Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 6 No. 46, November 2002
It is Never a Decision to Choose Between This and That
A Response to Herwitz
'The Defence of Extreme
Realities' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6
no. 45, November 2002 http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n45herwitz First of all, I would like
to thank Daniel Herwitz for his intelligent and insightful
review of my book, _Jean
Baudrillard: The Defense of the
Real_, and the
editor of _Film-Philosophy_ for inviting me to respond to
it. There is undoubtedly an irony in initiating a
conversation about a book that argues true thought does not
proceed through dialogue but through a strange kind of
'doubling', but as Daniel reminds us we do not 'really' live
the way Baudrillard's books describe. Or do we? That, I
suppose, is the question. Inevitably, no matter what
I say here, I will be seen as disagreeing with Daniel. But
this is not the case at all. In fact, I agree with
everything he says. I even thought that I was trying to ask
myself those same questions he puts to my book. In other
words, I agree with Daniel when he emphasises the problem of
Baudrillard's abstraction, his seeming disregard for 'lived
experience' -- what Daniel calls, rather nicely, his 'willed
myopia for normality'. I agree with Daniel that there is
always a 'presumption [in Baudrillard] that concrete
details prove astonishing abstractions at the level of
systems which are, it is always assumed, somewhere in place'
-- a presumption that must be rigorously challenged.
Indeed, I even had the
opportunity to put such questions to Baudrillard himself
once when he visited Brisbane. (The results are recorded as
an interview in the book _Jean Baudrillard: Art and
Artefact_.) I asked him: 'Is there not a risk you are
undertaking when you exclude empirical attention to those
systems you describe?' To which he replied: 'It's a risk I'm
very conscious of'. I then asked: 'But how did you decide
that this risk was the way to go?' To which he replied: 'I
cannot say. It was never a decision to choose between this
and that'. And later, prompted by another of his
questioners, he went on to say that it was not a matter of
choice in doing this; that the choice was already made for
him; that he did not choose but was chosen.
[1] This, I think, gets us to
the heart of the problem. How are we to assert that reality
which we might oppose to Baudrillard's abstraction? How are
we to attain some critical distance onto his work? In one
sense, as soon as we ask these questions, it is too late: we
are already within simulation. There is no way out except
further in. There is no way to defeat abstraction except by
more abstraction. This is Baudrillard's strategy -- and it
is mine as well in my book. Of course, we can always try the
other way and assert something outside of simulation --
'working, eating, leisure, communicating, watching
television' -- but we will always find in the end that it
only leads back in. (This is the sad fate that awaits Truman
in _The Truman Show_: the realisation that the world
'outside' of the show is already part of the show. And we
would say that the show would not be possible without this
'outside': what keeps people watching is the possibility
that Truman will discover that he is being filmed. This is
what Baudrillard means by -- he refers to it in the context
of the very similar _The
Matrix_ -- the
third and final order of simulation.) Undeniably, I took a risk
in attempting to turn Baudrillard's own 'method' against
him, in seeking to 'double' him. But perhaps it was not even
a risk, if we mean by that some subjective, existential
choice. Perhaps, like Baudrillard himself, I did not so much
choose as was chosen. The choice already seemed made for me
as I followed Baudrillard's system to its end. But at this
point I too was hoping to discover some 'Real' outside of
Baudrillard's system; to return to those same 'facts' as
what stand in for -- and therefore allow us to think -- what
is excluded from this system to make it possible. In other
words, I was wagering that those external 'facts' were not
merely the effect of simulation but also held the place of
the internal limit to Baudrillard's system. This is the
'undecidability' that runs throughout all of Baudrillard's
work, and why he can say that it is not finally a choice
'between this and that' with regard to it. So I would want to ask
again those same questions Daniel puts to me. I absolutely
acknowledge their urgency. What cannot Baudrillard's system
account for? What does it leave out? How can we take some
critical distance onto it? But I argue that these questions
can only be answered, in their very urgency, through the
detour of a patient, laborious reading of Baudrillard's own
text; the limits they imply would arise first of all only as
a kind of 'hole' or 'gap' within it. However, I think I can
answer one of Daniel's questions: why has work like
Baudrillard's had such an impact within the humanities?
Because it produces precisely that kind of forced choice I
have been trying to describe here: either the world is as it
is in its 'immanence', or it is only to be understood, in
this very 'immanence', in terms of Baudrillard. That is,
Baudrillard's work is not finally empirical but 'doubling'
(in which the empirical arises only as an effect of it). It
no longer operates through description and persuasion but
prescription and seduction. But today all systems --
material, political, intellectual -- are like this. They all
attempt to make the world over in their terms. And in a way
it is just Baudrillard's work that attempts to break this
fascination, including its own. Indeed, this is exactly what
happened to me. Upon finishing my book, I found myself no
longer constantly thinking of Baudrillard. I returned again
to the things of this world. I seemed to have attained a
certain distance upon Baudrillard. But was this because I
had forgotten him or, as with Borges's Zahir, because I had
become him? This I cannot answer. And perhaps in the end it
does not even matter. Perhaps in the end it is not even a
choice. St Lucia, Brisbane,
Australia Footnote 1. See Nicholas Zurbrugg,
ed., _Jean Baudrillard: Art and Artefact_ (London: Sage
Publications, 1997), pp. 47-8. Copyright ©
_Film-Philosophy_ 2002 Rex Butler, 'It is Never a
Decision to Choose Between This and That: A Response to
Herwitz', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6 no. 46, November 2002
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n46butler>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
salon, and receive the journal articles via email as they
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