Jean Baudrillard

"Man muss sich wie ein Teleskop in den leeren Raum hinein richten
..." (Florian Rötzer)
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24786/1.html
Jean Baudrillard, ein radikaler und provozierender Denker, der sich
selbst gelegentlich als "theoretischen Terroristen" bezeichnete, ist
im Alter von 77 Jahren gestorben.

In der iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity haben Benjamin Joerissen und ich zur dort laufenden Baudrillard Diskussion folgendes gepostet:

Hello everybody,

being new to this list, we're impressed by the controversial
discussions (still) going on about Baudrillard here. Positions
towards Baudrillards writings seem to be pretty clear: some follow
him, either a) making sense of his opaque writings or b) continuing
his style of writing, others read B either a) as a kind of intriguing
prophet (but not a scientist) oder b) as the worst case of pomo
lingo. Odds are those groups won't get together for several, and
supposedly rather principal, reasons.

We ourselves appreciated Baudrillard as someone who had an impressive
ability to detect and extrapolate social and esp. media related
trends. Alas, we never took his theses that serious. B's simplistic
approach to epistemic problems (in the ligth of discussions about
radical relativism, radical constructisism ot anti-
representationalism) completely fail to make sense beyond a kind of
realistic ontology (where you still can claim something "real" as
opposed to signs).

We don't want to discuss this here - principle discussions on
ontologies are surely rather unfruitful and easily too complex for
the means of a mailing list. We'd rather like to pose the question if
it would be more productive to try to bridge the gap between
Baudrillard connoisseurs and critics by asking if his observations
still contain valuable ideas for media theorists and researchers
beyond B's theoreticist approach to media.

If we don't (want to) rely on an idea that there is a "real" as
opposed to a symbolic sphere (take that POV for a moment, even if you
don't go with it), is B's simulacra-thesis (for example) worthless?
Or is it possible to re-read Baudrillard on the basis of alternative
ontologies resp. epistemologies?

Looking at media practices, we guess it would be possible to
distinguish between patterns of pure immediate imitation (of images,
for e.g. body images like in the MTV series "I want a famous face")
on the one side and patterns of active reception on the other. So, a
simulacrum would not be defined as a mere effect caused by media in
itself. Instead, the concept could serve as a means for identifying
certain ways to use media in our visual cultures. Of course, you lose
that grand tale of the "real" becoming a simulacrum that way (so
what). On the other hand, could it be that many of Baudrillard's
observations, despite his notion of proper conceptional and
scientific work, could become valuable to more people than they are
now?

Winfried Marotzki
Benjamin Joerissen



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