NP Baudrillard

[John Doe]

--- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> On 17/10/2005 Otto wrote:
> 
> > To be honest about it: no idea.
> >
> > There are about 800 to 850 million people starving
> in Africa. This is 
> > surely no argument against the Critical Theory.
> "That style of 
> polemic really scrapes the bottom of the barrel, and
> it only highlights 
> the polemicist's ignorance imho."

No, most probably DON'T have much to say about them,
since those scientists aren't professing to be
elucidating the subtle processes of perception and
cognition, the way Baudrillard ostensibly does when he
talks about how this post-modern world effects
"us"....the point of my question was, WHO, exactly,
does he have in mind? Who are this "us", and who be
NOT this "us"?....if you ( meaning B. ) are going to
make generalizations about human thought processes,
you'd BETTER take into account the super-marginalized,
along with all your super-educated French pals, or
else you're theory isn't worth shit...since, again,
unless he wants to risk the implication that he's a
racist, there should be NO difference between how an
African teenager's brain deals with "signs" and how
Baudrilard deals with them...if there is, either A)
human brains are differently "wired" and respond very
differntly to the stimuli of Post-modernism, in which
case his theses are rather dilute, vague, limited in
application and vagarous, or B) how people respond
post-modernist stimuli ( whatever they may be ) is
really dependent on nurture and environment..in which
case, he's really talking about verbally agile,
well-read, comfortable urban intellectuals...and if
that's the case, he should say "I have NO clue how
people who live in so-called "primitive" circumstances
deal with reality; all I know is how bright, verbal,
ideally French, intellectuals deal with
it"....theories about human psychology should include
people's EVERYWHERE, or else they're not worth a
damn...I have the same reaction to the newer
"disorders" like ADD,SOCIAL ANXIETY DISORDER, and even
so-called clinical depression....hey, stick that
supposed ADD kid in front of a Playstation and he'll
be riveted! Gee - what suddenly happened to his ADD?
Could ADD be what used to be, before PC times, called,
gets-restless-because-he-sucks-at-math-so-naturally-we-get-easily-distracted-from-something-we-suck-at....hey,
when it comes to balancing my check book I have ADD!
Give me a sexy equation to measure impedance and I
focus....I don't see much difference..plus the kicker
is again; if this disorder is endemic, shouldn't it
appear in Inuit kids, African bushman kids etc.? What?
are mental disorders suddenly only a Continental
phemomenon? That's absurd...unless you're a
racist...then one could say "well, gosh, Bob..it seems
poor mud-eating black kids don't suffer ADD...their
brains, being different of course from ours,chuckle
chukle, just don't respond the same way that my
urbanized white son's does..."

> I'd say that astrophysicists and molecular
> biologists also don't have 
> much to say about (or to) that poor, starving 12
> year old Ethiopian. 
> (Not that it's an argument against "Science"
> either.) That style of 
> polemic really scrapes the bottom of the barrel, and
> it only highlights 
> the polemicist's ignorance imho.
> 
> Thx for the Baudrillard/Star Trek link. (Haven't
> read 'The Mote in 
> God's Eye' btw.)
> 
> best
> 
> > In the end it doesn't matter if you die at 12 of
> starvation or at 55 
> > of cancer.
> > Nobody gets out here alive!
> 
>
http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol2_2/shapiro.htm
> 
> 



		
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