The Meaning
of IS…
I used a title at the beginning of my
notes for the reading of Simulations by Jean Baudrillard. The head of my note
pages reads; “The Meaning of is…”.
This is a reference to what president Bill Clinton said to a grand jury
during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998 that dogged and in ways defined Bill
Clinton’s legacy. Bill Clinton was asked by a grand jury to clarify his
statement that there is no relationship with that woman, Monica Lewinsky (a
Whitehouse intern with whom Bill Clinton had sexual relations during his
presidency). He said to the grand jury that it depended on what the meaning of
the word “is, is” (brilliant!!!). What line better captures Baudrillard’s
thesis in action? What did the meaning of “is” have to do with the supposed “real” intentions
of that grand jury (not much)? I thought this was a great way to illustrate how
language, representation and simulacra have in a large sense imploded into
itself or another form of simulacra. Language, simulation, representation can
be manipulated into virtually any conceivable shape. Bill Clinton personified
how Baudrillard’s thesis manifests itself in contemporary times (the last
couple of decades). Bill Clinton was a master politician whose agility with
language became “flesh” (or in this case a means of gaining and keeping
political power). I use the term “flesh” because it refers a bit to the title
of a 2004 book written by philosopher Jaques Rancierre titled, The Flesh of Words: The Politics of Writing.
Coral mentioned this book to me in reference to ways western powers colonized
(gained power over) other peoples (by use of simulations, words, symbols and
images). It is also how western cultures gained power over “nature”. These words are significantly related to
post colonial African literature. To me (without having read The Flesh of
Words) the book seems to be referring to how words are manifest in the “real”
which have a strong link to Baudrillard’s book. I have been interested in
Jaques Rancierre for several years now and own a copy of what is probably a
pretty bad translation of Rancierre’s 2004 book, The Politics of Aesthetics.
This book, in essence, is about how all aesthetic mediations are comprised of a
certain political values/ and intentions. This may be, perhaps why John Calvin
and Plato were against simulacra of the (so called) divine (I have not studied
Calvin in depth as yet but may need to do so in the near future with regards to
my own investigations of the interstice between the authentic and simulacra).
These simulacra according to Calvin and Plato rob the “real” of their inherent
divinity.
Whether Bill Clinton was fully aware of
Baudrillard’s thesis or not I suppose is beside the point. Or, better yet,
maybe it is that he didn’t know about Baudrillard’s thesis that makes
Baudrillard’s idea that much stronger.
When Clinton uttered those words I believe he knew that national
politics was not reliant on “facts” or “reality”. As Baudrillard suggests, it
is the form (and mode) of representation
that is the only real there is. In contemporary times according to what I
gathered from Rancierre on aesthetics is that political power constructions are
won and lost through simulation/s and how well they are put to use. Bill
Clinton represents the best I’ve seen in this regard. I believe that while he
may not have read Simulations (I
would not be surprised if he had) he knew how to use Baudrillard’s ideas as
well as anyone ever has. Clinton must have known as philosopher and critique,
Edward Said (1935-2003), once suggested that it is the mode of communication that has more to do with what is conveyed
than the reality itself. This was what I was trying to explore with my Brazen
Bull performance. However, more than that I wanted to maybe get a glimpse of
what price humans may or may not pay for “throwing the real under the bus” as it were.
I do believe that to a large extent though
simulation emptyed of meaning can lose all potential for positive change. I
mean will the Occupy Wall Street crusade change the minds of global industrial
capitalists when all they do is transmuted into another parcel of the media
monster as it were? Is it’s activist agency compromised into the kaleidoscope
of simulacra? I fear much of it is. When the entire movement is making an
honest effort to elicit real change via media spectacle I am skeptical .
Capitalists feed on simulacra. It makes exchange so much more seamless and
fluid. Simulacra boils everything into a law of equivalence. How can OWS assert
real change onto the simulacra the
capitalist machine created? It seems a Sisyphean task at best to me. It took
the death of God for religion to emerge.
For ethnology to live its object must die.
Luna, James Artifact Piece was first staged
in 1987 at the Museum and Man, San Diego
The work Artifact Piece
by James Luna, brings clarity to the western colonial modes operandi. Whether
always fully intended or not the west seems to be obsessed with boiling
everything into a category, status or parcel. It seems the west feels it can
only assert that power when it has been hardened and delimited.
The truth is that power constructions are
held by up their opposite. Republicans would not be possible without Democrats and
vice versa. The Twin Towers of the world trade center seem to represent that
kind of dynamic. Destroy something and it becomes frozen into the simulacra
based on anything the destroyer decides.
.More thoughts on Simulations...
- I thought using a hold-up as a way to illustrate the simulative
component of what we all assume is "real life" was a brilliant way to
parce the interstice...
Go and organise a
fake hold-up. Be sure to check that your weapons are harmless, and take the
most trustworthy hostage, so that no life is in danger (otherwise you risk
committing an offence). Demand ransom, and arrange it so that the operation
creates the greatest commotion possible - in brief, stay close to the
"truth", so as to test the reaction of the apparatus to a perfect
simulation. But you won't succeed: the web of artificial signs will be
inextricably mixed up with real elements (a police officer will really shoot on
sight; a bank customer will faint and die of a heart attack; they will really
turn the phoney ransom over to you) - in brief, you will unwittingly find
yourself immediately in the real, one of whose functions is precisely to devour
every attempt at simulation, to reduce everything to some reality - that's
exactly how the established order is, well before institutions and justice come
into play.It is interesting to compare this form of social disruption with the Occupy Wall Street operations. I could not help but compare them both as forms of disruption. Both are "motifs" in our culture. The hold-up I suppose is an "act" while an Occupy Wall Street is not really an act per se. It seems it is probably closer to a motif within a societal framework. I am not suggesting we all use forms of civil disobedience to make our point (i.e. Timothy McVeigh serves as a more than adequate example).
Timothy McVeigh, better known as the Oklahoma
City Bomber, He committed the largest terrorist act prior to 9/11 in blowing up
a public building in April of 1995.
What I am suggesting is an examination of these forms as we may examine colors on a palette, or scumbling versus impastos as a painter makes aesthetic decisions. In essence social discourses are partly aesthetic decisions which perhaps have the potential of merging with what we consider to be "real".
Still from the 1993 movie, Videodrome.
More thoughts...
I found it interesting that Baudrillard wrote that answers pre exists in the model on which
the question formed (i.e. Televison). So what I take from this is that questions and answers are already delimited by the limitations of the medium itself. So absolute power constructions must be able to conform to those models or risk being rendered incoherant. He then suggests that for power to be absolute it must be capable of creating its own equivalences.
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