בודריאר והמילניום

by Chris Horrocks, אריה בובר (Translator)

במובן ידוע, איננו מאמינים בשנת 2000". כך כתב הוגה-הדעות הצרפתי הנודע ז'אן בודריאר. תמוה ומטריד אף יותר הוא טיעונו כי המילניום, או האלף השני לספירה, עשוי לא 'להתרחש' כלל. ניתוחו המזהיר והאכסצנטרי של בודריאר את תקופת שלטון אמצעי התקשורת ההמונית חושף לעינינו תרבות חוזרת בתשובה - לאו דווקא בהוראה העברית - ואוגרת, משכפלת, "מגהצת" ומתאבלת על עברה, כמו גם עולם שממנו נעלמה אפילו אפשרות 'קץ ההיסטוריה'. אבל מאחורי חזות ביזארית זו של ממשות נטולת ממשות מזהה בודריאר אפשרויות נעלמות ואולי אפילו תפנית אירונית סופנית.

בודריאר והמילניום מתאר גם את מפגשו של אנליטיקן תרבות מקורי זה עם מה שהוא מתאר כ"לא-אירוע" או כ-"אירוע-שלא-התקיים" הגדול ביותר של העידן הפוסט-מודרני, מתוך שהוא מסביר גם את הביקורת שנמתחה על משנתו וחשיבתו של בודריאר.
נושאי מפתח, כגון אסונות טבע, הגוף, 'תרבות הקורבן', בעיית הזהות והווירוסים של האינטרנט, נידונים בהקשר להתפתחותה של הגות המילניום של בודריאר, החל בשנות השמונים של המאה שעברה ועד סוף שנת האלפיים.

Genres: Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Nonfiction

101 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 1995

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is impossible to explain adequately the thinking of a radical post-modern like Jean Baudrillard in well under 80 pages so I suspect any reader of this 1999 text would get a glimmer of insight and have some thoughts triggered but not much more.

Baudrillard comes across here as obscure but also as someone who may be highly relevant to understanding not so much what was happening at the end of the twentieth century but what is happening now - two decades on. At times, he seems eerily prescient.

I tend to ignore the political tussles surrounding philosophers as outraged liberals and sceptical conservatives dig in and miss the point which is not to change the world (or fear change in the world) but to understand it better in order to survive. Survival is now the game for most of us.

Baudrillard might be regarded as part of a more general climate of opinion that would contribute later to the fashion for accelerationism which is a stance or posture more than it is a philosophy. Where he was important was in creating a reasonable scepticism about liberalism.

Liberalism is reaching peak hysteria as I write, denying or redrafting history, adopting an insidious totalitarianism in response to precisely the forces that Baudrillard identified as naturally arising from the contradictions and absurdities of modern technologies and systems.

Baudrillard has certainly not been alone in criticising rights ideology and other fossilisations of once-fertile enlightenment ideas but his critique has the virtue of positioning that ideology as intrinsically absurd, something waiting to eat itself up in its own lack of intrinsic sense.

And twenty years on, that is what is happening. Lots of 'educated' but not particularly intelligent youngsters and academics are fuelling mass hysteria little different from Byzantine iconoclasm which the rest of us are going to have to sit through and then pick up the pieces later.

Baudrillard may be right or wrong about history and society (I suspect he is a bit of both) but his thoughts are worth investigating not so much as explanation (I doubt if anything today can be explained easily) but as help towards Stoic survival amidst the mayhem.

If we think we know that what we are living through is absurd and that the absurdity, if not easily explained, can be tracked through the social systems and technologies that have developed a life of their own, we can perhaps be better at dodging the rocks thrown at us by history as it unfolds.

The book itself is probably not the guide we need. It lacks sufficient clarity, a failing of all contemporary academics when trying to communicate with us mere mortals, but it might trigger interest in thinking on these issues on one's own account and that is no bad thing.

Used in that way, it may be a help to those new to the 'field' (that of observing with detachment our social absurdity). If it gets just a few people to ask how the hell we have built an entire society on rights that do not exist outside the imagination, then some good will have been done.

[Castles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wonder why this book got such low ratings. it’s an interesting debate into’s Baudrillard’s philosophy, but definitely not the first place I’d start with him. what I can say is that because this book was written in 1999, two years before the nine eleven events, it’s an interesting glimpse into how Baudrillard was accepted while he was still working, even before the ways he applied his theories on the disaster at new york.

this book deals with the new millennium and tries to understand it in Baudrillard's ways. the way the countdown clocks were counting the seconds and milliseconds until the new millennium enters, seems like humanity was confronting a time bomb rather than just a linear time in history.

it also mention the countless critics of baudlliard, which by now, more than 20 years after this book was written, with facebook, instagram, google, the coronavirus, and what not, i can’t help but to say that baudlliard got the upper hand, and you can’t help but to look at him as a true prophet of the age we’re now living (and i’m not saying it pasimistically), he was really ahead of his time.

[Uğur · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book in which Baudrillard's criticism of post-modern life is discussed with many theories, concepts and facts, in which both the universe of one-way information flow in a simulated life and the new person who has emerged through the virtual world replacing reality are examined.

The truth is no longer an indicator that societies are no longer a crowd, body and Labor into a commodity, has become the need of the subject in this image is a perceptual change in today's world when people, phone, or laptop, or desktop, our faces towards the screen, what is ideal, what it is, as intensely and helplessly exposed to it one way propanada be made of a short summary of this era that we're most like.

The fact that a person who is constantly struggling for life between developing and changing technology products and the constantly Decaying one has become identified with the new one has now turned it into a commodity. In such a situation, is there a chance for our thought and Decency to coexist?

This break is also the break of the Millennium era from man at the same time. Although it is called the machine age, it would actually be more accurate to call it the age of mechanization. Because instead of intelligent robots, robotized minds perform a more reasonable function in the system.

There is no meaning anymore. Doesn't matter now.

The author describes this situation by identifying it with the theory of insanity, Freudian psychoanalysis and the theory of quantum physics from place to place. Although it is written in a fairly simple language, it is necessary to make an accumulation about the mentioned facts. Because it's 21. a topic that is both the sociological and philosophical dominant problem of the century has been discussed.

[Dave Nichols · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun, little squirt of debate between Baudrillard (resting on his Nietzschian critique of metaphysical philosophy) and the Enlightenment (which the author has chosen to embody through, strangely, Francis Fukuyama) over the meaning and existence of history.

[Don Heiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Christopher Horrocks’ book "Baudrillard and the Millennium” (postmodern encounters) was published by Icon/Totem in 1999. At the time of publication, Christopher was Senior Lecturer in Art History at Kingston University located in the southwest corner of London. His book discusses French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s highly disturbing belief that in the year 2000 the end of time will likely occur. If it does occur, history as we understand it would end or would fall back on itself and descend in a backward spiral. Christopher’s critique also explains Baudrillard’s questionable views of soon to come natural catastrophes, “victim cultures”, internet viruses, and the deterioration of the human physical body. These alarming events were predicted by Baudrillard in the early 1980’s and received widespread media attention. Finally, Christopher Harrocks’ book discusses Baudrillard’s inaccurate beliefs that end of time events are caused by technologies that control, manipulate, and alienate humanity. Christopher’s book notes, key ideas, and bibliography were very helpful to my understanding of Baudrillard’s flawed perspectives about how science, technology, and political power will control the masses and our world. (p)

[Türkay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dağınık... okuması çok güç bir kitap

[Bagumbas · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved this!

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The French thinker Jean Baudrillard said, "In a sense, we do not believe in the year 2000." Even more disturbing was his claim that the millennium might not take place. I'm not sure I fully understand this whole "end of history" concept. And I'm not sure I can take it seriously.

Baudrillard makes note of Nietzsche's idea about truth: "What then is truth? A moveable host of metaphors . . . which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions . . . "

Baudrillard also makes note of E. M. Cioran's comment: "Machines are not driving humanity to its doom, but were invented for man because he was already on his way there; he sought means, auxiliaries to attain it faster and more effectively."

Baudrillard also notes how we use a clock to count down time at the end of a century or new year as if it were a bomb. Thus we construe time as subtraction and exhaustion rather than as accumulation.

He also speaks of "world stupidity." No argument there. Educational progress is outstripped by mental retardation.

At the actual end of the millennium, Baudrillard had nothing to say. No surprise there.

[Ricky · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable.