Posts filed under 'Baudrillard, Jean'

on Nihilism

If being a nihilist is carrying, to the unbearable limit of hegemonic systems, this radical trait of derision and of violence, this challenge that the system is summoned to answer through its own death, then I am a terrorist and a nihilist in theory as the others are in weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource we have left us. But such a sentiment is utopian. Because it would be beautiful to be a nihilist, if there still were a radicality, and it would be nice to be a terrorist, if death, including that of the terrorist, still had meaning. …to this active nihilism of radicality, the system opposes its own, the nihilism of neutralization. The system itself is also nihilistic, in the sense that it has the power to pour everything, including what denies it, into indifference.

1 comment November 20th, 2007

on Simulation

To dissimulate is to feign not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one hasn’t. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But the matter is more complicated, since to simulate is not simply to feign: “Someone who feigns an illness can simply go to bed and pretend he is ill. Someone who simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms” (Littré). Thus, feigning or dissimulating leaves the reality principle intact: the difference is always clear, it is only masked; whereas simulation threatens the difference between “true” and “false”, between “real” and “imaginary”. Since the simulator produces “true” symptoms, is he or she ill or not? The simulator cannot be treated objectively either as ill, or as not ill.

Add comment November 20th, 2007

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