The Antinomies of Realism

[alice malice]

he media do not reflect and represent the reality of the public but instead
produce it, employing this simulation to justify their own continuing
existence. Thus news feedback functions to confirm to itself, and to
convince us, that someone is watching, that the news is important, and that
the public are politically interested and mobilised. Desperately needing
this confirmation, news programmes tailor questions, debates and features
to provoke it, encouraging viewers to follow and contribute towards the
arguments or the fluctuating percentage results of the selected vote of the
day. Baudrillard's most controversial claim was that the Gulf War never
happened. Or rather, that the Gulf War and the World Trade Center attacks
that came later can only be understood as media events. He sees the events
of 9/11 in terms of image - this is what we recall when it is mentioned:
the endless television repeats of the live pictures - and sees the
US/British 'war on terror' response as a symbolic war primarily. So
terrorism and military invasion are seen here as semiotic and symbolic as
much as physical. Here is Merrin's (2005) explanation of Baudrillard's
argument. Baudrillard describes the 9/11 attacks as 'the absolute event'.
Instantly passing into and imploding with its electronic transmission, this
was a global media event, accelerating us into a state of hyperreality and
of feedback, interference and uncertainty. Despite the audience's extension
into the heart of the event - the real-time montage of close-ups, long
shots, multiple angles and ground images, edited and replayed and mixed
with commentary, speculation, political reaction, and the apprehension and
adrenalin of the live moment - no event was 'happening' for them. Their
electronic experience simultaneously actualised and hyperrealised the real,
and de-actualised and deterred it, in its semiotic transformation and
presentation as televisual spectacle for domestic consumption in the
comfort and security of the sign. 28

http://www.slideshare.net/mickgoogan/04-baudrillard-the-matrix-and-blade-runner-simulation-and-hyperreality



On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 1:16 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com>wrote:

> How could anyone write a book about the novel and not know that bad guys
> often make great narrators? Can you seriously doubt that   Jameson has read
> the canonical novels, classics, whatever that feature bad guy narratives?
> Maybe he has no business writing a book about the novel? Or, maybe he's
> saying something about the influence of War on art, on narrative, and by
> extension, the Military that controls things even after the war is ended?
>
> 24 Okla. City U. L. Rev. 681 (1999)
> Law of Simulated War in Gravity's Rainbow, The; Spencer, Nicholas
>
>
> http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/okcu24&div=37&id=&page=
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 12:21 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> War is non-narrative because...bad guys don't narrate?  Is that this guys
>> shtick?
>>
>> On Tuesday, February 18, 2014, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> "... war ... is virtually non-narrative, and ... this raw material
>>> seeks to appropriate its missing protagonist from any number of
>>> narrative paradigms, ranging from the conventions of generic war
>>> novels or films ... to [a] multiplicity of generic experiments ..."
>>> (p. 251)
>>>
>>> http://www.versobooks.com/books/1498-the-antinomies-of-realism
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>
>
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