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Reading
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General help with Baudrillard In this class we will be reading from the work of Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Lacan. These theorists are notoriously difficult to understand. But with hard work, you CAN understand this stuff, and it WILL enrich your readings of the primary texts. Trust yourself, trust each other, and trust me. Your brain will hurt, but just like with your muscles, pain means growth. Here are some beginning thoughts: Some tips on how to read French theory: As you know, you use different strategies for reading different kinds of texts. Most of your textbooks require a mastery approach--you read for the main idea, which you expect to be clearly stated in organized and accessible language. French theory doesn't work like that. In order to read theory, you need to read with both sides of your brain, so to speak. Your goal is to "get it," like you get a joke or a work of art, not master it like you would a formula or an outline. What Baudrillard and Lacan both want is for you not to do a surface level reading; they want to disturb your conscious understanding, so that unconscious processes will be engaged in making connections between what you know and what you need to understand. So that when you read, you'll continue processing that reading when you're taking a bath, playing sports, driving, etc. until you have a eureka! experience. Many times, that eureka experience of understanding will come when you're reading a picture book, probably because your unconscious is more fluent with images than your conscious mind. For your Netforum responses, then, I'm not asking you to summarize the reading. I'm asking you what connections, what associations you made while you were reading. It might seem a bit freaky, but you should keep a notebook handy as you read to jot down where your mind goes when it wanders during your reading. It may seem as if there is no connection at all, but this is where you need to trust yourself; you ARE making connections, and you are starting to understand the reading in ways that you haven't processed yet. So DO NOT CENSOR what you put on the NetForum. That's what I mean by trusting each other. We promise (and we all do promise, right?????) not to laugh maliciously (although we may in fact laugh, since conspiratorial laughter too is a response of understanding and empathic connection) at anything you say. I'll be participating too, and my responses will be up early so that you may read them before you respond if you would like. I'll also post some vocabulary explanations for each reading, both at this site and on the Net Forum itself. Here are some Baudrillard links: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/2795/jean_baudrillard.htm http://cid.unomaha.edu/~ajuska/SOC8020/baudmenu.htm http://www.satmundi.com/Mail/baudrillard%201.htm
Notes on "Transaesthetics": Good website on surrealism: http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/hthl/etuds/brown/brown.html
Vocabulary: Proliferate: to increase or spread at a rapid rate Raison d’etre: literally, "reason for being" meaning its defining feature Art’s symbolic pact: the notion that art has an obligation to comment on reality, to show reality its limits and failures and possibilities Ad infinitum: to infinity Gold standard of aesthetic judgement: a rule or an absolute standard of value (Remember the discussion about authoritarianism versus consequentialism—in the first case, a child would not steal because there is a rule that says, "thou shalt not steal," but in the second, the child would not steal because she fears the consequences. In the first instance, there is a sort of gold standard; in the second, there is a "well, it depends" kind of non-standard.) Stasis: stagnation, motionlessness Hyperbole: extravagant exaggeration Metastasis: (there’s that "meta" again!)the transmission of something from its original site to other sites .Baudrillard’s explanation of the spread of cancer is a good explanation of the process of metastasis (15) This gives us insight into what he means by transaesthetics: In the absense of a controlling definition of aesthetics that would limit its scope and range to something very definite, aesthetics metastasizes—it crosses all boundaries and everything becomes aesthetisized. Commodity: an article of trade or commerce Cosmopolitan spectacularization: we can now, through TV and the Internet, take the whole world as a site of spectacle—food for our eyes. Semiological organization: the relationship between signs and meaning Taken together, Baudrillard’s use of the above concepts is saying something like: We think we know what something is or means by simply knowing what it looks like. And even if something doesn’t really mean anything important, the transaetheticization of everything, and the fact that we isolate it as something to be looked at, causes us to ascribe value to very ordinary things. In a sense, we are all learning to see as a child sees, rather than teaching the child to see as the modernist adult. Eclecticism: pulling things together from diverse sources, blending very different thing and styles of things together Vortex of artifice: a vortex is like a whirlpool, drawing everything into its center, artifice can be a clever device or contraption, but it can also be a deception, so think of the bringing together of very clever, but ultimately not real, art objects—like paper mache cherubs rather than human forms sculpted in marble Iconoclast: someone who seeks to destroy sacred images, ideas, or traditions (icon means image, clast means to break) Infra—below, beneath, ultra—beyond, hyper—over, above, beyond
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