Abstract
This chapter discusses the transformation of aporia into (tragic) indifference. In the fast-moving world of the virtual game, one does not have time to think, only to act fast and survive. Aporia as a way of speaking and knowing one’s truth and desire is undercut by fast movement and the inability or reluctance to think. If the ancient hero’s misfortune was an oblique affirmation of the existence of God or the father who guarantees Law and order, the new hero seduces the Father-God and eventually leads him to death, in line with Baudrillard’s argument that the rules of the game have replaced the Law. In reality, Law (Lacan) and game (Baudrillard) play with one another.
For if the divine mission of all things is to find their meaning, they also seek, by virtue of a diabolical nostalgia, to lose themselves in appearances, in the seduction of their image.
(Baudrillard 1990: 67)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Baudrillard has been critiqued for absence of praxis, looking at society as a system of exchange only, inflicting a reductionist game of signification, employing a concept of signification which has not been developed enough (see Poster 1979; Kellner 1989), accepting the code and the omnipotence of the semiotic system too easily (see Poster 1981: 475), and providing an inadequate and loose concept of symbolic exchange posited as romanticised ‘loss’ and ‘rhetorical necessity’ (Hefner 1977: 112). For a more recent ‘reinstitution’ of Baudrillard in his rightful place in the critique of culture, see The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies; Clarke et al. (2009); Bishop (2009).
- 2.
Baudrillard ’s On Nihilism in Simulation and Simulacra (2006) is a mini manifesto on why he simultaneously is and is not a nihilist, ‘because it would be beautiful to be a nihilist, if there were still a radicality, as it would be nice to be a terrorist if death , including that of the terrorist, still had meaning’ (2006: 164). See Bogard for Baudrillard’s reading of the Nietzschean amor fati (1990: 5). Bishop and Phillips consider Baudrillard as an anti-rationalist, not a nihilist (2007: 141); Gane (2000: 120) sees Baudrillard as a Stoic. See Woodward (2009) for a comprehensive account of Baudrillard’s nihilism in the postmodern context.
- 3.
For Baudrillard ’s style, which is often intentionally elliptical, aphoristic, and hyperbolic, see Laügt (2012). Baudrillard has a tendency to proclaim his insights caring little for contradictions (Poster cited in Bogard 1990: 3) and often embodies the disorder he critiques and writes about (Butler 1999: 101).
- 4.
As opposed to a Theogony (Hesiod), the body of myths which describe the genesis—the advent of the gods.
- 5.
- 6.
Among Baudrillard ’s examples at that time were the Twin Towers in New York (2004: 70).
- 7.
For Baudrillard ’s relation to Marx, Adorno, Weber, Habermas, Foucault and Man, and Durkheim, see Bogard (1990); to Mauss and Bataille, see Boldt-Irons (2001); to McLuhan, see Genosko (1999); to Lyotard and Vattimo see Ashley (1990); Felski (1996); Woodward (2009); to Marxism, see Poster (1979 and 1981); Hefner (1977); to Barthes and Lefebvre see Butler (1999); to Hegel, Simondon and Serres, see Levin (1996); to Merlau-Ponty, Wittgenstein and Bakhtin, see Grace (2004); to Debord, see Huyssen (1989).
- 8.
For a succinct discussion of the object in French thought, see Levin (1996: 65–80).
- 9.
In the Order of Things (2006), Foucault discusses Velázquez’s painting as an example of pure representation, supported by the partial elision of the eye-painter-spectator. Baudrillard ’s emphasis is on the seduction of the gaze, not on the subject of the gaze.
- 10.
For Baudrillard the figure of the hostage is fascinating. The hostage posits the problem of non-exchange. The latter is only conceivable in the framework of the law . Torn from the circuit of exchange, the hostage becomes a pure object , ‘exchangeable against anything at all.’ (2008b: 71) and therefore perfectly meaningless or non-exchangeable.
- 11.
Baudrillard further comments: ‘Death does not allow itself to be caught in the mirror of psychoanalysis’ (2004: 154). When Lacan considers death as a Real (experience), he seems to echo this assessment.
- 12.
For a feminist discussion of Baudrillard ’s work, rebuttal of the critique of sexism, and possible uses of Baudrillard in feminist theory, see Grace (2000).
- 13.
The phrase ‘end of line’ is an old programming software command. It is also the film chapter title in the Tron Legacy DVD release and move 12 in the film’s musical score by Daft Punk.
Bibliography
Ashley, D. (1990). Marx and the Excess of the Signifier: Domination as Production and as Simulation. Sociological Perspectives, 33(1), 129–146.
Baudrillard, J. (1988). The Ecstasy of Communication (B. Schutze & C. Schutze, Trans.). New York: Semiotext(e).
Baudrillard, J. (1990). Seduction (B. Singer, Trans.). New York: St Martin’s Press.
Baudrillard, J. (2000). The Vital Illusion (J. Witwer, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Baudrillard, J. ([1999] 2001). The Impossible Exchange (C. Turner, Trans.). London: Verso Press.
Baudrillard, J. ([1976] 2004). Symbolic Exchange and Death (I. Hamilton Grant, Trans.). London: Sage Press.
Baudrillard, J. ([1981] 2006). Simulation and Simulacra (S. Faria Glaser, Trans.). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Baudrillard, J. ([1996] 2008a). The Perfect Crime (C. Turner, Trans.). London: Verso Press.
Baudrillard, J. ([1990] 2008b). Fatal Strategies (P. Beitchman & W. G. J. Niesluchowksi, Trans.). Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Bishop, R. (Ed.). (2009). Baudrillard Now: Cultural Perspectives in Baudrillard Studies. London: Polity Press.
Bishop, R., & Phillips, J. (2007). Baudrillard and the Evil Genius. Theory, Culture and Society, 24(5), 135–145.
Bogard, W. (1990). Closing Down the Social: Baudrillard’s Challenge to Contemporary Sociology. Sociological Theory, 8(1), 1–15.
Boldt-Irons, L. A. (2001). Batallie and Baudrillard: From a General Economy to the Transparency of Evil. Angelaki, 6(2), 79–89.
Butler, R. (1999). Jean Baudrillard, The Defence of the Real. London: Sage Press.
Cassirer, E. ([1955] 2009). The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Volume 2: Mythical Thoughts (J. M. Krois, Trans.). New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Clarke, D. B., Doel, M. A., Merrin, W., & Smith, R. G. (Eds.). (2009). Baudrillard, Jean: Fatal Theories. New York: Routledge.
Dowden, K. (1992). The Uses of Greek Mythology. London: Routledge.
Evans, D. (1996). An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.
Felski, R. (1996). Fin de siècle, fin de sexe: Transsexuality, Postmodernism and the Death of History. New Literary History, 27(2), 337–349.
Foucault, M. (2006). The Order of Things, The Archaeology of Human Sciences. London: Routledge.
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. In J. S. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis (The Penguin Freud Library 11). Reprinted in 1991, London: Penguin Books, pp. 245–268.
Gane, M. (2000). Modern European Thinkers: Jean Baudrillard: In Radical Uncertainty. London: Pluto Press.
Genosko, G. (1994). Baudrillard and Signs: Signification Ablaze. London: Routledge.
Gensosko, G. (1999). McLuhan and Baudrillard, Masters of Implosion. London: Routledge.
Grace, V. (2000). Baudrillard’s Challenge: A Feminist Reading. London: Routledge.
Grace, V. (2004). Baudrillard and the Meaning of Meaning. International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, 1(1). http://www2.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol1_1/grace.htm. Accessed 25 Nov 2016.
Hefner, R. (1977). Baudrillard’s Noble Anthropology: The Image of Symbolic Exchange in Political Economy. Sub-Stance, 6(17), 105–113.
Huyssen, A. (1989). In the Shadow of McLuhan: Jean Baudrillard’s Theory of Simulation. Assemblage, 10, 6–17.
Kellner, D. (1989). Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Lacan, J. (1989). The Signification of the Phallus. In J. Lacan, Écrits: A Selection (A. Sheridan, Trans., pp. 281–291). London: Routledge.
Lacan, J. (2007). The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII (R. Grigg, Trans.). New York: Norton and Co.
Laügt, É. (2012). America in Time: Aphoristic Writing in Jean Baudrillard’s “America”. Paragraph, 35(3), 338–354.
Levin, C. (1996). Jean Baudrillard: A Study in Cultural Metaphysics. London: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf Press.
Poster, M. (1979). Semiology and Critical Theory: From Marx to Baudrillard. Boundary 2, 8(1), 275–288.
Poster, M. (1981). Technology and Culture in Habermas and Baudrillard. Contemporary Literature, 22(4), 456–476.
Schroeder, R. (2004). Playspace Invaders: Huizinga, Baudrillard and Video Game Violence. The Journal of Popular Culture, 30(3), 143–153.
Tron Legacy. (2010). J. Kosninski, USA.
Verheaghe, P. (2006). Enjoyment and Impossibility: Lacan’s Revision of the Oedipus Complex. In J. Clemens & R. Grigg (Eds.), Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis, Reflections on Seminar XVII (pp. 29–49). Durham: Duke University Press.
Woodward, A. (2009). Nihilism in Postmodernity. Aurora: The Davies Group Publishers.
Žižek, S. (1994). Enjoy Your Symptom, Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. London: Routledge.
Žižek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso Press.
Zupančič, A. (2000). Ethics of the Real. London: Verso Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Voela, A. (2017). Towards a New Anthropogony? Tron Revisited. In: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Myth in Contemporary Culture. Studies in the Psychosocial. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48347-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48347-8_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-48346-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-48347-8
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)