doing the laundry and the end of history

Jean Baudrilard_Screened Out

Throughout his writings, Baudrillard notes that a loss of reality afflicts much of contemporary culture; most certainly western contemporary culture. What is interesting is his extension of this observation into the realm of history and the historical record. It is fitting that much of Baudrillard’s writing in Screened Out with regards to history occurs in the final decade of the twentieth century leading up to the year 2000; that new millennium and a ‘new beginning’ for history itself. It is within this context that Baudrillard comments upon the phenomenon of revivalism, of what he saw as the societal vogue for collective revivalism which had arisen in the latter stages of the twentieth century; a “collective hallucination” occurring around topics, ideologies, and events such as the Cold War, Hiroshima, Nazism, Fascism, the holocaust, nuclear warfare, freedom, human rights, etc.

According to Baudrillard, through the revival of its past, society would be able to whitewash its modern history; to take up the momentous historical events of the twentieth century and launder them, cleansing its collective memory of them in a way; cleaning up the historical record via a sort of generalized cultural amnesty. Through a societal process centered around a compulsion to relive history, a compulsion driven by the “profound sense of guilt at not having been there,” and the associated enthusiastic work of mourning for and of the significant events of the twentieth century, everything that had taken place in this century was in effect given a face-lift in an act of cultural repentance. This gigantic process of historical revisionism, in the mind of Baudrillard, was a mechanism of self-defense, the self-defense of a society which had disappeared from the political and historical scene and was thus incapable of generating its own history. Consequently, it was this society which resorted to a systematic re-hashing of history to “prove its own existence, and to prove to its own crimes.”

Historical revisionism, then, was a search for post-mortem truths within history. Problem being, that this search was occurring at a point in time when there was, quite simply, not enough truth around for society to verify the truthfulness of the truths it was ‘locating’, and neither enough history per se to produce any “historical proof of what actually happened.” In other words, many of the events of the twentieth century could no longer be understood historically, and consequently, truth could not be derived from them. In any case, revivalism and revisionism spelled the end of history for Baudrillard; either its demise as deep-frozen history within our collective cultural memory or as the end of history via its dissipation in the expansion of communication. Either the death of history by freezing, or the death of history by the hyper-fluidity and hyper-circulation of its events.

Consequently, Baudrillard positions himself so that he is logically able to question whether or not all these events really existed. And what allows him to make such a provocative statement is his belief that through our hyper-analysis of historical events, these events, ideas, and histories have themselves become largely unintelligible. The more these phenomena are examined and rooted through, the more we come to understand all the little details of these phenomena and the better we understand their causes and reasons for occurring, the more their existence fades; the more confused we become over the very identity of these events in the first place.

As a further complication in this matter, Baudrillard cites the supplanting of history by the media in contemporary times. Here again, we confront the problem of reality and its fragile relationship with history. As Baudrillard often points out, our understanding of the reality of the world around us so often arrives via the filter of the media, “the tragic events of the past included.” In our contemporary times, how can history be certified as real, when the tools of historical intelligibility have seemingly disappeared? Through the media reconstruction of event, history is reconstituted as myth whereby the very reality and truthfulness of history can no longer be guaranteed: Baudrillard’s end of history.

What is interesting then is that while Baudrillard was writing primarily with regards to the final decade of the twentieth century and its endpoint, in many ways, the phenomena he is discussing have continued well into the early twenty-first century. At one point, Baudrillard writes that it is the nature of the west to increasingly become a repository, or better still a dumping ground for all those ideologies and events which fall under the category of freedom and human rights. Specifically, and quite locally, I find myself considering the phenomenon of the to-be-constructed Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

What becomes evident when one visits the promotional website for the Canadian Museum of Human Rights is that this museum will at least in part be yet another act of historical revivalism and revisionism, another re-hashing of history in a move of “lest-we-forget-ism.” When one loads the opening page to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights website, the visitor is bombarded by the provocative imagery of its flash introduction, which is followed by a 20 minute video presentation outlining the museum’s vision, mission, and goals as well as the emotional rollercoaster that visitors to the museum will be party to. Guests will wind their way through the various levels of what is to be the largest Human Rights Museum in the world on a 1.5 km long “life altering experience.” This journey will be in essence a walk of mourning, a process of reliving the significant human rights events, both atrocities and successes, of our collective western history. In this sense, much of our history will become flash-frozen in these exhibits, forever on display, forever a source of raw emotion, forever a reminder of a past history in an age when the historical record is constantly being called into question. It will be representative of our incessant search for a history with some weight to it when the whole of our current day events and occurrences are trivialized and diluted in their immediate exposure and circulation.

And in our contemporary context, what can we do but call the authenticity of these stories, of these histories into question? After all, this museum will be a prime example of how Baudrillard describes history as having been supplanted by the media enterprise, how history is heavily filtered. While support for the museum is widespread (it will be the recipient of funding from the Government of Canada, the Province of Manitoba, and the City of Winnipeg), the museum is largely the brainchild of the late media giant Israel Asper, his family, and the Asper Foundation. Upon its completion, the museum will in fact remain in the control of the Asper Foundation rather than the Heritage Department which usually oversees museum operations. In this light, there has been concern and criticism of the museum’s programming as hypocritical an d biased; those events which will be granted a permanent place within the exhibit halls of the museum have fallen under scrutiny, not because of what has been included, but rather that which has, at least thus far, been excluded.

While the content of the museum is to include stories and records of the injustices against, Jews, Ukrainians, Rwandans, Cambodians, Bosnians, and Aboriginal Peoples, as well as exhibits championing reproductive rights, sexual rights, and same-sex rights, certain histories have been excluded, most notably any mention of the atrocities committed against Palestinian civilians. This may or may not be ‘coincidental.’ The Asper media enterprise has after all had a tendency to support Israel, the Iraq War, and the War on Terror, while Asper himself was very much opposed to the idea of Palestinian nationhood and any support of the Palestinian cause in general. Furthermore, the advisory council which will make many of the decisions regarding the museum’s formation is mysteriously missing any participants from Arab or Islamic or Caribbean or African or Turkish Armenian groups. And while it may be the case that a larger advisory board including representatives from these groups would be cumbersome, one has a feeling that if Jewish or Native Canadian groups were not so represented on this board, there would be a deafening outcry.

The point to be made then is that history has indeed changed forever; the relation between an event and the record of that event has forever shifted. As Baudrillard has pointed out, our reality today, including the events of the past, arrive via a media reconstruction, in this case, that of the Asper Foundation and its board of directors. Furthermore, regardless of what side of the argument one is on, whether it be in support of the museum as is, or calling for a more comprehensive set of histories for its exhibits, the fact remains that both parties are engaged in a pathological revival of the past, in a compulsion to relive a previous history which we have lost the ability to truly comprehend because of our hyper-analysis of it and the resulting clouding and confusion of these events which we have created. In these ways, history becomes reconstituted as myth, wherein the reality and truthfulness of history can no longer be guaranteed: Baudrillard’s end of history.

Catastrophy/Virulence

catastrophy/virulence
The growth of cancer results from the the anomalities of the body's cells. Terrorism is envoked by anomalities in political bodies of the enemy countries. These violences are resisting against an "even greater evil" that would be far more catastrophic then them. Baudrillard believes "everything is ambigious and reversible". Without the extreme phenomenons like cancer or terrorism, our system would escalade to complete order and transparency. "Chaos serve as as a limit to what would, otherwise, run off into the absolute void. So extreme phenomenon serve, in their secret order, as prophylaxis-by-chaos" against total Catastrophy, against the state of extreme escalation of order and transparency.
We live in a virtual war of mutual assured destruction. The game of who has control over who stands seperate from the war on ground; the real war. The virtual war, fed by our fear, will remain virtual as long as fear remains installed in us. So, fear protects us from the ultimate Catastrophy, that Baudrillard speaks of: the catastrophy of a nuclear ground war. This hyper-realized virtual war leaves the world as it is. It runs parralel with us, but will never physically touch us. We are dominated by bombs and virtual catastrophies which do not explode. Our fear however, is constant, living in the background of our minds and often forgotten.(p21) The ulterior motive behind the possession and control of weapons of mass destruction is to sustain political control. North Korea has put the world in fear with the operation of a nuclear reactor in Yong Byon to fabricate missiles of mass destruction, and the atomic bomb test in October, 2006. Kim Jong will discontinue the operation of the nuclear reactor in return for 50 000 metric tons of fuel, or economic aid of equal value. As long as people are threatened by the possession of weapons of massive destruction, the power contrived by these weapons, a power of ultimate control over other countries, remains intact. Our fear drives the virtual war, and keeps it from becoming reality.

Mediascapes

From the components within mediascapes, the receiver can form scripts of narratives about themself, and about the "other". The information through imaging that mediascapes represent does embody the essence of a collective society, however, the representation of this information is always provided from a biased agenda of the sender. For instance, as the Asper Family owns the Winnipeg Free Press, all the representations of the information provided in the paper, is screened by the Asper Family before it is published. The Asper's must approve of the biases, perspectives, and insights given in each article of the paper, or atleast in the body of the paper, before the public can process them. With this said, when Appadurai suggests " these scripts [formed by mediascapes] can and do get disaggregated into complex sets of metaphors by which people live" (224) it is quite settling. The reciever of the messages mediascapes send is brainwashed into acquiring the sets of narratives, constituting of content of the 'other' or of oneself, within the parameters of the senders bias. The reciever believes he or she controls their manifestation and decoding of the represented world information sent through the mediascapes, however this is not the case. The represented information is already filtered with the sender's intented interpretation. How can the transfer, and representation of information be less transparent and more susceptable to multiple interpretations? The information must be sent directly, without representation, and without the masking of imaging. Information must be read at face value, truthfully, for what it is in reality. Do we as a society have the capability of grasping the concept of a flow of crystalized information uncoded, unmasked and unrepresented?

Disjuncture and Difference

The virtual flow of information enables the "deterritorialization" of groupings Arjun Appadurai speaks of. The fact that it is so readily accessible for investors in Japan to "buy up" Los Angelos determines the blur between territorial ownership and national boundaries. Does this accessibility for foreign countries to take partial ownership of other nations devalue a nations solidity? For if buyers in foreign countries take partial ownership of businesses out of their home nation, do they reside their best interest in that nation, or in their home nation alone? Is the integrity of a nation's economy at risk when it is slowly being taken over by an outsider?
For instance, the Bay, the historical fur trading company that was alive longer than Winnipeg itself was bought out by a company in the United States. Firstly, what does this say about Canada's values to preserve our heritage? Secondly, is it in the best interest of the American company to continue the success of the Hudson's Bay Company for Canadian history's sake? Of course not. The worldly disjunction between the owned and the owner creates determental affects to a nations society, not just in terms of its economy, but its self-esteem.

Post Modernist Ideologies

In the article "Globalization, The Politics of Identity and Social Hope", Richard Rorty discusses how nowadays, political and social philosophy takes its starting point not from a historical narrative, but rather from philosophy of language including the catch words "identity" and "difference", "self" and "subject", "truth" and "reason". He believes a turn away from narration and utopian dreams toward philosophy seems to be a gesture of despair. However, isn't identity and difference, self and subject, and truth and reason parasitic themes of our postmodern ideologies? If so, then these topics are indeed parallel to a contemporary narrative and history. Why should we be dreaming of a utopia anyway? I don't think in our day we are in search of a utopia, but more a stabilization mechanism which will hold us from falling deeper and deeper into a virtual world.

Globalization, The Poetics of Identity and Social Hope. Richard Rorty

“we have witnessed increasing inability to believe that someday we shall ever have a classless global society: one in which there are no vast differences between the opportunities open to children in one nation and in another, much less between those open to children in one section of a city and those in another section of the same city”

Now this is a very interesting discussion that Rorty has started to lead into regarding the class differences that become apparent in our everyday society. Essentially what this all settles down to is a nation derived on consumerism with a goal to assume as much as possible in order to keep up with ‘the Jones’. Everyone is concerned with appearances and is dedicated to projecting a particular image of themselves for the rest of the world to witness. This is a topic that we’ve touched on previously, but is a direct connection to this weeks article regarding our next generation; children. With these types of categorizations out there I cannot help but relate children to their primal influence; their parents. Those who are more fortunate in terms of consumerism and assets, being the upper class, will have more capability and desire to provide their children with the same form of treatment. By this I am not only referring to designer clothes, jewelry and high end cars, but also the opportunities that are created for them such as education, careers and future networking and connections. Essentially in our society it is all about who you are, what you do or who you know. In fact a Dr Phil episode revealed that in our society it is extremely difficult for a lower class individual to move up the latter of social class; this basically restricts that you will most likely stay in the same class as your parents were before you.

I agree that this is extremely sad that in our world of high technology and booming economy that the one thing that we cannot attain is social equality. This reminds me of a saying “if everyone was the same life would be boring” and in a sense this is probably what would occur. People wouldn’t strive for the greater things in life, the rewards that have to be attained not just given, but rather would be content with whatever it was that they had. I guess you can say that inequality and differences in social class make life more of a challenge, an adventure and hopefully make people drive for what they want and to be passionate when they attain it.

People will never be viewed equally in terms of social classes, consumerism, materiality, education, careers, etc but what this all boils down to is money…if all the money was taken away than we are left with people of the same. I think this universal problem is one that is unsolvable regardless of the perspective you take on it. I think we all need to be happy with who you are, work hard, dream big and really anything could happen.

globalization? + sensory disjunction=

This is in response to Lorna's blog titles "sight or hearing".

I think that regardless if you have sight or hearing or both it will alter the way one understands and interprets the world around them. For those of us who are furtunate enough to have both; is this something that is taken for granted? We already know that cross culturally people communicate differently, but when you add a whole new dimension such as sensory disjunction it would distort the communicative ability even further. Aside from this distortion it would also affect the way in which individuals would percieve the unknown culture at hand due to the additional disability in communcation. So this makes me question the notion of globalization even further because all people, cultures and scenarios will be inevitably different so how would it be established on a full scale; all cases should be considered individually in order to make sense of the terms.

Disjunction and Difference

“semantic to the extent that words (and their lexical equivalents) require careful translation from context to context in their global movements; and pragmatic to the extent that the use of these words by political actors and their audiences may be subject to very different sets of contextual conventions that mediate their translation into public politics”

Essentially this begins to discuss the notion of globalization and whether or not this complicated synergy actually exists. Is it possible to travel across the globe to any given destination and be able to fully interact, understand and interpret all this is occurring in the foreign culture around you? I think the key term here is ‘foreign’ which for me indicates the unknown or essentially something that is out of reach and no matter how much one might believe in this global interconnection, one can never really be sure if what they see is what they get. For instance say you are visiting Mexico and although you don’t speak Spanish you can use gestures or other forms of communication to try and project a message. I guess in a sense if the local picks up on your attempt at communicating than those gestures are in a sense universal, but at the same time you can’t really trust what they are telling you anyways. One reason being that the communication could have been interpreted differently than intended or else they could be simply messin with you. Honestly you never really know and because cross culturally there are many similarities, there are also a lot of disjunctions as well. I guess this has me questioning many different factors because there is so much that goes into communication as well as culture so how can one be 100% sure? You can’t, and just like the quote above, there is translation from context to context and you must be aware that people do not always understand communication as intended and therefore the notion of globalization is yet to be declared.

This is where the author’s framework of exploring such disjunctures comes in as he begins to analyze the relationship between 5 different dimensions as a possible solution to this disconnectivity. They are ethnoscape, mediascape, technoscape , finanscapes and ideoscpaes. So essentially by understanding these categorizations and how they are interconnected to one another and then overlaying it onto a cultural scenario one is able to interpret and further understand how the links of globalization would need to be filled. This could begin to identify where cultures differ and what’s involved in establishing connections and erasing boundaries

Sight or Hearing

Question.
Regarding the discussion topic in class of primal and discursive language: if you had to give up one of the following senses, which one would it be:
your sight or your hearing? (discounting the possiblity of knowing sign language)

if you choose sight, does this mean you rather communicate through speech?
if you choose hearing, does this mean you rather communicate through primal means?
hmm.