8.4
POST--MODERNISM· LYOTARD
AND BAUDRILLARD
Iain Hamilton Grant
very paradigm of every sort of submission, every sort
Introduction: what is post-modernism?
of compromise with the status quo' (Guattari, 1986,
p. 40) underscores his belief that a genuinely critical
'Postmodemism', jibed Felix Guattari, aiming at a
recent analysis of this complex of epistemological,
aesthetic, social and political problems by Jean
philosophy and a genuinely radical politics remain
possible, both Lyotard and Baudrillard consider our
Fran�ois Lyotard, 'is not philosophy at all, Uust]
modern philosophical and political certainties to have
something in the air' (Guattari, 1986, p. 41). De
been left standing by revolutions in 'late capitalism',
spite three published books on the topic (1984,
whose new technologies assume an exponentially more
1992, 1993b), Lyotard sometimes seems to agree,
powerful formative social role. In revolutionary post
as in his 'Answer to the Question: "What is post
industrial, post-modern or cybernetic society, the
modernism?" ': 'I am of course trying to understand
Copernican revolution in philosophy and the socialist
what it is, but I do not know' (Lyotard, 1985b, p. 74).
Perhaps more ironically, Guattari's challenge to post
revolution in politics have become such hollow idols
that fundamental questions arise as to what - if any
modernism finds a co-sponsor in Jean Baudrillard,
thing - might take their place.
who is almost universally hailed (or condemned) as
Given the scale of these problems, it is perhaps not
the 'high priest' or 'prophet' of post-modernism, but,
surprising that neither Lyotard nor Baudrillard can
when asked about this faith and this canonisation, he
answer the question 'What is postmodernism?'.
Since, moreover, as Foucault (1984) shows in his
replied, '[p]ostmodemism ... doesn't have a mean
ing. It's an expression, a word people use but which
explains nothing. It's not even a concept. It's
analysis of Kant's 'What is Enlightenment?', the very
asking of the question 'What is our age?' defines that
nothing at all' (Baudrillard, 1993b, pp. 21-2).
age as inescapably modem, perhaps the fact that no
Baudrillard often expresses himself with even less
one can answer 'What is postmodernism?' is itself
informative. As Lyotard writes, post-modern knowl·
restraint, insisting that post-modernism is a soft,
'yuppie' ideology, 'the most degraded and general
edge does not 'produce the known, but the un•
known' (Lyotard, 1984, p. 60).
ized idol fetishism' (Baudrillard, 1990a, p. 150); he
has even said, 'I have nothing to do with postmo
dernism' (in Gane, 199la, p. 46).
Reworking modernity: Lyotard on post•
Why, despite his reputation, does Baudrillard so
modernism
dismiss post-modernism, and why, despite so many
Despite Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition havinl
by now become the most cited account of post•
attempts, is Lyotard still perplexed about it? Whereas
Guattari's denunciation of post-modernism as 'the
628
POST - MODERNISM: LYOTARD AND BAUDRI L LAR D
modernity, its diagnosis of post-modernism as 'in
the Critique of Judgement, sensus communis (Gemein
credulity towards metanarratives' (Lyotard, 1984, p.
sinn or public sense) is a reflective Idea - one whose
xxiv) and advocacy of a concomitant post-modem
object cannot be given in experience - for Haber
practice of 'little narratives' have ironically achieved
mas, the reflective Idea of Gemeinschaft or consensus
soundbite status, thus obscuring its epistemological
is illegitimately deployed to prescribe morally accep
and political arguments beneath what Lyotard criti
table utterances on theoretical grounds. For Lyotard,
cises as the 'hegemony of narrative' (Lyotard, 1992,
Habermas's justification of his move by appeal to a
p. 35). We will focus here on the two major elements
principle of judgement, 'does violence to the hetero
typically overlooked in Lyotard's account: the lin
geneity of language games' (Lyotard, 1984, p. xxv).
guistic reorientation of Kant (see also Lyotard,
Thus, Habermas ultimately claims that you must
1988a); and the focus on contemporary capitalism
either agree to the principles of universalisable con
and new technologies. The latter thus provides a
sensus implicit in all communication,
Marxist rationale for the linguistic shift, so that
yourself from
dialogue,
since
your
or
exclude
performance
Lyotard's long years of commitment to political
(communication, and hence an aim at agreement)
struggle and the Marxist philosophy underpinning
contradicts your message ('not all language aims at
it (see Lyotard, 1988b) here re-emerge. In sum, for
agreement').
Lyotard, the post-modern condition is theoretically
governed by 'Kant after Marx' (Lyotard,
In short, if Habermas wanted to reunify reason,
1989,
morality and experience by adopting the incomplete
Jurgen Habermas's 'Modernity after Postmoder
tools for a 'postmodern knowledge' that would
'project of modernity', Lyotard wanted to derive
p. 273ff.).
nity' extends into philosophy, social and political
'refine our sensitivity to differences and reinforce
theory a debate that had previously been confined to
our ability to tolerate the incommensurable' (Lyo
architecture and the arts. Later retitled 'Modernity -
tard, 1984, p. xxv) by working through the roots of
An Incomplete Project', Habermas's essay, which
critical philosophical modernity. Kant is then an
seems to focus on modernism in the arts, glories
entrenched reference in the Habermas-Lyotard de
in critically reinaugurating the Kantian project of
bate, supplying the tools for both projects: if Haber
Enlightenment. Citing the latter's aims as the devel
mas builds on Kant's idea of Enlightenment, Lyotard
opment of 'objective science, universal morality and
radically renegotiates the critical territory on which
law, and autonomous art according to their inner
this project was built. Thus, where Kant invests great
logic' (Habermas in Foster, 1985, p. 9) in order to
care in delimiting the faculties, Lyotard redoubles
achieve more transparent and rational forms of
this 'critical' vigilance, delimiting 'incommensurable
everyday social life, Habermas, following Max We
language games' ('differends') (1988b), sacrificing
ber, deplored the development of a culture run by
harmony to discord and strife.
technocratic expertise to the detriment of the every
Why, however, call this return to the roots of
day 'life-world'. To counter this tendency, he called
Kantian modernity 'postmodern' rather than, for
for the life-world to reappropriate these specialised
example, 'radical modernism'? In some ways the
fields and to return them to the task of completing
latter is appropriate to Lyotard's work, and at times
the 'project of Enlightenment'. Habermas envisioned
institutions based on the universal norms implicit in
'communicative rationality', ultimately leading to
he himself reformulates 'post-modernism' as 'rewrit
ing modernity'. Taking post-modernity not as a
historical epoch, but as a 'mode within thought,
the establishment and enforcement of 'consensus'
speech, and sensibility' (Lyotard, 1992, p. 35), Lyo
( Gemeinschaft).
tard turns the historicising tables and insists that
In response, Lyotard cited Kant for his part, taking
something can 'become postmodern only if it is first
postmodern . . . [so that] postmodemism is not
Habermas to task for violating the Kantian distinc
tio ns between pure (theoretical) reason, practical
modernism at its end, but in a nascent state, and
(moral) reason and teleological judgement (art,
biology and human history). Whereas for Kant, in
this state is recurrent' (ibid., p. 22). But things are
not always so clearcut. The
629
Postmodern Condition
IAIN HAM I LTON GRANT
talist modernity loses the human subject, post-mod
closely ties post-modernism to the development of
'
the 'postindustrial age . For Lyotard, these socio
ernity no longer seeks to recover either loss but to
economic conditions, along with Marx's relentless
exacerbate the resultant unreality and inhumanity by
critique of the mutations of capital, 'forbid any return
experimentation. Lyotard applied these distinctions
to Kant' (Lyotard, 1989, p.353), th.us establishing a
not only to the arts (ibid., pp. 11-25), but also to
'differend' between Kantian modernity and post
philosophy and politics: th.us, Marx's nostalgia for a
modemity (ibid., p. 327). While post-modernity is
according to Lyotard, a question of different modes of
lost human community and his assault on the
ideological and industrial distortions of reality are
'expression in th.ought: in art, literature, philosophy,
clearly modernist, whereas the enjoyment experi
politics' (1992, p. 92), these modes must be inves
tigated according to what prevents a return to Kant:
enced by the nineteenth-century industrial proletar
iat, as Lyotard 'scandalously' argues (Lyotard, 1993a,
pp.111-12), in the disruption of their lives and the
capital.
modifications of their bodies by new manufacturing
technologies, constitutes a post-modem, industrial
Capital, technology and the sublime
sublime.
The second characteristic mode of modernity
According to Lyotard, there are two characteristic
'modes' of modernity: the sublime and the project.
appears th.rough Lyotard's analysis of the decline
of 'grand narratives' or 'metanarratives'.While such
a decline is now commonplace in discussions of post
The first, sublimity, involves the relation between
'presentation and cognition' (Lyotard, 1992, p.22).
In th.is context, 'presentation' refers to the 'aesthetic'
as both the presentations of the senses and the
modemism, Lyotard's reasons for supporting th.is
products of the imagination. Kant describes as
legitimated by reference to an 'Idea of freedom,
'sublime' a certain relation of faculties; namely,
Enlightenment,
cognition without capability of presentation - when
p. 29), an Idea which is in principle - and should
therefore become in fact - universal, guiding 'every
thesis are less well known. Such
something is conceived in cognition but cannot be
presented, either th.rough sense or imagination. If,
however, as Lyotard argues, modernity consists in the
socialism,
etc.'
tives are
narra
(Lyotard,
1992,
'retreat' or 'lack of reality' (ibid., p.19) exemplified
human reality' so th.at th.is very universality in turn
legitimates the narrative.The realisation of these
Ideas supplies modernity with 'its characteristic
in Kant's limitation of knowledge to representations
mode: the project' (ibid., p. 30), the 'will directed
we manufacture for ourselves - th.us forbidding access
to things in themselves - th.en the relationship of
towards a goal' (ibid., p. 61). Now, precisely this
what can be conceived to what we can see or imagine
'will-to-project' has been 'liquidated' (ibid., p. 30) by
another contender in th.is 'conflict of the narratives',
is itself sublime. This is so, since, following Kant,
namely, Habermas's great enemy, capitalist tech·
neither sense nor imagination can present the real in
noscience and its 'performativity' principle. Thus,
itself (which remains the putative object of our
against Habermas's assertion th.at 'every speech
[situation ...] is oriented towards the ideal of
thought), but can only re-present what is re-cog
nised; that is, known or knowable in advance.
truth' (Habermas, 1970, p. 144), Lyotard argues since capitalism is, for him, the driving force in
There are, then, two 'modes' of the sublime
relationship between cognition and presentation:
the
first,
characteristically
modem,
producing knowledge - th.at efficiency, the increase
in knowledge and technical applications, substitutes
'performativity' for truth and justice (cognition and
normativity} (see Lyotard, 1984, pp. 46-7).
Capitalism, sharing the 'project' mode and joinin&
accentuates
'the inadequacy of the faculty of presentation . ..
the nostalgia for [the] presence' of reality 'experi
enced by the human subject'. The second, charac
the concomitant struggle over narratives and
universality, is also modem in Lyotard's sense:
grand narrative of capital promises 'emancipa
teristically post-modem, emphasises the 'power of
the faculty to conceive [. ..], its "inhumanity"' and
the 'jubilation which comes from invent[ion]' (ibid.,
from poverty through techno-industrial dev
p. 22).If Kantian modernity loses reality and capi-
630
POST -MODERNISM: LYOTARD AND BAUDRIL LARD
ment', just as the Kant-Habermas Enlightenment
itself for legitimation, but instead extends its imma
narrative promised 'emancipation from ignorance
nent self-propagation. In this sense, it is not com
and servitude through knowledge and egalitarian
ism' (Lyotard, 1992, p. 36). Since each narrative
mitted, as are the more critical narratives, to what
Lyotard calls the 'negative heroes' (Lyotard, 1992,
strives to maximise the universality of its Idea,
p. 47) who formed the principal image of the
conflict ensues, because each narrative contains its
modem, critical intellectual, committed to reinstat
own immanent consensus on what can be known
ing a 'lost' legitimacy through the project of eman
and done. As Lyotard writes: 'there is no reality
unless it is confirmed by a consensus between
partners on questions of knowledge and commit
cipation.
This problem may be recast in terms of the two
ment' (ibid., p. 18). Contra Habermas, then, con
mourn a lost subject and a lost reality. However,
modes of the sublime: the emancipatory projects
sensus is not a universal, but is rather immanent to a
in so far as this subject and this reality remain
particular project in conflict with others; moreover,
conceivable although unpresentable, the emancipa
by prescribing the institution of the Idea as a uni
tory projects become projections of a bygone age or
versal, not only does Habermas violate Kantian
critical demarcations, but his project also accelerates
fragmented community - 'simulation[s], [n]arrations
utopian future, of an unalienated subject and un
of the unreal' (ibid., p. 59) - unreal, that is, in
the very social disintegration it criticises. Since
Habermas's critique is constrained by the same drive
relation to the dominant political and intellectual
order. In so far as this (distorted) reality is defined by
to maximise the universality of its Idea as capitalist
technoscience, it effectively supports the very crisis it
so deplores, helping to bring about 'the victory of
capitalism, the project becomes critical in the sense
capitalist technoscience over the other candidates
does not, however, 'love order', and does not aim to
of opposing its goals to capitalism. Capitalism itself,
for the universal finality of human history, [which] is
reintroduce or maintain a 'social or political creation
another means of destroying the project of modernity
according to rule'. In this sense, capitalism, a
while giving the impression of completing it' (ibid.,
'romanticism
p. 30).
Capitalism has two distinct advantages over its
1993b, p. 25), remains modem in so far as it is
committed to a project of infinite enrichment, while
competitors in this post-modem condition. Expli
citly committed to the maximisation of profits and
at the same time exhibiting the post-modem mode of
sublimity, realising and eliminating the 'project of
[of]
the
infinite
will'
(Lyotard,
power, capitalism defines the criteria for success in
modernity' in its tireless experimentalism. Indeed,
the conflict of the narratives: optimal performance
rather than attempting to reanimate a project or
equals infinite enrichment. Capitalist technoscience
embodies the idea of an 'infinity of the will' inherent
experimental: 'capitalist creation does not bend
resurrect a 'lost' reality or subject, capitalism is
the rules, it invents them' (ibid., p. 26).
ls Lyotard's post-modernism politically quiescent?
in the modem project (Lyotard, 1993b, p. 25) - the
will to realise the Idea and thus to glorify the will
and materialises it by co-opting knowledge and
-
It may seem so, since he has discounted the 'critical'
technology into the service of its singular criter
ion. The project is no longer, as it was for Kant
model as offering solutions to obsolete problems
(and remains so for Habermas), to be eventually
system it criticises in providing technoscientific
realised in harmony with a reflective Idea of the
moral ends of the human species, but is immediately
expansionism with new reserves of energy - since
realised and augmented in and through technology the material manifestation as well as the medium of
capitalist knowledge and power. Second, sacrificing
everything else to this minimal goal, capitalism is not
but continues, none the less, its struggles to realise a
(Lyotard, 1984, p. 14), and as complicit in the very
it has failed to bring about universal emancipation
project. Furthermore, since he has apparently ele
vated capitalist 'sublime' experimentalism over its
critics' rule-bound nostalgia, does not his 'post
committed to the retention or recovery of any
modern condition' amount to 'the very paradigm
t>anicular state of affairs. Nor does it appeal outside
of every sort of submission, every sort of compromise
631
IAIN H A M I LTON GRANT
Essentially, the new technologies concern lan
with the existing status quo', as Guattari suggests? On
the contrary: Lyotard simply talces contemporary
guage. They are in continuity with prior technol
capitalism's power seriously. He does not therefore
ogies in that they substitute automata for natural
suggest that resistance is futile and lapse into nihi
agents (humans, animals, etc.). They are different
listic political despair, but rather asks, 'what is to be
done when there is no horizon of emancipation,
in that the substitution bears on sequences pre
viously carried out by the higher nervous centers
where can we resist? For me, that is the question'
(cortex). {Lyotard, 1 993b, pp. 15-16)
(Lyotard, 1 985b, p. 69).
Such incursions wrest language from the domain
of human institutions and tum communication into
Lines of resistance
a conduit for capitalist expansionism, increasingly
erasure of any 'horizon of emancipation' in critical
vulnerable to regulation by technology and the
market (see ibid., p. 1 7). Communication, the very
thought, preventing post-modernity from returning
fabric of the 'post-modem social bond' {Lyotard,
If one consequence of capitalism's victory is the
to Kantian modernity, what are the concrete
1984, pp. 14ff), is now a technological concern,
developments in capitalism that have brought
driven by an infinite will deriving no longer from
about the extreme simplification of post-modern
human subjects, but from capitalist expansionism.
ism as the famous 'incredulity towards metanarra
For this reason, Lyotard's neo-Kantianism brings the
Information
'full force' of critique to bear not 'on the dividing
technologies have introduced vast changes com
lines' between the subject's faculties (Lyotard, 1992,
pared to their manufacturing precursors: if, for
p. 83), but rather on those in language manipulated
Marx,
human
by a 'second cortex' of communications systems,
brain, created by the human hand' - fundamen
circulating knowledge and language, fragmented
tives'
{Lyotard,
machines
1984,
were
p.
xxiv)?
'organs
of the
tally 'prostheses' of human cognitive and manual
into 'bits' of information. Rather than 'proposing a
capabilities - then, with new technologies, the
"pure" alternative to the system' {Lyotard, 1984,
fixed capital of machinery becomes the 'fixed
p. 66), or fighting the attendant alienation, this
critique 'activates the differends' (Lyotard, 1992,
knowledge' of computerised societies (ibid., p. 6;
cf. Marx, 1973 ). Computers assume those func
tions 'previously carried out by the higher nervous
p. 24) - the irresolvable tensions - between capita
lism's 'investment of the desire for the infinite in
centers' {Lyotard, 1993b, p. 16): memory (data
language' (Lyotard, 1993b, p. 27), and the experi
bases), planning and forecasting (simulations),
mentalism occasioned by precisely the dehumanisa
knowledge {expert systems), and communication
tion of language.
(information technology). Rather than prostheses
Thus, with the exponential growth of information
for human cognition, as Marx saw industrial ma
technologies and their incursion into the social
chines, computers 'replac[e] natural agents' and
bond, Lyotard asserts that computerised society as
become
society
a totality constitutes a machine or system in which
(ibid.), thereby becoming 'prostheses of language'
subjects are no longer discursive parmers aiming at a
independent of speakers (Lyotard, 1992, p. 99).
universal transparency in communication, but are
Rather than refusing to countenance extra- or
simply 'nodal points of specific communication' in
non-linguistic phenomena as determinants of so
the network. 'One is always located at a post through
which . . . messages pass' (Lyotard, 1984, p. 15),
writes Lyotard, teasingly: is this the 'post' of post•
modernism, the 'post' as computer terminal in the
the
'cortex'
of a
cybernetic
cial change (as Benhabib ( 1 9 84) argues against
Lyotard), Lyotard focuses on language-games pre
cisely because of the impact of new technologies
'second cortex' (Lyotard, 1992, p. 100)? But this
post-modem, cybernetic, capitalist Leviathan is sub·
lime, defying the faculties to present it, and thus
y
undermining both representationalist epistemolog
on language.
Language is the most contested area, the most
intense field of 'general agonistics', in post-industrial
society and post-modem culture (Lyotard, 1984, p. 10):
632
POST-MODERN ISM: LYOTARD AND BAUDRILLARD
and the socio-political projects of modernity. The
epistemological situation imposed by the sublime
relation between presentation and conception 'pro
duces not the known, but the unknown' (Lyotard,
1984, p. 60): rather than satisfying the representa
tionalist 'demand for reality' (ibid., p. 16) - for
clarity, certainty and communicability in epistemol
ogy, art and politics - Lyotard urges invention and
'allusion' to what remains conceivable but not
presentable. This sublimity forecloses any final an
swer to the question 'What is post-modernism?': such
an answer would revert from invention to realism,
and thus paradoxically cancel the very post-moder
nity it invokes. The experimentalist thus works
without rules to retrospectively 'establish the rules
for what will have been made' ( ibid., p. 24).
By the same sublimity, there can be no final
answer to the question 'What is capitalism?' Capit·
alism is not post-modem by being brand new, but by
carrying over elements of modernity - specifically,
the 'infinite will' - into a sublime mode; precisely
because of this conjunction of infinite will and
experimentation, capitalism liquidates metanarra
tive and reconditions reality. For the philosopher,
as for capitalism, the post-modem will always remain
to be determined, for once determined, it will
become modem.
Similarly, post-modem politics, incredulous of the
will and its projections, no longer aims at modernist
utopias or lost realities, but exacerbates the sublime
mode of experimentation to multiply language games
and their resultant differends. Thus the question,
'What is to be done given the demise of emancipa
toty projects?' does not so much dismiss modernity
and proclaim post-modernity its triumphant succes
sor, but rather 'works through' modernity in order to
'trace a line of resistance' to it (ibid., p. 47).
As we have seen, Lyotard radicalises Kantian
critique in order not only to demarcate the limits
of a given language game, but also to 'dissipate [the]
illusions' (Lyotard, 1989, p. 156) attendant upon the
transgression of these limits. If, however, the reality
behind the illusion, the transparency behind the
distortion, cannot be presented, no guarantees can
be elicited that illusion has been dissipated, since the
illusion's 'dissipation may [itself] be an illusion'
(ibid.). Thus, while Lyotard insists that deploying
critique without guarantees, 'judging without criter
ia', engages the critical-experimental mode of post
modemity and traces the line of resistance against
capitalist-technoscientific advance, precisely the
irreducible simulation he risks provides the basic
theoretical context of Jean Baudrillard's work, to
which we now tum.
Baudrillard, modernity and simulation
If Lyotard, the Columbus of the post-modem 'archi
pelago' (Lyotard, 1988a), has charted and navigated
passages, Baudrillard often seems merely adrift, with
no thesis on post-modernism. Indeed, other than a
few interviews and scattered mentions of the term,
Baudrillard has had virtual.ly nothing to say about post
modemism - a stance explicitly affirmed by his
proclamation that he has 'nothing to do with
post-modernism' (in Gane, 199la, p. 46). Although
they share the view that modernity and its critical
theories constitute a redundant pairing, approaching
Baudrillard from the perspective of Lyotard's post
modern Kantianism will show Baudrillard as a
'theoretical terrorist', one who maintains a 'position
of challenge' (Baudrillard, 1993b, p. 122) to both
modernity and 'post-modernism' - orthodoxies to
which he has never been party, but under which he
has all too often been subsumed.
Against the critical subject's manipulation of
appearances for epistemological purchase, Baudril
lard announces the theory of the simulacrum as an
'anti-Copernican revolution' (Baudrillard, 1994c,
p. 42). Like a shadow 'liberated' from the body that
cast it, the simulacrum is a sign 'liberated' from any
reference to reality, a sign that has itself become real,
leaving nothing with which to discriminate the real
from its simulation. Since most interpretations of
Baudrillard as a post-modernist are based on the
theory of simulation, the following account will
interrogate this theory and the 'fatal' strategy of
symbolic exchange.
In accordance with a 'political economy of the
sign' (see Baudrillard, 1981, 1993a) parallel with the
'successive mutations of the law of value since the
Renaissance' (that is, the history of capitalism),
Baudrillard posits 'three orders of simulacra' (Bau
drillard, 1993a, pp. 50ff): counterfeit, production and
633
IAIN HAM ILTON GRANT
simulation (hyperrealism) ; each order marking an
nature. Whereas Plato's artisan copies an Idea when
incremental deregulation in the economy of signs.
he manufactures a bed, which is then copied again by
the artist painting a picture of the bed (Republic X,
In his chief theoretical work, Symbolic Exchange and
Death ( 1 993a), Baudrillard outlines his historiogra
595a--602b), the industrial production of innumerable
identical objects 'liberates' signs from any referential
phical schema: rather than a shift from modernity to
post-modernity, modernity itself is subdivided ac
or metaphysical function; signs became object-signs
cording to the order of simulation. Since Schelling's
'which will never have to be counterfeits, since from
Ages of the World, Marx's history of capitalism and
the outset they will be products on a gigantic scale'
Heidegger's epochality of Being, philosophers have
(Baudrillard, 1993a, p. 55). The value of a sign no
frequently sought to order history by their own
longer lay in its referent (what it can be exchanged
paradigms; Baudrillard's theory of simulacra follows
for), because, with the fascination with technologi
this tradition. Following his schema, he is not a post
cal reproduction, everyone may now own a Mona
modernist; rather, 'postmodernity' is the mode of
Lisa (ibid., pp. 53-7).
modernity found within his schema.
Kantian modernist epistemology slips easily into
The first-order simulacrum, the counterfeit, occurs
this industrial schema, producing objects regulated a
when signs lose the fixed, transparent and natural
priori as identical serial appearances rather than as
doubles of things. When Kant distinguishes phenom
ena or appearances from noumena or things in
relation to the real Baudrillard hypothesises that they
enjoyed in feudal or archaic societies. The counter
as money destabilises the exchange of goods. When
themselves, he emphasises this non-negotiable lim
itation of our knowledge by undercutting even the
the Renaissance swept the feudal order aside in
possibility of raw 'appearances': appearances appear
feit sign destabilises a fixed order of signification just
favour of generalised competition, signs no longer
to us because they have been - in an 'act of
referred to a natural order, but to a synthetic, forged
order: where once there were distinct social ranks,
spontaneity . . . prior to all thought' (Kant, 1958,
and signs referred to reality, the social order was
representations (VorsteUungen, literally presentations
placed before us). When, moreover, a concept is
p. 153) - worked up by our faculties to become
democratised, opened up to competition; signs then
began to counterfeit reality, to forge a second
applied to a representation, rather than gaining
access to the thing 'behind' it, we manufacture
'nature'. The counterfeiting of social distinction
was reflected in the rise of fashion, and that of
the 'representation of a representation' of an ob
nature is reflected in the semi-realised dream of
ject, a second-order sign. Baudrillard's 'anti-Coper
cladding the world in stucco (ibid., pp. 50-3 ) , a
nican revolution' does not simply reverse this
single, synthetic substance, the artificial essence of
schema in a Luddite ambition to vanquish the
humanity's technological prowess from which every
industrialisation of the real by epistemological la
thing would spring. At this point, the counterfeit is
bour and let 'real reality' flourish once more. Rather,
taking theory as 'a challenge to the real[,] [a]
distinguishable in principle when it becomes proble
matic in fact (ibid., p. 55). In other words, it still
challenge to the world to exist' (Baudrillard, 1987,
makes sense to ask which is the real and which the
p. 124), Baudrillard pushes the tendency of the
forgery; which is the erstwhile natural sign and which
'hyper' inherent in this epistemic labour to the
is the artificial; whence a family's riches, nobility or
trade? The counterfeit sign is therefore a first-order
extreme, so that the real goal of representationalist
epistemology is, in common with its industrial para·
simulacrum of nature itself, a simulacrum that would
digm, to produce the 'hyperreal . . . the meticulous
like to exchange roles with nature, to naturalise the
new order.
reduplication of the real' (Baudrillard, 1993a, p. 7 1 )
and to consume it as hyperreality. Even Marx saw
that, with the industrial order, it was no longer
If naturalness was the lode-stone for the counter
feit sign, with industrialisation signs entered the 'age
enough merely to interpret; the point is to change
of mechanical reproduction' (to borrow Walter
the world after a radical model.
At this point, between second-order, serially
Benjamin's famous phrase) and lost any relation to
634
POST-MODERN ISM: LYOTARD AND BAUDRILLARD
lard's analyses of simulation, defining his epistemic
reproducible reality and simulation, the third order
model as the cybernetic or informational model of
of simulacra - the hyperrealization or 'ecstatic form
of the real' (Baudrillard, 1990b, p. 9), its crystalline,
feedback, where the code endlessly replicates and
recycles itself, taking itself as its own self-regulating
abstract formula or code
achieves pre-eminence
over the couple 'model - copy' that provided the
-
object in total indifference to a Kantian 'industrial'
subject, supposed to have produced it.
schema for 'true and false' during the order of the
counterfeit. With the removal of the rigid dissym
After the metaphysics of being and appearance
metry that dominated the counterfeit relation, and
[the order of the counterfeit], after energy and
determinacy [the industrial] the metaphysics of
taking over the function of reproducing forms in the
industrial order, serial products are no longer gener
indeterminacy and the code. Cybernetic control,
ated through the technological reproduction of an
generation through models, differential modula
object; simulation now generates third-order simu
tion, feedback, question/answer, etc.: this is the
lacra from models that are already simulations,
new operating system . . . Digitality is its meta
hastening modernity to its culmination in the form
of a 'code' (Baudrillard, 1993a, p. 90).
physical principle . . . and DNA is its prophet.
(Baudrillard, 1993a, p. 5 7 )
Although 'code' plays a major role i n Baudrillard's
Genetic revolt and fatal strategies:
work by typifying the third-order simulacrum, his
Baudrillard's code
condensed, allusive and often anti-thetic prose
makes it difficult to pin down its meaning. How
We can therefore see why many commentators
locate Baudrillard's 'post-modernism' in the 'hyper
ever, complaints such as Kellner's that Baudrillard
realism' of third-order simulacra, for this seems to be
never 'clearly or systematically defines his notion of
what is generally meant by 'post-modernity': the real
code' (Kellner, 1989, p. 29) miss the functionalism of
irretrievably lost in the funhouse of simulations. For
his theoretical terms. Baudrillard's 'code' cannot, as
Baudrillard, however, such processes remain para
Kellner assumes, be reduced to generating meanings,
digmatically modem: post-modernism, 'the first truly
as in structural linguistics, for, like structuralism
itself, as the above passage shows, 'code' in Baudril
universal conceptual conduit, like jeans or Coca
Cola' (Baudrillard, 1996a, p. 70), simply marks the
lard's work is indissociably cybernetic, genetic and
extension of commodification into the conceptual
semiotic. In other words, in line with the thesis of the
realm. In the resultant 'world-wide verbal fornica
sign's loss of referentiality, Baudrillard's theoretical
tion', concepts lose any determinate meaning, so
terms are functional rather than denotative - they
that 'as Lyotard says, grand theories are over and
work rather than refer.
done with' (Baudrillard, 1993b, p. 22). In mourning
Thus, Baudrillard contends that, with simulation,
this loss, post-modernism becomes 'post-mortemism',
the code has become 'all-powerful', since it not only
forms the operating system on which simulacra run -
'reviewing,
rewriting,
restoring,
and face-lifting
everything [in an] end of the century moratorium'
their genotype or genetic structure - but also struc
(Baudrillard, 1994a, p. 12). In defying the absence of
tures their phenotype or appearance. The further
meaning, post-modernism is determined to 'mean
argument that the code has become all-pervasive in
nothing' (Baudrillard, 1993b, p. 22), rather than not
mean at all. Third-order simulacra, however, no
the order of simulation, that such 'artificial life' is
everywhere, derives from the spectacular saturation
of media and communications technologies with
longer pose questions of meaning, but of function,
for they are separated from their precursors by their
third-order simulacra; thus, the code is 'the func
tional, technological matrix of these systems which
operativity. This last formulation, in addition to
control the mode of appearance and disappearance'
(Baudrillard, 1994b, p. 40). Simultaneously the
separating Baudrillard from post-modernism, also
informs, as we shall see, the strategies he adopts to
'reverse the course of modernity'.
genetic structure of simulacra and the mechanism
The function of the 'code' is crucial in Baudril-
for regulating their replication, the code eludes
635
I A I N H A M I L T O N G RA N T
external control: as both operating system and
(ibid., p. 60), that is, a conventional object rather
medium of all communication, we cannot commu
than an objective reality. The geneticist Jacques
nicate with the code itself; as the structure and
Monod's consideration of the same question, cited
system of appearances, the code does not itself
by Baudrillard (ibid., pp. 60-1), concludes by nat
appear in itself, but appears everywhere as simulacra
uralising 'convention': if DNA is not actually real, but
of itself. As the genetic structure governing living
only conventional, it is not the sort of convention
things, it is itself neither living nor dead, and so
human beings can do without, and so becomes
exceeds their control.
inescapably 'real' for us. This makes it inevitable
that the perfect scientific object, DNA, would consist
However, might we not respond, against Baudril
of pure code.
lard, that since science discovered the code, we can
now obtain some degree of control over the genetic
We can thus appreciate, following the excision of
code, perhaps even redesign its products? Whatever
the accidental, that the 'discovery' of the code
the epistemic status of the code, are these not real,
reintroduces a certain 'primitive' fatalism into the
rather than merely simulated, results? Although
scientific object. Against this background, Baudril
Baudrillard rarely engages with science, we can
lard insists that the 'strategy of the subject' has been
defeated by the object, and that the only strategy left
reconstruct a Baudrillardian answer to these ques
tions, beginning with the following challenge: what if
is the 'fatal strategy' of the intractable and elusive
the 'discovery' of the genetic code were not acci
object (Baudrillard, 1990b, p. 7). It is a considerable
dental; what if, given the structure of our knowledge,
'objective irony' that the 'human' genome is too
the discovery were inevitable, so that, in the heart of
modem science, a current of fatalism is introduced;
massive a code to be mapped using merely human
what then would be the consequences for 'the object'
code. According to Baudrillard, with the advent of
we have thus discovered?
To address the first part of Baudrillard's challenge,
into the models' (ibid., p. 9). Thus, instead of an
memory: only machine code can simulate the genetic
the third order of simulation, 'we have passed alive
what might account for the inevitability of discover
object manufactured as an appearance for a subject,
the cybemetised genome turns the human subject
ing the genetic code, the question of 'observation' in
scientific experimentation is greatly contested, since
into a scientific object; and, as inessential to the pure
the requirement that results be reproducible entails
form of the object, the code finally excises the
subject, making it the residue of the code-as-object.
the meticulous construction of the technological and
sociological (training, funding) conditions under
If, then, the 'code' operates not simply in terms of
which an object can appear. Scientific phenomena
a structural analysis or a semiotics of cultural forms,
but is equally the deep or genetic structure of living
therefore become progressively more refined as ex
periment and observation are subject to controls
things, the audacity of Baudrillard's deployment of it
which regularise phenomena by extracting the acci
dental or inessential. In this way, the scientific object
consists in re-exporting the application of its biolo
can be replicated by replicating the technological
as a 'social genetic code' (Baudrillard, 1993a, p. 60).
and sociological codes governing its observation.
Far from being irreducible to genetic determinism,
gical function on to social and political phenomena,
Through this, science does not so much illuminate
the code 'governs' politics in the same way as it
the real, or force nature to reveal its secrets, as it
dictates gender or skin colour, removing every claim
refines objects into codes to ensure their replication;
to harness the 'general will' in democracy (Rous·
thus, code reacts upon code, reflecting only its own
seau), the particular wills of the oppressed against the
will of the oppressor (Marx), or the efficient whims
logic. This is, however, precisely the definition of the
real adhered to by the industrial codes governing
of the Princely dictator (Machiavelli). Such fatalism
is anathema to modem politics, and yet it is success·
modem scientific enquiry: 'the real is that of which it
fully used, Baudrillard claims, by what he calls the
'mass' or 'silent majorities' in refusing to be co-opted
into the 'reign of will or representation' (Baudrillard,
is possible to provide an equivalent reproduction'
(Baudrillard, 1993a, p: 73). This result leads Bau
drillard to consider 'whether DNA is itself a myth'
636
POST-MODER N I S M : LYOTARD AND BAUDRILLARD
1983, p. 24). Rather than being mobilised by politics
there is too much body, but that the body is super
and its will to represent 'the people', the masses
absorb and deflect every attempt to transform them
fluous' (Baudrillard, 1990b, p. 32). This is the
'incredible violence of genetic simulation': the ge
into either the historical subject of political oppres
netic code may be an 'artifact . . . , and artificial
sion or the liberated subject of capitalism. Since
matrix . . . of simulation' (Baudrillard, 1979, p. 234 ),
but simulation, as we have seen, would not be
fatalism is thus anathema to the modem 'will', it
is therefore also fatal to the modem subject, the
simulation if there remained a 'reality' beyond it.
In other words, simulation is not the simulation of
possessor of that will.
At this juncture, as the mass becomes the object of
the natural - that would be the counterfeit
but the
generation of the hyperreal through the code. DNA is
increasingly frantic polling, a fatal strategy - or a
strategy of fatalism - becomes indissociable from the
not, therefore, less real than the body, but is the
medium of its hyper--realisation.
'fate of the object' (Baudrillard, 1 990b, p. 1 1 1 ). Thus,
while subjects cannot struggle against the dictator
ship of the code, no matter how much political will
Symbolic exchange and the critique of
they have - while, in other words, we cannot 'fight
DNA
.
.
•
-
modernity
with the class struggle' (Baudrillard, 1993a,
p. 4) - nevertheless, 'revolt has become genetic'. Just
Modernity is neither a sociological nor a political
as the events of May 1968 - a political reference dear
concept, nor properly a historical concept. It is a
to both Lyotard and Baudrillard - broke out without
characteristic mode of civilisation opposed to the
the consent or planning of the official Communist
mode of tradition, that is, to every other previous
or traditional culture. (Baudrillard, 1978b, p. 63)
Party or the intellectuals, neither we nor universal
history can dictate when or where the revolution will
or should take place: instead, 'like the cells in cancer
This characterisation of modernity as a cultural mode
and metastases', revolts break out with 'uncontrol
opposed to archaic societies harks back to Baudril
lable vitality and undisciplined proliferation' (Bau
lard's earlier attacks on universalist Marxist history
drillard, 1990b, p. 33 ).
and economics (Baudrillard, 1975; 1993a). Accord
Reversing this spiralling, genetic logic of revolt
ing to some, these survive as the 'basic matrix' of
once again, Baudrillard writes of cancer not as a
Baudrillard's theory; that is, 'the opposition between
disease tragically afflicting a body, but as the body
symbolic and semiotic (or simulational) cultures'
and its cells 'rebelling against their genetic decree,
(Gane, 1995, p. 1 1 1 ). Semiotic cultures are irredu
against the commandments . . . of DNA' (ibid.),
while the individual becomes a 'cancerous metasta
cibly tied not only to Marxist historiography and
political economy, but also to the critical, opposi
sis of her base formula' (Baudrillard, 1979, p. 235).
When some scientific research programmes, inter
tional stances of Marx's successors; thus, the history
preted as proposing simplistic genetic or anatomical
of capital and the theory of the revolution-to-come
form the crucial index of modernity for Baudrillard.
explanations for social phenomena such as homo
In this sense, it would be misleading to structurally
sexuality, criminality, or even class, are championed
oppose symbolic to semiotic cultures, for the problem
by certain political interests, Baudrillard's strategy is
is not a new orientation for opposition, but the
not to argue for cultural rather than genetic deter
articulation of symbolic exchange at the simulated
minism, nor to try to limit the damages of such social
heart of modem capitalism.
engineering; rather, he insists that society is deter
Capitalist exchange is supposed to have super
mined by the code, and that there is no need to
seded 'primitive' symboUc exchange, a category Bau
deploy such techniques, since the code itself eradi
drillard takes from Marcel Mauss's ( 1 974) analysis of
cates the accidental in quest of the essential, taking
itself as the norm.
the gift. If Marx viewed all history as a linear
From the standpoint of the code (of the object),
toriography with repressing the ambivalence inherent
'what makes the obese [body] obscene is not that
in the binding reciprocity of the gift, an alternative
evolution, then Baudrillard challenges Marxist his
637
I A I N HAMILTON GRANT
this, the strategy deployed must be fatal, not only to
economic form that puts the entire modem 'political
order at stake' (Baudrillard, 1975, p. 59). The
such cultural modes, but also to all strategies. The
ambivalence of the gift-exchange derives from its
paradox is crucial; having staked everything on a
symbolic character: it is not the content of the gift
(what is given) that matters, but its reversible form
- calling the latter fatal risks making it simply
(gift reciprocated by counter-gift). In ceremonies
another modem, oppositional strategy, pitting one
contest between two strategies - linear and reversible
such as the potlach of native North Americans
finality (modem capitalism) against another (pri
gift-exchange spirals out of control into an orgiastic
mitive fatalism). In so far as a strategy aims to realise
an end, whichever strategy is deployed, far from
destruction of goods, such that cycles of exchange
blur into one another; huge amounts of goods were
ending modem linearity, would simply replace one
wasted in symbolic affirmation of the social bond. To
finality with another. Baudrillard asked, focusing the
modem, utilitarian eyes, such orgiastic waste - which
Baudrillard, following Bataille (1991), calls the
paradox: 'how could there be fatality if there is
strategy?' (ibid., p. 188).
'accursed share' - is abhorrent.
The simulated death-drive pursued by the fatal
strategy answers the paradox: fatality and strategy
Rather than being based on equivalence, over
are mutually exclusive, since 'from a strategy we
which both capitalist and Marxist economics strug
gle, the reciprocity principle of symbolic exchange
expect control', while fatality denudes us of control.
Insisting on fatal strategies is thus self-defeating, but
requires that the counter-gift be greater than the gift.
The exponential cycle of exchange thus never ends,
this is precisely Baudrillard's point: a fatal strategy is
having no external finality such as accumulation of
profit or power, but only perpetual reversal as its
fatal, since, in adopting it, the subject 'succumbs to the
surpassing of its own objectives' (ibid., p. 189). The
internal non-finality.
point of these strategies is not to exit modernity but to
engage those fatal tendencies of modernity that drive it
The linear and accumulative 'strategy of moder
nity' (Baudrillard, 1990b, p. 1 1 7 ) pits itself against
towards its own death (ibid.). In other words, Bau
the reversibility and waste of symbolic exchange.
drillard forsakes both a nostalgic return to (primitive
However, as capitalism progressively annihilates any
reference to the utility of goods in favour of the pure,
societal order) or exitfrom (modem hyperrealist order)
in favour of upping the stakes, amplifying simulation
with a simulatory theory that induces reversibility at the
simulated form of exchange, it comes ever closer to
the orgiastic destruction of goods in the potlach. With
core of simulation itself; such reversibility carries mod
ernity's inherent, fatalistic primitivism into the expo
reference abolished in simulated as in symbolic
exchange, the stakes become clear: not semiotic
nential cycles of symbolic exchange, 'accelerating the
versus symbolic society, but linearity versus reversi
process . . . [towards] the fatal as maximum outcome'
bility within the code governing the hyperreal. The
(Baudrillard, 1993b, p. 158).
feedback effect by which the code generates simu
Baudrillard refuses to accept that the 'real' - a relic
of a bygone semiotic order - survives hyperrealisa
lacra of itself always risks abolishing its own deter
minacy, moving from metastasis to genetic revolt,
from order to disorder. In this sense, the intensifica
tion. Since reality is not concealed by simulation,
everything - including a theory of simulation such as
Baudrillard's - must itself be a simulation. Even his
tion of simulation in modernity is haunted by the
symbolic 'in the form of its own death' (Baudrillard,
1993a, p. 1 ) , haunted, that is, by the spectre of a
own theories are too close to their sources, feeding
simulation back on to simulation, 'like the famous
reversal into the symbolic exchange it 'superseded'.
feedback effect . . . produced by a source and a
Just as 'fatality' re-emerged in modem science
receiver being too close together' (Baudrillard,
1994, p. 5). This 'hyper-logic' accounts for the
when the codes of scientific theory became the
scientific theory of the code, Baudrillard's analyses
troubling sense that Baudrillard's works may be
fictions, throwing light here and there on diverse
of modernity seek the reversibility immanent to
contemporary cultural phenomena, but without any
readily apparent theoretical or critical ground. That
modem, code-governed simulated exchange in or
der to accelerate their symbolic demise. To provoke
638
POST-MODER N I S M : LYOTARD AND BAUDRILLARD
it is a logic, based on a genealogy of the sign, however,
difference between the two? Seizing the redundancy
reflects his paradoxical realism: despite the real
of old forms of critical theory, both philosophers
undertake a 'critique of critical reason': Lyotard
having become hyperreal, a simulation or illusion,
'one has to recognize the reality of the illusion, and
regenerates Kantian critique in the information
age; Baudrillard dismisses critique as buttressing
one must play upon this illusion and the power it
exerts' {BaudriUard, 1993b, p. 140). If Baudrillard's
the very system it critiques.
theories are in some sense 'fictional', then this is
Opposing the critical model of social fragmentation
because the only available reality today is that of
induced by alterations in social hardware, Lyotard
simulation:
recommends an experimentalism 'with neither pro
'today,
reality
itself is hyperrealist'
(Baudrillard, 1993a, p. 74).
gramme nor project' {Lyotard, 1993a, p. 262) to
redress the stakes in a cybernetic society. Facing
the same situation, and equally rejecting alienation
Conclusion
as a theoretical basis for strategic engagements with
We should remember that both Lyotard and Bau·
capitalism,
drillard, in common with much French philosophy
science fiction' to radicalise capitalism's more destruc
Baudrillard offers only a 'theoretical
since the 1960s, were driven by what they saw as the
tive tendencies at the level of simulation. Both thinkers'
death-knell of radical, Marxist politics and its
perspectives on the disappearance of the finalities of
'critical' intellectuals. Both served their radical ap
modernity foreground the diminishing returns on
prenticeships during the 1950s and 1960s. Lyotard
philosophic solutions to science-fictional problems.
was in the Trotskyite Socialism or Barbarism group
Thus, in place of the triumphalist knowing subject of
and was later a Nanterre activist during May 1968;
the Copernican revolution, forming and knowing
Baudrillard, who studied under the Communist
objects to perfection in 'a system of . . . totalitarian
intellectual Henri Lefebvre, was a proto-Situation
explanation' (Baudrillard, 1 995a, p. 82), and in place
ist. Both struggled in their early works to provide a
of the proletarian subject and its triumphalist emer
future for critical theory and practice {Lyotard, 1972,
gence at the end of history, Baudrillard places the
1993b; Baudrillard, 1975, 1981, 1996b). Now that
object's revenge at the centre of an ironized, illusory
the future is here, however, technocapital has revo
universe of symbolic exchange: 'The world is given to
lutionised society, overshadowing every other revo
lutionary project: what is the fate of social change
us,
and given to us as unintelligible; we have to render
it even more unintelligible . . . , to render it, give it
when change has exceeded constancy and erased the
back' (ibid.)
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