had written off Foucault’s idea of “power” as simply a redundant notion. All formerly secure terms, such as “desire”, “reality”, “truth”, were now targeted, and the trio of categorical crimes against thought was completed when De la seduction (1979; Seduction, 1990) emerged. This publication, which has recently been reassessed as the first “post-post-feminist” text, exemplifies Baudrillard’s technique of looking at society from another side, emphasis-ing what he called “reversibility” – in this case the gendered triumph of apparent “objects” over the attempts of subjects who wish to control them.
In the early 1990s, the backlash against so-called “postmodern theory” (of which Baudrillard was never a part) became popular in the press, and conservatives and radicals condemned Baudrillard in equal measure. Many critics accused him of being wilfully obscure, and irresponsible – a kind of intellectual playboy whose work was simply a special effect that exacerbated rather than alleviated our symptoms. But Baudrillard’s project was never concerned with providing answers or antidotes, and he was always puzzled when he was called to account.
For example, when he published his book Amerique (1986; America, 1988), he was castigated for its failure to represent the actualities of the United States. His response to accusations that he had failed to represent issues of racial conflict was that it was not the America he had sought to represent. He always thought of phenomena at another level, and was not allied to the mission to seek out and determine social or other truths.
In the late 1980s he appeared at the ICA in London for a book launch. Academics and the press wanted something from him; the queue of young postmodernists put such pressure on the event that the overspill had to be absorbed into a room next to the “real” show, with his talk relayed via a monitor. Everyone was captivated. Baudrillard greeted the idea with his usual shrug and ” Pourquoi pas?” This reduplication of an event within an event, which dismantled the idea of the event, struck me as perhaps the most Baudrillardian experience one could have.
He had friends – all over the world.
The “academic establishment” never offered as much to me as he did.
Let us be clear about this: if the Real is disappearing, it is not because of a lack of it – on the contrary, there is too much of it. It is the excess of reality that puts an end to reality, just as the excess of information puts an end to information, or the excess of communication puts an end to communication. We are no longer dealing with the problematic of lack and alienation, where the referent of the self and the dialectic between subject and object were always to be found, supporting strong and active philosophical positions… By shifting to a virtual world, we go beyond alienation, into a state of radical deprivation of the Other, or indeed of any otherness, alterity, or negativity. We move into a world where everything that exists only as idea, dream, fantasy, utopia will be eradicated because it will immediately be realized, operationalized. Nothing will survive as an idea or a concept. You will not even have time to imagine. – Jean Baudrillard
We must say that the strongest resistance to this destructive virtualization comes from language itself, from the singularity, the irreducibility, the vernacularity of all languages, which are actually very much alive and proving to be the best deterrent against the global extermination of meaning. So the game is not over, but no one can say who will have the last word. – Jean Baudrillard
“The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.” – Jean Baudrillard
I remember a lecture given by Baudrillard at Emory. The crowd had transcripts of Baudrillard’s lecture, in case his accent was too overwhelming for them. People flipped pages like it was the Bible.
I just looked and listened. I had no trouble whatsoever – and after all, he gave the lecture in English, not French.
At one point, he quoted “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right” while making slight gestures from side to side. Because they were focused on the paper before them, not many people saw his slight gestures (nor, I suspect, recognized the lyric). Performative irony.
I laughed out loud, earning disapproving looks from those around me. It reminded me of the old days at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
But Jean Baudrillard looked straight at me, and grinned.
If you are a literalist, don’t even bother trying to read anything by Baudrillard. It will never make sense to you. The question and answer period after that lecture was a parody of the intellectual life toward which I had always worked.
To his critics: Yes, Baudrillard could have been more clear, less aphoristic. Yes, he got both the left and the right to froth – that’s one of the things that made him interesting. But let’s start with a hermeneutics of paying attention, eh? Sigh… I often feel that his detractors haven’t even read the work.
Baudrillard is partially responsible for my marriage. He has already apologized (grin). John has been friends with Baudrillard for years. He had translated some of Baudrillard’s work, and they had been planning a project together… he is even more upset than I am.
Anyway, the early encounters between John and myself were all about arguing about Baudrillard. We had differing interpretations on his views of the viral and evil and reversibility. We began to meet in order to argue about Baudrillard. We met a lot. It took a song by Leonard Cohen to tip the balance, but without Baudrillard we would never have gotten together.
Eventually, we visited Baudrillard in Paris, and posed our questions. That conversation was one of the highlights of my life, and that session did more to solidify the eventual argument of my dissertation than almost anything else. My dissertation, by the way, leaves a lot unsaid.
What isn’t mentioned very much in discussions of Jean is the kind of energy he gives off as a person. When I’ve seen him, he’s been a bit rumpled, often needing a shave and a haircut. He had the most wonderful mischievous grin, and he was hospitable and clearly delighted to see us. What struck me most was his “there”-ness. He was there in a way that is very rare. He made me feel confident, engaged, worthy of being an interlocutor – and a friend. Beyond the incredibly stimulating intellectual/pataphysical discussion, I remember being surprised by Jean’s kindness and charm. I had read his books so feverishly, but I had not understood the tone of voice. The books read differently, later – much more comprehensible, with different rhythms.
His works in progress looked something like the Burroughs “cut-up“, which explains a lot.
I admired his crystal bowl full of lemons, a point of beautiful innocent clarity among all the piles of books and papers. I’ll be buying a bag of lemons later today. We’ve got a beautiful big crystal bowl, and we’ll honor and remember him that way.
When John and I married, Jean gave us a large print of one of his famous photographs
John has been able to spend more time with him than I have – and of course they have known each other much more closely and for a longer time. I don’t get to Paris very often, and Baudrillard only came to Emory a couple of times.
Jean Baudrillard was, nonetheless, one of those rare people who change something within you – something subtle perhaps – but something real and permanent. I have my disagreements with some of his ideas, but my engagement with them changed me. It was a kind of alchemical synergy.
My dissertation owes a debt to Baudrillard (among others, of course). Of course, that may be why it took so long to write… What I ended up with was a cyborg creature. Perhaps Baudrillard was its eyes.
There was one very unfortunate side-effect of reading his work, and taking it seriously (and playfully and provocatively and ironically). A series of synchronicities occurred which, together with reading a lot of Baudrillard, made me very nervous about the potential “revenge” of the viral. It was a bit like Nietzsche’s abyss gazing back at you.
I can never decide whether Baudrillard is more of a Gnostic or a magician.
I am not sure how Baudrillard’s work will resonate in future. Others may attempt to paint the bigger pictures, to create the spectacle, the more-Baudrillard-than-Baudrillard. Or perhaps he will just disappear.
Still, this death – this “disappearance” of a “simulacrum” – affects me deeply, personally.
There is so much to say, and nothing to say. He’s gone.
Baudrillard on Tour, Nov. 28 2005, From The New Yorker, Talk of the Town
“I don’t know how to ask this question, because it’s so multifaceted,†he said. “You’re Baudrillard, and you were able to fill a room. And what I want to know is: when someone dies, we read an obituary—like Derrida died last year, and is a great loss for all of us. What would you like to be said about you? In other words, who are you? I would like to know how old you are, if you’re married and if you have kids, and since you’ve spent a great deal of time writing a great many books, some of which I could not get through, is there something you want to say that can be summed up?â€
“What I am, I don’t know,†Baudrillard said, with a Gallic twinkle in his eye. “I am the simulacrum of myself.â€
The audience giggled.
“And how old are you?†the questioner persisted.
“Very young.â€
“Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or dispatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.”
“Mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible, and that the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction. The “marketing” immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder.”
“What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world.”
A little background:
More Obit thoughts:
Of course, that’s just a start. I’ve got a shelf of Baudrillard books here. When I can stand it, I’m going to read them all again.
Jean Baudrillard is dead.
Horrible, terrible news. We were going to see him this summer.
I will write something about Baudrillard’s enormous influence on me, my thinking, and my life tomorrow. Perhaps I will be able to think more clearly then.
Tonight, I can only grieve. Tears keep falling, falling. I can’t process this at all. I am devastated.
Oh, Jean. Farewell, dear one.
“Contagion is not merely active within each system; it operates between systems.”
“Consider the recent release of an informational diskette on AIDS which was itself infected by a computer virus.”
“The real does no concede anything to the benefit of the imaginary: it concedes only to the benefit of the more real than real (the hyperreal) and to the more true than true. This is simulation. Presence is not effaced by a void, but by a redoubling of presence that effaces the opposition between presence and absence. Nor is a void effaced by fullness, but rather by repletion and saturation, by a plenitude greater than fullness.”
“For the problem, the only problem, is: where did Evil go? And the answer is: everywhere—because in a society which seeks—by prophylactic measures, by annihilating its own natural referents, by whitewashing violence, by exterminating all germs and all of the accursed share, by performing cosmetic surgery on the negative—to concern itself solely with quantified management and with the discourse of the Good, in a society where it is no longer possible to speak Evil, Evil has metamorphosed into all the viral and terroristic forms that obsess us.”
“If AIDS, terrorism, economic collapse and electronic viruses are concerns not just for the police, medicine, science and the experts, but for the entire collective imagination, this is because there is more to them than mere episodic events in an irrational world. They embody the entire logic of the system, and are merely, so to speak, the points at which that logic crystallizes spectacularly. Their power is a power of irradiation and their effect, through the media, within the imagination, is itself a viral one. They are immanent phenomena which are all related to each other; they obey the same protocol of virulance and have contamination effects way beyond their actual impact.”
(Thank you, Joseph, for delivering this sad message).
I am a serious fan of Joe Frank. He is the radio noir guru of my soul. I have been listening to him since the eighties. He was the joy of my Friday nights, and did much to get me through a difficult graduate program in philosophical theology and ethics. From 1986 until 2002, Joe produced four Series: “Work in Progress,” “In the Dark,” “Somewhere Out There,” and “The Other Side.”
Late Friday night, “Work in Progress” (from KCRW Santa Monica) played on the local NPR station in Iowa City, and almost every Friday night, I was listening. It became something very like a religious ritual for me. Candles, comfortable surroundings… provocative thoughts, brilliant rants, hypnotic bits of music, and his voice. He’s witty and absurd and satirical and dark and deep and funny, and the rhythms of the rants get me every time.
Here’s a little example of the kind of thing he does:
When endowed with profound religious feeling, your skin becomes transparent and your blood begins to turn a thin watery hue until the light of the sun streaming in the window passes entirely through you. At last, having evolved into pure spiritual energy, nothing remains of your existence but a small pile of dirty underwear, damp socks, rumpled garments, a driver’s license, credit cards and perhaps a small nail clipper.
This is what happens when you achieve oneness with the air, with the sky, with the whole world and everything in it. No longer tormented by nagging questions such as the conundrum of imploding ethical systems as expressed in post-war German soup recipes, you feel a sense of ecstatic exhilaration. It is this condition of bliss that Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There will attempt to elicit in its listeners.
Ahh, but with Joe, it’s all in the delivery.
The trains of thought that his work set off for me were better intellectual stimulation than almost anything else I had encountered. There was a sensual, even vaguely erotic, aspect to whole thing as well, so that it was (for me) a perfect melding of mind, spirit, body. I’m not saying that I’m sexually attracted to Joe – I love this man’s soul. I *deeply* respond to his ideas, his delivery, his voice, but it’s in some other sort of space and place, almost otherworldly. I can’t fully express the sense of kinship and gratefulness that I have felt for this.
Back in 1989 or 90 or so, I wrote him a long fan letter, raving about one of the shows. In a wonderful bit of synchronicity, he called me on my birthday (and was surprised that I was so young! Evidently, my letter sounded like it was written by a women some ten or twenty years my senior). After that, I was actually in a short bit of “The Loved One,” from the In the Dark series – which I think I flubbed, pretty much (sigh).
John and I lived in Los Angeles for a summer (Ben was about 2 years old), and I finally got to meet Joe in person. At his house. However, as is my unfortunate tendency when I am socially anxious, I babbled – while he made himself some pea soup to comfort his ulcer, and looked somewhat askance at the aloe vera juice I had brought along as a gift. I couldn’t center myself. I admire him so much that I still feel kind of starstruck when I interact with him. I have no idea what I’m saying or why. It’s the opposite of how I am when I’m listening to his work – centered, serene, silent, clear, my mind dancing, my spirit wild and free.
Still, he hasn’t written me off completely (grin). I think he’s probably used to that kind of thing. We talked recently about a range of things, and while I was still disappointed in myself, it was a very fun conversation nonetheless. Mostly I was just pleased that he was doing better. (Joe – if you ever read this – know that you have only seen the aspect of me that I like the least, the “I don’t know what I’m saying, I just want to be here” where I’m actually standing outside myself, a reflexive ghost just watching and shaking my head morosely, wondering what inauthentic flotsam of self is operating the mouth. I would like to get to a more engaging level of conversational exchange with you someday. Thank you for your kindness toward this awkward flailing confusionbot as we create the terrain between.)
Anyway…. ahhhhh… I am extremely pleased that Joe is still with us. He had a kidney transplant last year, and his recovery seems to be going very well.
It’s been one of my frustrations with living in Georgia that this NPR station could not be convinced to carry any of his work. Sheesh. What is wrong with this place?
Anyway, new things are brewing!
You can listen to some choice bits of Joe’s work on his MySpace “music” page. JoeFrank.com has whole shows. You can listen to a couple of them for free, and there is a paid membership option for more.
There are podcasts available! Now playing: Pilgrim.
Here’s the feed for your podcast software.
If you’re on a PC, download Juice “for fresh content”.
You can also hear him on Sonic Theater, XM radio channel 163 (if I understand it correctly).
If you go to the MySpace page, be sure to check out “Ode to War,” which is in my short list of favorites. See if it doesn’t make you think.
Now there is even a brand-spankin’ new forum for us Frankophiles (.com!).
At MySpace, join the Frankolyte group.
If you’re on MyTribe, join the JoeFrankophiles group.
If I am ever in a position to do so, I would love to buy the whole library of his work. He gave me copies of “Rent-a-Family” and “The Dictator” – both are special multi-part shows. Even all these years later, when I’ve gotten rid of almost all my cassette-tapes, I have held onto the shows I recorded off the radio. I still listen to them, despite the rotten sound quality.
There are no medals to peace, no honors, no marching bands, no great monuments to peace, no hymns sung, no great odes, no martial melodies, no parades to peace. There are no gigantic fireworks displays, no champagne corks popped to peace, no last cigarette smoked in its honor. There is no night before peace, no declaration of peace. The very absurdity of a nation declaring peace on another shocks the imagination. And who among us can say that he has heard of the spoils of peace? Is there such a thing as a peace hero? Who among us have gathered with his old cronies late at night, hoisted a glass and told peace stories? What valiant young man has been welcomed back from peace? What young boy has gazed longingly at his father, saying that he would willingly go to peace to save his country?
My near-worshipfulness is not really objectively critical, but at least I’m not alone:
“Joe Frank is by far the most brilliant comic in America… [He] has created a series of dead-pan radio monologues so sharp and intelligent that during the quiet bits you can almost hear God taking notes.” — The Guardian (UK)
“[Joe Frank] travels in the emotional landscape of Bergman and Fellini; there’s a tension and sense of mystery halfway between Kafka and Chandler, plot twists worthy of Rod Serling, and a satiric edge worthy of Firesign Theatre and Woody Allen.” — The Washington Post
“The world of Joe Frank is a wildly entertaining surrealistic universe…hilarious, unsettling, zany, powerful, moving and perhaps the most unique, inventive and effective use of radio since Orson Welles convinced much of America that there was a “War of the Worlds.” — The L.A. Weekly
“[Joe Frank is] the most imaginative, literate monologist in radio today… If a microphone could capture the nether recesses of the modern psyche, it would sound like Frank’s absurd comical excursions: Radio Vertigo.” –The Village Voice
“A combination monologist-philosopher-black comic-shrink, Frank strips away radio’s genteel veneer of good vibes and exposes the private fears that plague us all.” — The Los Angeles Times
“RADIO’S PRINCE OF DARKNESS RULES THE FREEWAYS” [Frank is] alternately dark, bizarre and very funny – but always hard to turn off.” — The Wall Street Journal
“…Joe Frank is an invaluable warrior who stands in defense of our fears, our vanities and our forever-eroding sense of ourselves. He transforms the everyday banality of the human comedy into an inspired weirdness that feeds on pathos and irony, and feels a lot like revelation. Sartre would have called it nausea; Frank makes it art.”
– Spin Magazine“I came upon Joe Frank’s work by accident a number of years ago while driving to my home in the Napa Valley late at night. I couldn’t believe the originality and sheer brilliance of what I was hearing. From that moment on I became a dedicated Joe Frank fan.” — Francis Ford Coppola
“Joe Frank is a singular voice in radio. What he has done that is so amazing and impressive to me is to take this singular voice out of my radio and put it inside my head. As I listen, Frank’s show invades me and becomes my own thought process. It’s hypnotic, psychotic, neurotic, sad, terrifying, and some of the funniest stuff I have ever heard anywhere. I can’t think of another radio performer who has come close to achieving this kind of alchemy.” — Charlie Kaufman
“Joe Frank is an original whose work has helped form some of the most eccentric, dark and interesting parts of public radio’s personality.” —Terry Gross
“He’s one of the great, original radio performers. He’s created a sound and style for himself – a complete aesthetic that’s entirely his own. I first heard him when I was 19 and it changed everything for me. His work demonstrated the intensity and emotion that the medium is capable of; ingenious…fantastic.” — Ira Glass
“To me, he’s what radio is really for … his show makes me think he’s getting to some great truth … so completely captivating and just unlike anything else.” — David Sedaris
