[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Baudrillard and the 1983 comments

["J.M.G" <jay@gibsonnet.net>]

At 11:15 AM 2/8/01 -0500, you wrote:
>well, the internet was there in 1983 but not very much used by
>activists; the web made a big difference there, as well as the spraed
>of email beyond the scientific community.
>btw, another option: Baudrillard was wrong because his analysis was
>faulty.
>why would a reaction to an event (i.e. another event, right?) be a degraded
>form of the first one? Does that mean that the only genuine event
>would be the first event ever? (e.g. the creation myth in Genesis)
>how do you go about defining the borders of an event? isn't an event
>anything you chose to describe as one?
>Example: is "the Russian revolution" one event, or many? when does it
start >and stop? who is involved in it? Borderline case: e.g., everyone who
reacted >to it by coming to fear Bolshevism? that would be millions of
people, >including lots of American capitalists and politicians, and their
actions >partially caused by this fear, thus, does the Red Scare of the
1940s-60s
>constitute a part of "the Russian Revolution" as an event? certainly
>the "meaning" of "the Russian Revolution" is largely determined by
>such reactions.
>
>Why would an "overproduction" (relative to what?) of meaning and
>discourse result in an undecipherable reality? when was there a
>situation when reality was easily and uncontroversially "decipherable"?
>I suspect Baudrillard is talking about some of the campaigns of the
>1970s, conducted largely by mimeograph and photocopy and telephone,
>the most prominent example in Paris being solidarity with Russian and
>East Block dissidents and prisoners of conscience. By "electronic" he
>probably means mass media like TV and radio.

I welocme all of your comments;
* Baudrillard in this footnote mentions the initial actions of the students
during the Paris 'event'. He writes: 

"One would not hesitate to analyse the intervention of the media in May
1968 in this sense.  The extension given to the student action permitted
the general strike, but the latter was precisely a black box which
neutralised the original virulence of the movement.  The very amplification
was a mortal trap and not a positive extension." 

* Yes Baudrillard largely talks of radio and television (hence his
discussion of McLuhan). However how do his remarks fair in light of the
Internet?

j.


>
>At 1:10:50 AM on Thursday, February 08, 2001, jay@gibsonnet.net wrote:
>
>> Baudrillard in a footnote to his 'Implosion of Meaning in the Media'
(1983) 
>> writes:
>
>> "Distrust the universalisation of struggles through information. Distrust 
>> campaigns of solidarity that is both electronic and worldwide. Every
strategy 
>> of the universlaisation of differences is an entropic strategy of the
system."
>
>> This seems to be the antithesis of current positions on global activism
and its 
>> utilisation of the net. NAFTA, The EZLN and N30 all suggest the opposite
to 
>> this typical Baudrillardian stance.
>
>> *Is Baudrillard wrong because he was writing 18 years ago?
>> *Or is his concern re: the neutralisation of struggles via the an
attempt to 
>> amplify struggles ring true?
>> *Is it true that an event that reacts to an initial event is already a
degraded 
>> form of the event?
>> *Does the Internet merely overproduce meaning and speech and thus end in
an 
>> undecipherable reality?
>
>> -
>
>
>
>> ---------------------------------------------
>> This message was sent using Endymion MailMan.
>> http://www.endymion.com/products/mailman/
>
>> #  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
>> #  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
>> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
>> #  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
>> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
>
>
>
_________________________________________
 Jason Matthew Gibson
 School of Social and Behavioural Sciences
 Swinburne University of Technology
 Po box 218, Hawthorn (Wurundjeri Country)
 VIC 3122
 Ph: 9380 6832 
      **************
 indigenous.gibsonnet.net
 iratiwanti.org 
 aboriginalaustralia.org
__________________________________________


_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold