In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, new edition (Semiotext

by Jean Baudrillard, Sylvère Lotringer (Introduction), Hedi El Kholti (Introduction)

Baudrillard's remarkably prescient meditation on terrorism throws light on post-9/11 delusional fears and political simulations. Published one year after Forget Foucault, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (1978) may be the most important sociopolitical manifesto of the twentieth it calls for nothing less than the end of both sociology and politics. Disenfranchised revolutionaries (the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof Gang) hoped to reach the masses directly through spectacular actions, but their message merely played into the hands of the media and the state. In a media society meaning has no meaning anymore; communication merely communicates itself. Jean Baudrillard uses this last outburst of ideological terrorism in Europe to showcase the end of the "Social." Once invoked by Marx as the motor of history, the masses no longer have sociological reality. In the electronic media society, all the masses can do—and all they will do—is enjoy the spectacle. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities takes to its ultimate conclusion the "end of ideologies" experienced in Europe after the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the death of revolutionary illusions after May 1968. Ideological terrorism doesn't represent anything anymore, writes Baudrillard, not even itself. It is just the last hysterical reaction to discredited political illusions.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Sociology, Theory, France, Politics, Cultural Studies

136 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1983

About the author

Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet, with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as hyperreality. Baudrillard wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, critique of economy, social history, aesthetics, Western foreign policy, and popular culture. Among his most well-known works are Seduction (1978), Simulacra and Simulation (1981), America (1986), and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991). His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism. Nevertheless, Baudrillard had also opposed post-structuralism, and had distanced himself from postmodernism.

Reviews

[فرشاد · Rating 4 out of 5]

در این کتاب توضیح داده می‌شود که چگونه در عصر جدید، امر اجتماعی به وانموده خود تبدیل می‌شود و چگونه توده‌ها هر امر اجتماعی و مخصوصاً هر شکلی از معنا را در خود جذب می‌کند و امر اجتماعی را به مرگ و تلاشی می‌کشاند. همچنین مولف توضیح داده است که توده و تروریسم هر دو امر اجتماعی را نشانه گرفته‌اند و در پی فروپاشی آن هستند. دو جستار پایانی کتاب به نقد این فرضیه می‌پردازد که در عصر جدید، رسانه‌ها به ابزار ضد ارتباطی تبدیل شده‌اند که کار آن‌ها فروپاشی امر اجتماعی در توده از طریق فروپاشی معناست. به عبارت دیگر، توده با وانمایی امر اجتماعی، آن را به مرحله پایانی و مرگ می‌کشاند‫.

کتاب، می‌تواند مخاطب علاقه‌مند را به وجد آورد. هرچند نمی‌توان از خوانش دشوار آن چشم‌پوشی کرد. با این حال مواجهه مخاطب با نظریات ستیزه‌جویانه مؤلف در تقابل با فرضیه‌های جامعه‌شناسی بینهایت لذت‌بخش است‫.

[Çağatay Boz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kötülüğün Şeffaflığı'na kıyasla okunması ziyadesiyle daha kolay Sessiz Yığınların Gölgesinde. Bunun sebebi de dil, içerik değil, zira reis yine ateş ediyor.

"Kitlenin bir ayrıcalığı, bir yüklemi, bir niteliği ve bir göndereni yoktur." diyor ve tamamıyla kangren olmuş bir yapıdan bahsediyor. Diğer kitaplarında da sık sık değindiği "gerçeklik" olgusunun yok edilmesini ele alıyor. Ne tanımlanabilen ne de tanımlanamayan.

"Daha iyi haber verebilmek için, daha iyi toplumsallaştırmak için, kitlelerin kültürel düzeylerini ükseltmeye çalışmak için vb. vb. Hepsi palavra. Çünkü kitleler bu akılcı iletişim zorlamasına insanı aptallaştıracak bir biçimde karşı koymaktadırlar. Onlar anlam yerine gösteri istemektedirler." diyerek sessiz yığını oluşturan maddenin anlamdan bütünüyle uzak, sadece ve sadece gösteri odaklı olduğuna dikkat çekiyor.

Kitap dahilinde en çok dikkatimi çeken kısımlardan biri de kitlelerin "gönderen" olmaktan çıktığının belirtildiği kısımdı. Kocaman bir alıntıyı buraya aktararak kafa açmayayım hiç. Reis'in tabiriyle kitleler bir gönderen değil artık, zira temsil edilemiyorlar. Bu sebepten ötürü sondajlarla sık sık yoklanıyorlar. Daha duru bir şekilde anlatılamazdı.

Jean Baudrillard'nın eserleri dahilinde nasıl bir sıra izlenmeli, veya izlenmeli mi, fikrim yok. Fakat Tüketim Toplumu ve Kötülüğün Şeffaflığı'ndan önce fikir vermesi açısından Sessiz Yığınların Gölgesinde okunabilir. Geçen zaman ve öğrenilenlerle birlikte tekrardan okuyacağım, sık sık fikir danışacağım bir kitap.

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting essay, written in the late 70s, about the effect that mass media, information overload and the creation of 'brands' has on society and what he calls the "destruction of the social", which I think means the ability to live and depend on social relationships for survival - and the institutions created to support those. Instead, these social relationships are replaced by consumerism and meaning is destroyed. He argues that society has advanced into a hyper-reality - a belief in the world provided by movies in tv screens, by the "spectacle" that the media relies on to manipulate us to pay attention, which ends up feeling more real than the real world. And those who control the medium control the message and eventually control that shared vision of reality. He argues that this simulated world is like a black hole - information goes in but it does not come out.

[Kevin Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting new attempt to put nails into Marxism's coffin, the book analyzes a Debordian spectacle and responds with nihilism. There's some interesting and good stuff here, but it's buried under piles of simplistic, pessimistic, annoying drivel.

[Tintarella]

کتاب پنج بخش داره:
مبادله‌ی نمادین و مرگ: ترجمه‌ی قسمتی از اوایل کتابِ مبادله‌ی نمادین و مرگ (تازگی‌ها نشر بیدگل این کتاب رو چاپ کرده)-
-در سایه‌ی اکثریت‌های خاموش
-... یا پایان امر اجتماعی
-فروپاشی معنا در رسانه‌ها
-توده‌ها: فروپاشی امر اجتماعی در رسانه‌ها
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جالبه که بودریار مارکس رو به خاطر تحلیل تخیلی‌ش از توده‌ها نقد می‌کنه (استحاله‌ی امر اقتصادی درون امر اجتماعی). در این زمینه شاید تند و تیزترین و البته بدبینانه‌ترین نوشته‌ها علیه سرمایه‌داری رو می‌شه این‌جا خوند. با این‌که ترجمه خوب نیست (از معادل‌سازی‌هایی که هیچ‌وقت منطق‌ش رو نفهمیدیم ونیازمند واژه‌نامه هستند که بگذریم، به نظرم جمله‌هایی که به فارسی نوشته شدند خوب نیستن و اصطلاحاً دچار معضل حشو هستند. شاید توصیه‌ی درست و حسابی خوندن کتاب به انگلیسی باشه) ولی تماشای فرود آمدن تیغ چو فولاد آقای بودریار بر سر «همه‌شان» دیدنیه.
.
هگل نتیجه می‌گیرد که این آگاهی نیست که خود را به جای دیگری می‌گذارد، بلکه خود شخص «روشنگر» است که خود را به جای دیگری، کسی جز آن آدم عادی که او تلاش می‌کند از حماقت خود آگاه‌ش کند، می‌گیرد. «هرگاه این پرسش مطرح شود که آیا فریب‌دادن مردم کاری مجاز است یا نه، باید پاسخ داد که این پرسشی بی‌مورد است، زیرا فریب‌دادن مردم ممکن نیست» (پدیدارشناسی روح - هگل)
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هیچ‌کس نمی‌داند آن‌چه به راستی مخالف آگاهی‌ست چیست؛ و این چه می‌تواند باشد جز همان ناخودآگاه سرکوب‌گری که روان‌کاوی به ما تحمیل کرده است. اما ناخودآگاه راستین ما شاید در همین توان طنزآمیزنامشارکتِ بی‌میلی، نادانی، سکوت، جذب همه‌ی قدرت‌ها، برون‌رانی همه‌ی اراده‌ها و خواست‌ها، همه‌ی دانش‌ها، معناها و واگذاری آن‌ها به نمایندگانی که هاله‌ئی از مسخرگی احاطه‌شان کرده است. پس ناخودآگاه ما شامل انگیزه‌ها و رانه‌ها که تقدیرش سرکوب تاسف‌بار باشد نیست، این ناخودآگاه اصلاً سرکوب‌شده نیست و محصول همین طرد و برون‌رانی همه‌ی ابرساختارهای دست و پاگیر هستی و اراده است.
ما همیشه نگاه تاسف‌باری به توده‌های بیگانه‌شده و به ناخودآگاه سرکوب‌شده داشته‌ایم. این همبستگی اسف‌بار بر کل فلسفه‌ی ما سنگینی می‌کند. حتی اگر به خاطر ایجاد یک تحول هم باشد، تصورکردن توده، توده‌ی اُبژه‌گانی به عنوان گنجینه‌ی یک راهبرد نهایتاً موهوم و همبسته با یک ناخودآگاه طنزآمیز، لذت‌بخش و فریبنده، خالی از لطف نخواهد بود.

[Ömer · Rating 4 out of 5]

kahin bu adam.

[Quiver · Rating 3 out of 5]

The following pastiche of quotes (extracted from the text in the presented order) transmits fairly well Baudrillard's message about the silence of the majorities:

This comforts [power] in its illusion of being power, and leads away from the much more dangerous fact that this indifference of the masses is their true, their only practice, that there is no other ideal of them to imagine, nothing in this to deplore, but everything to analyse as the brute fact of a collective retaliation and of a refusal to participate in the recommended ideals, however enlightened. [...] Bombarded with stimuli, messages and tests, the masses are simply an opaque, blind stratum, like those clusters of stellar gas known only through analysis of their light spectrum—radiation spectrum equivalent to statistics and surveys—but precisely: it can no longer be a question of expression or representation, but only of the simulation of an ever inexpressible and unexpressed social. This is the meaning of their silence. But this silence is paradoxical—it isn't a silence which does not speak, it is a silence which refuses to be spoken for in its name . And in this sense, far from being a form of alienation, it is an absolute weapon. [...] The mass absorbs all the social energy, but no longer refracts it. It absorbs every sign and every meaning, but no longer reflects them. [...] For every question put to it, it sends back a tautological and circular response. It never participates.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant, pretentious, aphoristic, often indecipherable, insightful, peculiar...

One of the most interesting portions of this particular edition is a little essay (Event and Non-Event" = "Le Virtuel et l'événementiel") dating from 2003 on the Twin Towers and on history and the non-event -- which ends with Baudrillad's acceptance that, in fact, there may be irruptions into the fabric of the simulacrum, and which ends thus:

"There is a beautiful metaphor in a video by an artist who pointed his camera at the tip of Manhattan during the entire month of September 2001. He intended to record the fact that nothing happened, to record the non-event. And banality exploded before his camera with the Twin Towers!"

That -- for Baudrillard -- is progress...

[Joe Mecham · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really got me excited. I read an introduction to Baudrillard before this book, expecting his writing in general to be incredibly confusing, and in hindsight, I don't think I really had to. I'm sure reading it while trying to understand it all would have been much more difficult, and taken much longer, but it's just a matter of deciphering the quarter to half page long sentences and breaking down some of the terminology. I can't wait to receive another book like this in the mail, reading it was nothing less than exciting.

[Osman Tosun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tipik bir Baudrillard sayıklaması olarak okunmak istense dahi buna izin vermeyen bir eser. Toplumun anlamı soğuruşunu ve nötralize edişini, yönlendirilemezliğini anlamın toptan yitiminden öte biçimde tariflediği eseri olmasıyla ufuk açıcı. Yazıldığı 70’lerin sonu, 80’lerin başında bariz biçimde görülemeyen; toplumun, medium’un eyleyiciliğinden öte bir anlamı medya yoluyla al(a)mayacağı ve bu anlamı kendileştirip anlamdan sıyıracağı projeksiyonu, bugün tertemiz yaşıyorken daha anlaşılır hâle geliyor. Farklı olarak, medya “sosyal” olduktan sonra “kitlenin”, iktidarın ürettiği anlamı alıp yeniden üretenin toplumun kendisi olması, o günkü projeksiyonu epey belirgin biçimde daha distopik hâle getiriyor; amma ne gam?

Bundan başka, Türkçe çevirisinin sonundaki eklerde (éclair?), ana metindeki toplumsala dair ortaya sürdüğü teorilerin en kötümserini işleyerek işlevselleştirme çabası; toplumsal sözleşmeden yola çıkarak sosyalizm fikrini (aslında külliyen modern tüm fikirleri dövmek isteğinde kral) yanlışlamaya gayret ederken, doğrudan Marshall Sahlins’in primitif kolektif toplum fikrinden dayanak alarak aslında toplumun artık değeri kendiliğinden yeniden paylaşan ve potlaçvari yok eden bir projeksiyona yönlendiren bir kurtuluş sunması gibi fikirsel gezinmeleri var. Zaten bunları diğer eserlerinde de geniş geniş ele alıyor. Yine de sondaki kısmı “kitap bitti!” diye atlamayalım; okuyalım.

[Stefano Solventi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Più attuale che mai. Da leggere e rileggere.

"Si è sempre creduto - è l'ideologia stessa dei mass-media - che siano i media a irretire le masse. Si è cercato il segreto della manipolazione nella semiologia accanita dei mass-media. Ma si è dimenticato, in questa logica naive della comunicazione, che le masse sono un medium più forte di tutti quanti i media, che sono esse che li irretiscono e li assorbono - o che almeno non c'è alcuna prevalenza dell'uno sull'altro. Un solo processo è quello della massa e quello dei media. Mass(age) is message."

[Grace Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly dense and rewarding series of essays. Clearly written in the wake of the post-68 moment, Baudrillard is writing against both Marxist thought and psychoanalytic thought (which postulates a secret desire for domination/fascism amongst the masses) to explain the failure of the revolt.

His claim is that ‘the masses’ are no longer the representatives of a positive process in history (the proletariat), or even a conflictual political scene (social classes). Because of this breakdown in representation, ‘the masses’ as a sociality can only be simulated to the political class and media through statistics: opinion polls, surveys, referenda, and the like. Rather than producing meaning, this endless information only serves to accelerate the decline of signification into hyperreality. The more surveys and opinion polls we have, the less anyone is able to interpret anything coherent from them. Hence, the infinite malleability of the ‘silent majority’ (what they want, what they fear).

This void where the social once stood produces a craving for the social, but perverted into an individual demand. For Baudrillard, this is proven in the desire and demand for excessive health treatments and nosology. At its most extreme, it is also the cause of the global uptick in terrorism during the 1970s and 80s, a “tactic” produced from the breakdown in real linkages between the social, the political, and representation.

A work worth engaging with on its own terms, and not just read as a prelude to Baudrillard’s more famous works.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

His overuse of postmodern jargon aside, Baudrillard is On To Something yet again. The idea of an inscrutable collection of individuals making up the Masses explains why nothing really changes in our world anymore. The age of revolution is over - the age of politics as entertainment has begun. Terrorism is the newest form of "tragedy TV" - here to stay thanks to our Mass Media which provides different flavors of liberalism for the Masses to enjoy. With this reality, the potential for progress via mass democratic action seems futile.

[Charles Keiffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baudrillard at his best. If you don't enjoy him this book will alienate you from the beginning. If you are already a fan you will love this. This is where he goes all the way in applying his theory of the simulacrum to social life, which becomes especially applicable in the age of social media. It feels like he is writing for our times in an almost spooky way. He predicted all of it. If you aren't a fan of Baudrillard, this is probably not the place to start.

[Dmitriy · Rating 3 out of 5]

sociology thinking in face of postmodern reality

[Noah Coates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid book. Just an application of his theory to concept of the "masses". Further clarifies the death of the dialectic and the implosion of meaning.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

FOUR ESSAYS BY THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHER

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French philosopher, sociologist, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer most associated with the “Postmodern” movement.

He begins this 1983 book with the statement, “The whole chaotic constellation of the social revolves around that spongy referent, that opaque but equally translucent reality, that nothingness: the masses… They are neither good conductors of the political, nor good conductors of the social, nor good conductors of meaning in general. Everything flows through them, everything magnetizes them, but diffuses throughout them without leaving a trace. And, ultimately, the appeal to the masses has always gone unanswered. They do not radiate; on the contrary, they absorb all radiation from the outlying constellations of State, History, Culture, Meaning. They are inertia, the strength of inertia, the strength of the neutral.” (Pg. 1-2)

He says, “Regarding the impossibility of making meaning circulate among the masses, the best example is God. The masses have hardly retained anything but the image of him, never the Idea. They have never been affected by the Idea of God, which has remained a matter for the clergy, nor by anguish over sin and personal salvation. What they have retained is the enchantment of saints and martyrs; the last judgment; the Dance of Death; sorcery; the ceremony and spectacle of the Church; the immanence of ritual---the contrast to the transcendence of the Idea. They were and have remained pagans, in their way, never haunted by the Supreme Authority, but surviving on the small change of images, superstition and the devil.” (Pg. 7)

He observes, “Can one ask questions about the strange fact that, after several revolutions and a century or two of political apprenticeship, in spite of the newspapers, the trade unions, the parties, the intellectuals and all the energy put into educating the mobilizing the people, there are still… a thousand persons who stand up and twenty million who remain ‘passive’---and not only passive, but who, in all good faith and with glee and without even asking themselves why, frankly prefer a football match to a human and political drama?... the masses are neither mislead nor mystified.

"Power is only too happy to make football bear a facile responsibility for stupefying the masses. This comforts it in its illusion of being power, and leads away from the much more dangerous fact that this indifference of the masses is their true, their only practice, that there is no other ideal of them to imagine, nothing in this to deplore, but everything to analyze as the brute fact of a collective retaliation and of a refusal to participate in the recommended ideals, however, enlightened.” (Pg. 13-14)

He points out, “For a long time it was enough for power to produce meaning (political, ideological, cultural, sexual), and the demand followed… Meaning was in short supply… Today everything has changed: no longer is meaning in short supply, it is produced everywhere, in ever increasing quantities---it is demand which is weakening. And it is the production of this demand for meaning which has become crucial for the system. Without this demand for, without this susceptibility to, without this minimal participation in meaning, power is nothing but an empty simulacrum and an isolated effect of perspective. Here, too, the production of demand is infinitely more costly than the production of meaning itself.” (Pg. 27)

He asserts, “The people have become a PUBLIC. It is the football match or film of cartoon which serve as models for their perception of the political sphere. The people even enjoy day to day, like a home movie, the fluctuations of their own opinions in the daily opinion polls. Nothing in all this engages any responsibility. At no time are the masses politically or historically engaged in a conscious manner. They have only ever done so out of perversity, in complete irresponsibility.” (Pg. 37-38)

He says, “…it is the social as remainder which has assumed real force and which is soon to be universal. Here is a more subtle form of death. In this event, we are really even deeper in the social, even deeper in pure excrement, in the fantastic congestion of dead labor, of dead and institutionalized relations within terrorist bureaucracies, of dead languages and grammars… Then of course it can no longer be said that the social is dying, since it is already the accumulation of death. In effect we are a civilization of the supersocial, and simultaneously in a civilization of non-degradable, indestructible residue, piling up as the social spreads.” (Pg. 72-73)

In the final brief essay, he states, “The media are terrorists in their own fashion, working continually to produce (good) sense, but, at the same time, violently defeating it by arousing everywhere a fascination without scruples, that is to say, a paralysis of meaning, to the profit of a single scenario.” (Pg. 113-114)

A bit more acerbic than most of Baudrillard’s other books, this book will be of keen interest to those who enjoy his other works.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“information and security, in all their forms, instead of intensifying or creating the "social relation," are on the contrary entropic processes, modalities of the end of the social.
It is thought that the masses may be structured by injecting them with information, their captive social energy is believed to be released by means of information and messages (today it is no longer the institutional grid as such, rather it is the quantity of information and the degree of media exposure which measures socialisation)…Instead of transforming the mass into energy, information produces even more mass. Instead of informing as it claims, instead of giving form and structure, information neutralises even further the "social field"; more and more it creates an inert mass impermeable to the classical institutions of the social, and to the very contents of information.”

“the production of demand largely overlaps the production of the social itself). For a long time it was enough for power to produce meaning (political, ideological, cultural, sexual), and the demand followed; it absorbed supply and still surpassed it. Meaning was in short supply, and all the revolutionaries offered themselves to produce still more. Today, everything has changed: no longer is meaning in short supply, it is produced everywhere, in ever increasing quantities — it is demand which is weakening. And it is the production of this demand for meaning which has become crucial for the system. Without this demand for, without this susceptibility to, without this minimal participation in meaning, power is nothing but an empty simulacrum and an isolated effect of perspective. Here, too, the production of demand is infinitely more costly than the production of meaning itself.”

“The demand for objects and for services can always be artificially produced, at a high, but accessible cost; the system has proved this. The desire for meaning, when it is in short supply, and the desire for reality, when it is weakening everywhere, cannot be made good and together threaten total ruin.
The mass absorbs all the social energy, but no longer refracts it. It absorbs every sign and every meaning, but no longer reflects them. It absorbs all messages and digests them. For every question put to it, it sends back a tautological and circular response. It never participates. Inundated by flows and tests, it forms a mass or earth; it is happy to be a good conductor of flows, but of any flow, a good conductor of information, but of any information, a good conductor of norms, but of any norm, and thereby to reflect the social in its absolute transparency, to give place only to the effects of power and of the social, the latter like constellations fluctuating around this imperceptible nucleus.”

“the inertial strength of the masses is unfathomable: literally, no "sounding" or survey will cause it to become evident, since their effect is to blanket it out. A silence which topples the political and the social into the hyperreality with which we associate it. For if the political seeks to "pick up" the masses in a social echo or simulation chamber (the media, information), it is the masses who in return become a huge echo or simulation chamber of the social. Manipulation has never existed. The game is played on both sides, with the same weapons, and who can say which is winning”

“The mass realises that paradox of being both an object of simulation (it only exists at the point of convergence of all the media waves which depict it) and a subject of simulation, capable of refracting all the models and of emulating them by hypersimulation (its hyperconformity, an immanent form of humour).”

“We are theréfore at the paradoxical point where the masses refuse the baptism of the social, which is also that of meaning and liberty. Let us not make them into a new and glorious reference.
For one thing, they don't exist. But note that all power silently flounders on this silent majority, which is neither an entity nor a sociological real-ity, but the shadow cast by power, its sinking vortex, its form of absorption. A nebulous fluid, shifting, conforming, far too conforming to every solicitation and with a hyperreal conformity which is the extreme form of non-participa-tion: such is the present calamity of power. Such is also the calamity of revolution. For this implosive mass, by definition, will never explode and every revolutionary promise will implode into it as well. In consequence, what is to be done with these masses? They are the leitmotif of every discourse; they are the obsession of every social
project; but all run agruund on them, for all remain rooted in the classical definition of the masses, which is that of an eschatological faith in the social and its fulfillment. Now, the masses aren't the social, they are the reversion of any social and of any socialism. Enough theorists have criticised meaning, denounced the traps of liberty and the mystifications of the political, radically censured rationality and every form of representation; however, when the masses wander through meaning, the political, representa-tion, history, ideology, with a somnambulent strength of denial, when they realise here and now everything which the most radical critics have been able to envisage, then the latter know not what to make of it, and persist in dreaming of a future revolution - a critical revolution, a revolution of prestige, that of the social, that of desire. This revolution by involution is not theirs: it is not critical-explosive, it is implosive and blind.“

“Indeed the only phenomenon which may be in a relation of affinity with it, with these masses such that the final vicissitude of the social and its death is at stake, is terrorism. Nothing is more
"cut off from the masses" than terrorism. Power may well try to set the one against the other, but nothing is more strange, more familiar either, than their convergence in denying the social and in refusing meaning. For terrorism claims to really aim at capital (global imperialism, etc.) but it mistakes its enemy, and in doing so it aims at its true enemy, which is the social. Present-day terrorism aims at the social in response to the terrorism of the social. It aims at the social such as it is produced today - the orbital, interstitial, nuclear, tissual network of control and security, which invests us on all sides and produces us, all of us, as a silent majority. A hyperreal, imperceptible sociality, no longer operating by law and repression, but by the infiltration of models, no longer by violence, but by deterrence/ persuasion
- to that terrorism responds by an equally hyperreal act, caught up from the outset in concentric waves of media and of fascination…Present-day terrorism, initiated by the taking of hostages and the game of postponed death, no longer has any objectives if it claims to have any, they are ridiculous, or unachievable, and in any case, this is quite the most ineffective method of attaining them, nor any determinate enemy. Do the Palestinians strike at Israel by means of intermediary hostages? No, it is through Israel as intermediary that they strike at a mythical, or not even mythical, anonymous, undifferentiated enemy; a kind of omnipresent global social order, whenever, whoever, down to the last of the "innocents." Terrorism is this: it is novel, and insoluble, only because it strikes wherever, whenever, whoever; otherwise it would only be ransom.”

“The process accelerates and reaches its maximal extent with mass media and informa-tion. Media, all media, information, all information, act in two directions: outwardly they produce more of the social, inwardly they neutralise social relations and the social itself.
But then, if the social is both destroyed by what produces it (the media, information) and reabsorbed by what it produces (the masses), it follows that its definition is empty, and that this term which serves as universal alibi for every discourse, no longer analyses anything, no longer designates anything. Not only is it superfluous and useless - wherever it appears it conceals something else: defiance, death, seduction, ritual, repetition - it conceals that it is only abstraction and residue, or even simply an effect of the social, a simulation and an illusion.”

“Defiance always comes from that which has no meaning, no name, no identity — it is a defiance of meaning, of power, of truth, of their existing as such, of their pretending to exist as such. Only this reversion can put an end to power, to meaning, to value, and never any relation of force, however favorable it is, since the letter reenters into a polar, binary, structural relation, which re-creates by definition a new space of meaning and of power.”

“The social has really existed, it exists even more and more, it invests everything, it alone exists. Far from being volatilised, it is the social which triumphs; the reality of the social is imposed everywhere. But, contrary to the antiquated idea which makes the social into an objective progress of mankind, everything which escapes it being only residue, it is possible to envisage that the social itself is only residue, and that, if it has triumphed in the real, it is precisely as such.“

“Proportional to the reinforcement of social reason, it is the whole community which soon becomes residual and hence, by one more spiral, the social which piles up. When the remainders reach the dimensions of the whole of society, one has a perfect socialisation. Everybody is completely excluded and taken in charge, completely disintegrated and socialised.
Symbolic integration is replaced by a functional integration, functional institutions take charge of the residue from symbolic disintegration — a social agency appears where there was none, nor even any name for it.. they thus fall under its jurisdiction and are fated to find their place in a widening sociality. It is on these remainders that the social machine starts up again and finds support for a new extension. But what happens when everybody is socialised? Then the machine stops, the dynamic is reversed, and it is the whole social system which becomes residue. As the social progressively gets rid of all of its residue, it becomes residual itself. By placing residual categories under the rubric "Society," the social designates itself as remainder.
Now what becomes of the rationality of the social, of the contract and of the social relation if the social, instead of appearing as original structure, appears as refuse, and refuses processing? If the social is only remains, it is no longer the scene of a positive process or history, it is simply the scene of a piling up”

“EXCURSUS: The Social, or
The Functional Ventilation of Remainders
(The social exists to look after the soaking up of excess wealth which, redistributed to all and sun-dry, would ruin the social order, would create an intolerably utopian situation.
This reversion of wealth, of all wealth, which formerly was effected by sacrifice which left no room for any accumulation of remainders, is intolerable to our societies. It is by this very fact that they are "societies" — in the sense that they always produce a surplus, remainders — whether it be demographic, economic, or linguistic — and that these remainders must be cleared up (never sacrificed, that is too dangerous: but purely and simply got rid of).
The social exists on the double basis of the production of remainders and their eradication.
If all wealth were sacrificed, people would lose a sense of the real. If all wealth became disposable, people would lose a sense of the useful and the useless. The social exists to take care of the useless consumption of remainders so that individuals can be assigned to the useful management of their lives.
Use and use value constitute a fundamental ethics. But it exists only in a simulation of shortage and calculation. If all wealth was redistributed, of itself this would abolish use value (the same goes for death: if death was redistributed, brought forward, of itself this would abolish life as use value).
It would suddenly and brutally become clear that use value is only a cruel and disillusioning moral convention, which presupposes a functional calculation in all things. But it dominates us all and, intoxicated as we are by the phantasm of use value, we could not bear this catastrophe of eversing wealth and of reversing death. It is not that everything should be reversed; just that the remainder should be.“

”Hence there is a kind of wisdom in the institution of the social as a matrix preventing the growth and reversion of wealth, as a medium for its controlled squandering.”

“From this point of view the problem of the death of the social is simple: the social dies from an extension of use value which is equivalent to its extermination. When everything, including the social, becomes use value, it is a world become inert, where the reverse of what Marx dreamed occurs. He dreamed of the economic being reabsorbed into a (transfigured) social; what is happening to us is the social being reabsorbed into a (banalised) political economy: administration pure and simple.”

“Either information produces meaning (a negentropic factor), but doesn't succeed in compensating for the brutal loss of signification in every domain. The reinjection of message and content by means of the media is vain, since meaning is devoured and lost more rapidly than it is reinjected. In this case, appeal has to be made to a productivity at the base in order to relieve the failing media. This is the whole ideology of free speech, of the media subdivided into innumerable individual cells of transmission, indeed
"anti-media" “

“Just where we think that information is producing meaning, it is doing the exact opposite. Information devours its own contents; it devours communication and the social”

“communication as well as the social functions as a closed circuit, as a lure — to which is attached the force of a myth. The belief and the faith in information attached to this tautological proof give the system itself, by doubling its signs, an unlocatable reality. But this belief may be thought to be as ambiguous as the one attached to myths in archaic societies. One both believes and doesn't believe. The question is simply not posed. "I know very well, but all the same…A sort of inverted simulation corresponds in the masses, in each one of us, to this simulation of meaning and of communication in which this system encloses us. To the tautology of the system the masses have responded with ambivalence; to dissuasion they have responded with disaffection, and an always enigmatic belief. The myth exists, but one must guard against thinking that people believe in it.”

“the mass media, with its pressure of information, carries out an irresistable destructuration of the social.
Thus information dissolves meaning and the social into a sort of nebulous state leading not at all to a surfeit of innovation but to the very contrary, to total entropy.'”

“perhaps there is still a revolutionary and subversive use-value of the medium as such. Yet - and this is where McLuhan's formula at its extreme limit leads - there is not only the implosion of the message in the medium; in the same movement there is the implosion of the medium itself in the real, the implosion of the medium and the real in a sort of nebulous hyperreality where even the definition and the distinct action of the medium are no longer distinguishable.
Even the "traditional status" of the media themselves, characteristic of our modernity, is put into question. McLuhan's formula, the medium is the message, which is the key formula of the era of simulation (the medium is the message - the sender is the receiver — the circularity of all poles - the end of panoptic and perspectival space - communication.”

“Without a message, the medium also falls into that indefinite state characteristic of all our great systems of judgement and value. A single model, whose efficacy is immediacy, simultaneously generates the message, the medium, and the "real."”

“Etymologically, the term only signifies the curvature, the winding down to the bottom of a cycle leading to what can be called the "horizon of the event," to the horizon of meaning, beyond which we cannot go. Beyond it, nothing takes place that has meaning for us - but it suffices to exceed this ultimatum of meaning in order that catastrophe itself no longer appear as the last, nihilistic day of reckoning, such as it functions in our current collective fantasy.”

“Here we have discussed information only in the social register of communication. But it would be fascinating to consider the hypothesis within the framework of the cybernetic theory of communication.
There also, the fundamental thesis would have it that information would be synonymous with negentropy, the resistance to entropy, and an excess of meaning and of organization. But it would be fitting to pose the opposite
hypothesis: INFORMATION = ENTROPY. For example: the information or knowledge about a system or an event that can be obtained is already a form of neutraliza-
tion and of entropy of this system. (This applies to the sciences in general and to the human and social sciences in particular.) The information in which an event is reflected or through which it is diffused is already a degraded form of the event. One would not hesitate to analyze 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 neutralized the original virulence of the movement. The very amplification was a mortal trap and not a positive extension. Distrust the universalization of struggles through information. Distrust campaigns of solidarity at every level, this solidarity that is both electronic and worldwide.
Every strategy of the universalization of differences is an entropic strategy of the system.”

“The media are terrorists in their own fashion, working continually to produce (good) sense, but, at the same time, violently defeating it by arousing everywhere a fascination without scruples, that is to say, a paralysis of meaning, to the profit of a single scenario.”

[Ceena · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main essay aims to dismantle the ambiguous term, "the masses". It's a good start on the subject matter and especially some insightful views on the absorption of the social energy, or the implosion. In a historical context, in less than a yeares after the publication of this essay, the masses in Iran imploded the sum energy of the social movements of the past few decad of their country into a bizzar revolution (or better called involution). But the essay turns quickly against this dangerous potential force and claims the silence of the masses as disobedience, a counter strategy against the power. I think this take cannot be the logical deduction of the opening of the essay especially after criticizing the social and the political to the full extent. someone called Baudrillard the drama queen of social studies and I think I agree to some extent. His ideas are not asfresh and genuine as I once thought they were. He strives so hard to open new horizons on the topic of Media. Alas, McLuhan was a much better visionary. Most of his ideas in the second essay were farfetched and downright false in the view of the current affairs in media. His comparison between terrorism and the masses was quite interesting though and I wish that were the main topic of the essay instead.

[Gerardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il rapporto sociale non esiste: è un simulacro che viene creato per permettere alla massa di identificarsi in qualcosa. La massa è un mezzo: è attraversata da flussi di informazioni, sentimenti, voglie, desideri, odi, volontà. Quindi, in sostanza, la massa non ha una sua identità: o perché viene influenzata dai flussi, quando si è capaci di catturare l'attenzione della massa o perché disperde il senso dei flussi, neutralizzando qualsiasi elemento di significazione.

Il terrorismo si inscrive all'interno di questa perdita di senso: visto che l'individuo e la vita hanno perso di senso, venendo digeriti nel pensiero globalizzato, il terrorismo accusa questa perdita di senso cercando una nuova attenzione, in maniera atroce. Non è usato per uno scopo, ma è la rappresentazione di questa assenza di senso e quindi di scopo.

[Berat Sadıç · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hem farklı alanlarda ufkumu genişletmek hem de yarım bırakmadan Kindle ile okumam için rastgele seçimlerim sonucu karşılaştığım bu kitap bana malesef çok ağır geldi. Kitapta sıkça sözü geçen simülasyon teorisinin ne olduğunu bilmediğim için, fikirleri olağanüstülükle absürtlük arasında tam olarak nerede konumlandıracağımı kestiremiyorum, belki haddime de değil. Yine de bu fikir tufanı kitaptan oldukça yere basan düşünceleri yakaladığımı düşünüyorum.
Örneğin artık mal arzı ve üretiminin ötesinde, en önemli şeyin kitle iletişim araçları ile talep üretimi olması, ya da bir odada sessizce oturan insanların, fikirleri olmadığı için mi yoksa bilinçli olarak mı sessiz kaldıklarını bilmediğimizden onları sessiz ve tek bir kitle olarak adlandıramayacağımız spekülasyonu gibi.

Yapmak lazım bunu, hiç anlamayacağımız kitapları bulup alıp okumamız lazım..

[Vytas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poor idealists of the first Baader-Meinhof generation. The waves and echoes of Stammheim prison deaths are only retracted by the masses as farts – at best. If this was incomprehensible, give yourself a present by reading this little book. Its finality, hopelessness and nihilism can't help but supply with a healthy dose of optimism and curiosity.

[Taras · Rating 4 out of 5]

Погляд автора на маси, організацію ілюзії соціальної боротьби, сумніву в системі, яка ніколи не має своєю метою усунення будь-якої опозиції. Псотійні прагнення сучасності уособленням застарілості та наповнити бажанням побороти таку непридатність сучасності.

[Jeno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though he could make it more understandable for the masses (pun intended)

[Martine Berenpas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think Baudrillard's idea of the hyperreality and the social is a very accurate yet desturbing theory.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is Baudrillard cynical about communism, or cynical about cynicism? At any rate, it gets connected to the connections between media and terrorism.

[Henrique Valle]

adorno + uma bad trip de bala

[José L B Carvalho · Rating 3 out of 5]

definitivamente não se enquadra no tempo forte de Baudrillard, mas é uma boa leitura. Faço um review em outro momento.

[Durham McNamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

lots of gems, I wish I could remember them all to be able to bring up in conversation. Will re-read at some point haha

[Lilly Ma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read „Simulacra and Simulation” before. This helped me to understand Baudrillards ideas and how it shaped his later work. As always, he isn’t an easy read.