Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard's own writings have almost been overwhelmed by the huge variety of introductory texts, commentaries, valedictory offerings and sour grapes spewed out by academics such as myself, and by others who should know better. As with any "original" author it is best to read Baudrillard in the raw, sloppy references, "flawed" logic and all. Here I append some of the notes which I took (dating back to Mark Poster's edited edition of a number of Baudrillard's books). These should provide the dual role of adding to the pile of excrement which surrounds Baudrillard's work while simultaneously obfuscating his text.

The System of Objects

In reading "The System of Objects" (19868) it helps if you have read something of the writings of Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Lacan and J.K. Galbraith. In it Baudrillard explores the possibility that consumption has become the chief basis of the social order and of its internal classifications. The notion of "free competition" has moved from production, which is now highly organized and oligopolistic, to consumption. One is now "free" to consume from a huge selection of objects in order to distinguish oneself from others. The paradox of consumption is that while advertising tells us to "Buy this because it is like nothing else", it also tells us to "Buy this because everybody else is using it." and this is in no way contradictory. Like William Leiss (1976) Baudrillard argues that self-actualization is not so much a breaking away from objects as a means of becoming oneself through objects. Thus advertising nowadays is much more than just a commercial practice, it permeates all of society. Advertisers talk of "freeing" us from our guilt concerning self-indulgence in order to allow us to become happy. Baudrillard regards this as a conceded freedom; we are permitted by the advertisers to do these things. "Free to be oneself" means "free to project one's desire onto goods". This is only freedom by default. Consumption is a moral activity in that it allows for blocked desires to become sublimated into products which are socially acceptable.

He asks the question (possibly following from Roland Barthes Fashion System) of whether one may view consumer objects as a set of linguistic categories rather than with the tools of economics, psychology, anthropology or sociology? If the object/ advertising system actually were a language then it would be a two-way process. Objects would instruct needs and needs would influence the structure of the object world. The buying situation concerns an interaction between a person and a product. The relation between these is the same as any human relation. Baudrillard argues that while one part of the interaction, human desires, are fluid and contingent, the system of objects is coherent. The coherent system of objects acquires the ability to structure the system of needs. The system of objects is a set of expressions but it is not a language because it has no syntax. Here we have the 'Tower of Babel.' Needs disappear into products which have a greater degree of coherence. Thus the system of objects is a classification system and not a language. Categories of objects induce categories of persons. There are echoes here of William Leiss's thought concerning the fragmentation of needs which has greatly impoverished the human experience. However Baudrillard goes further than Leiss and seems to come close put forward by Herbert Marcuse in One Dimensional Man, in stating that control by categories "is the best vehicle for a social order.. to materialize itself under the sign of affluence." Baudrillard suggests that the language that goods speak to us is the language of brands. These shout at us from the hoardings, the buses and on TV. To Baudrillard, this is the most impoverished of languages.

Advertising works through metaphor. Cigarettes are associated with "springtime", cars with a "rugged environment" or a "beautiful woman". Objects now define what our social standing is. Yet social standing is also measured in relation to power, authority and responsibility. However he suggests that in our society measures of power, authority and responsibility are withdrawing, leaving objects in their wake to regulate such affairs. The code of objects, the "Rolex" is the only way now in which we can infer social standing.

Simulation

Is an indexical sign pointing back at Jean Baudrillard. I have little to add to this except the following example:

Journalist describing a flight to LA to cover the Academy Award ceremony:

"I didn't really want to get off. the in-flight move had been 'California Suite' in which there is a sense where Maggie Smith, playing an English actress flying to Los Angeles for the Academy Award ceremonies in which she will find out if she has won an award for best supporting Actress watches an in-flight movie about herself flying in an aircraft through a raging storm. For this very role the real-life Maggie Smith had just been awarded Best Supporting Actress. Flying along with earphones plugged into my head while watching Maggie Smith flying along with earphones plugged into her head watching herself flying along, I had suffered a partial collapse of the will to live! The twentieth century was getting too complicated for a simple soul to deal with.' Observer, June 10 1978).

References

Baudrillard, Jean (1968) trans. 1996 The System of Objects, London: Verso.
Leiss, William (1976) The Limits to Satisfaction. Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
Poster, Mark (ed) (1988) Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge University Press.

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