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America
From the sierras of New Mexico to the streets of New York and LA by night—”a sort of luminous, geometric, incandescent immensity”—Baudrillard mixes aperçus and observations with a wicked sense of fun to provide a unique insight into the country that dominates our world. In this new edition, leading cultural critic and novelist Geoff Dyer offers a thoughtful and perceptive take on the continued resonance of Baudrillard’s America .
154 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
Jean Baudrillard
211 books2,019 followersJean 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.
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January 2, 2008
Not unless I'm forced will I read another word by this absolute head-up-ass dreck-merchant. I was prepared to be a very sympathetic reader; I was primed and ready for some snappy and devastating criticisms of America; but Baudrillard is too concerned with manufacturing what he must think are theoretical pronouncements to actually observe his surroundings. He certainly didn't need to travel to write this shmarmy and useless rubbish pit of a book; he probably had the whole thing outlined before he started smirking his way off whatever airplane dropped him in the country. He is also wrong about everything and racist.
I couldn't get too far past his chapter on "New York" in which the following trash nuggets can be found:
"Why do people live in New York? There is no relationship between them. Except for an inner electricity which results from the simple fact of their being crowded together. A magical sensation of contiguity and attraction for an artificial certainty . . . There is no human reason to be here, except for the sheer ecstasy of being crowded together."
of breakdancing: "You might say that in curling up and spiralling around on the ground like this, they seem to be digging a hole for themselves within their own bodies, from which to stare out in the ironic, indolent pose of the dead."
"For me there is no truth in America. I ask of the Americans only that they be Americans. I do not ask them to be intelligent, sensible, original. I ask them only to populate a space incommensurate with my own, to be for me the highest astral point, the finest orbital space."
He can ask me to kick his ass into the finest orbital space any time he wants. If you'd like my copy of this book, come and get it.
I couldn't get too far past his chapter on "New York" in which the following trash nuggets can be found:
"Why do people live in New York? There is no relationship between them. Except for an inner electricity which results from the simple fact of their being crowded together. A magical sensation of contiguity and attraction for an artificial certainty . . . There is no human reason to be here, except for the sheer ecstasy of being crowded together."
of breakdancing: "You might say that in curling up and spiralling around on the ground like this, they seem to be digging a hole for themselves within their own bodies, from which to stare out in the ironic, indolent pose of the dead."
"For me there is no truth in America. I ask of the Americans only that they be Americans. I do not ask them to be intelligent, sensible, original. I ask them only to populate a space incommensurate with my own, to be for me the highest astral point, the finest orbital space."
He can ask me to kick his ass into the finest orbital space any time he wants. If you'd like my copy of this book, come and get it.
October 28, 2009
For sure, Baudrillard is one of the rock stars of postmodernism, probably as much for his tentative connection with The Matrix as for his pronouncement that the first Gulf War didn't happen. One surely wouldn't expect any typical travel writing or sociology from him, even in a book titled America and billed as a collection of traveler's tales. This isn't Tocqueville elaborating, building arguments, and expounding on observations. This is Baudrillard at his postmodern haziest: playful, poetic, enigmatic, slippery, a little pedantic.
Ultimately, I find myself in a love/hate relationship with this work, a binary opposition that seems appropriate when postmodernism is involved, though I'm not sure which term I privilege more. I just keep vacillating between them.
I like to be seen reading Baudrillard at the nearest locally owned coffee shop as much as the next smug pseudointellectual, but I sometimes want more than pompous declarative sentences piled atop each other like graduate students at an old Pavement show. The text is comprised of a lot of empty pronouncements and one-liners one can use to impress (or conversely frighten) a date, but at times this work is, if one can manage to find and follow a salient theme, a trenchant critique of American and consequently, consumer, culture. Baudrillard certainly makes me feel the vast emptiness and absurdity of American life. Jogging, marathons, anorexia, advertising, highway signs, cars and cruising --- he subjects even the most pedestrian elements of American culture to his pitiless gaze. Everything is always indicative of a wider cultural phenomena, which is alternately stimulating and exasperating. In many of these instances, he reads like a hack sociologist poet, infusing, (translating?) the aforementioned cultural elements with entirely new meaning and implications (something I actually really enjoyed. Maybe my compliments are a bit ambigious). However, several of of the metaphors are shoddy, gimmicky, and melodramatic --- things are tumours, tissue, death, the apocalypse, the Regan years are menopause. But there IS a true prophetic voice at work here.
He wrote America in 1986, in the waning years of the Regan presidency, before the internet and social networking had taken hold, before the terror attacks on New York City, before reality televison, but somehow he seems to predict them all with his proclamation, perhaps warning, that "it is Disneyland that is authentic here! The cinema and TV are America's reality!" The U.S., he posits, "is the original version of modernity. [...:] Having seen no slow, centuries long accumulation of a principle of truth, it lives in perpetual simulation, in a perpetual present of signs." America, then, is the ultimate example of the hyperreal. Incidentally, I wonder if Baudrillard had a friendster account in those early days of social networking? Or if he watched ‟The Real World″ and ‟Rock of Love″ and talked about them around the water cooler on Monday mornings?
New York, he tells us, "acts out its own catastrophe as a stage play. And this is not an effect of its decadence, but of its own power, to which there is, of course, no threat. In fact this absence of threat is its power. Its density, its surface electricity rule out any thought of war. [...:]Its voltage protects it, like a galvanic dome, from all external threats [...:]" Today, of course, there is irony in these lines, and New York, specifically the Twin Towers, were chosen precisely for the symbolism Baudrillard alludes to.
Baudrillard, like almost everyone who attempts to chronicle a national character and catalog differences between Europeans and Americans, falls prey to generalizations and false dichotomies, often using stereotypes. He also blunders as he delves into sexuality, critiquing the Annie Hall and David Bowie androgyny, and seemingly poking fun at the notion of gender. His essentialism shows here.
I suggest a slow, leisurely perusal of this work. If, reader, you're at all curious about Baudrillard, postmodernism and poststructuralism, or simply want a critical, if idiosyncratic, perspective on the U.S. you should pick this up. But consider yourself warned: unless you're working on a Ph.D in philosophy or cultural studies or working your way through a fancy pomo reading list and this stuff is second nature to you, you should probably be willing to pause after every sentence or two to analyze what Baudrillard REALLY means and how it reconciles with the sentence before it and the sentence before that and so on.
Ultimately, I find myself in a love/hate relationship with this work, a binary opposition that seems appropriate when postmodernism is involved, though I'm not sure which term I privilege more. I just keep vacillating between them.
I like to be seen reading Baudrillard at the nearest locally owned coffee shop as much as the next smug pseudointellectual, but I sometimes want more than pompous declarative sentences piled atop each other like graduate students at an old Pavement show. The text is comprised of a lot of empty pronouncements and one-liners one can use to impress (or conversely frighten) a date, but at times this work is, if one can manage to find and follow a salient theme, a trenchant critique of American and consequently, consumer, culture. Baudrillard certainly makes me feel the vast emptiness and absurdity of American life. Jogging, marathons, anorexia, advertising, highway signs, cars and cruising --- he subjects even the most pedestrian elements of American culture to his pitiless gaze. Everything is always indicative of a wider cultural phenomena, which is alternately stimulating and exasperating. In many of these instances, he reads like a hack sociologist poet, infusing, (translating?) the aforementioned cultural elements with entirely new meaning and implications (something I actually really enjoyed. Maybe my compliments are a bit ambigious). However, several of of the metaphors are shoddy, gimmicky, and melodramatic --- things are tumours, tissue, death, the apocalypse, the Regan years are menopause. But there IS a true prophetic voice at work here.
He wrote America in 1986, in the waning years of the Regan presidency, before the internet and social networking had taken hold, before the terror attacks on New York City, before reality televison, but somehow he seems to predict them all with his proclamation, perhaps warning, that "it is Disneyland that is authentic here! The cinema and TV are America's reality!" The U.S., he posits, "is the original version of modernity. [...:] Having seen no slow, centuries long accumulation of a principle of truth, it lives in perpetual simulation, in a perpetual present of signs." America, then, is the ultimate example of the hyperreal. Incidentally, I wonder if Baudrillard had a friendster account in those early days of social networking? Or if he watched ‟The Real World″ and ‟Rock of Love″ and talked about them around the water cooler on Monday mornings?
New York, he tells us, "acts out its own catastrophe as a stage play. And this is not an effect of its decadence, but of its own power, to which there is, of course, no threat. In fact this absence of threat is its power. Its density, its surface electricity rule out any thought of war. [...:]Its voltage protects it, like a galvanic dome, from all external threats [...:]" Today, of course, there is irony in these lines, and New York, specifically the Twin Towers, were chosen precisely for the symbolism Baudrillard alludes to.
Baudrillard, like almost everyone who attempts to chronicle a national character and catalog differences between Europeans and Americans, falls prey to generalizations and false dichotomies, often using stereotypes. He also blunders as he delves into sexuality, critiquing the Annie Hall and David Bowie androgyny, and seemingly poking fun at the notion of gender. His essentialism shows here.
I suggest a slow, leisurely perusal of this work. If, reader, you're at all curious about Baudrillard, postmodernism and poststructuralism, or simply want a critical, if idiosyncratic, perspective on the U.S. you should pick this up. But consider yourself warned: unless you're working on a Ph.D in philosophy or cultural studies or working your way through a fancy pomo reading list and this stuff is second nature to you, you should probably be willing to pause after every sentence or two to analyze what Baudrillard REALLY means and how it reconciles with the sentence before it and the sentence before that and so on.
January 23, 2013
France's least rigorous theorist takes on the United States.
America is a frustrating read. I've also read Simulations, and the two books have a lot in common. Both have the theoretical jargon, impenetrable passages and lack of care for readability. The technical words from other disciplines that you suspect Baudrillard doesn't actually understand (even relatively simple ones like "refract"). The faux-profundity (one of the insights is that the desert, for example, Death Valley, symbolises, um, death). The style that, perhaps deliberately, makes it hard to critically assess the claims that are made, it obfuscates and intimidates. Unlike some other difficult writers, I rarely feel that Baudrillard's prose is tough because he's being precise.
The book kept confounding and then re-founding my opinions of it. Baudrillard spouts what sounds a lot like nonsense for quite a while, then provides a lucid explanation of how America is a succesful revolution, a utopia without great dreams or hopes. Then, just as you're starting to think "but what about racism, counter-cultures, etc...." he explains these. Or rather, doesn't explain, but says it is a paradox. The great resort of mystics, of people who don't actually understand or explain something. And then in the next chapter he provides a clear and empirical explanation of a paradox in action.
One of the comparisons made in the blurb and the introduction is to de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. This made something stand out to me. De Tocqueville has a great interest in the people of America, in how they think and act, and what they say. Although he usually talks in generalities, he gives the impression of someone who has listened to and observed people carefully. Baudrillard, on the other hand, seems like he never speaks to anyone.
In fact, Baudrillard pretty much says he's not interested in what Americans have to say, that he 'doesn't ask them to understand'. He asks only that they 'be Americans' - archetypes, objects, specimens to be observed. Unsophisticated people with no self-awareness, who need a Frenchman to explain their country and their lives? Is it any wonder he presents America as a place that is without depth and human relationships?
Maybe it can take an outsider to understand a culture, to look at it with different assumptions and perspectives. Baudrillard seems weirdly unaware of his own perspective though. In the best example, he talks about how rather than movies being the representation of America, movies actually prefigure the country. He doesn't stop to consider that the perspective of someone from France who was first introduced to America through movies might be different to someone who was born there. Or if he does consider it he decides it's not worth mentioning. Predictably, he later contradicts this impression, showing, briefly, some awareness of his viewpoint.
In America, like Simulations, the high points usually make you go "I'm not entirely convinced that is true but it is a very interesting way of looking at things, and worth thinking about some more." Little in America is obviously correct or incorrect. The question is whether it's worth your time and effort to figure out what is what. My guess is probably not.
America is a frustrating read. I've also read Simulations, and the two books have a lot in common. Both have the theoretical jargon, impenetrable passages and lack of care for readability. The technical words from other disciplines that you suspect Baudrillard doesn't actually understand (even relatively simple ones like "refract"). The faux-profundity (one of the insights is that the desert, for example, Death Valley, symbolises, um, death). The style that, perhaps deliberately, makes it hard to critically assess the claims that are made, it obfuscates and intimidates. Unlike some other difficult writers, I rarely feel that Baudrillard's prose is tough because he's being precise.
The book kept confounding and then re-founding my opinions of it. Baudrillard spouts what sounds a lot like nonsense for quite a while, then provides a lucid explanation of how America is a succesful revolution, a utopia without great dreams or hopes. Then, just as you're starting to think "but what about racism, counter-cultures, etc...." he explains these. Or rather, doesn't explain, but says it is a paradox. The great resort of mystics, of people who don't actually understand or explain something. And then in the next chapter he provides a clear and empirical explanation of a paradox in action.
One of the comparisons made in the blurb and the introduction is to de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. This made something stand out to me. De Tocqueville has a great interest in the people of America, in how they think and act, and what they say. Although he usually talks in generalities, he gives the impression of someone who has listened to and observed people carefully. Baudrillard, on the other hand, seems like he never speaks to anyone.
In fact, Baudrillard pretty much says he's not interested in what Americans have to say, that he 'doesn't ask them to understand'. He asks only that they 'be Americans' - archetypes, objects, specimens to be observed. Unsophisticated people with no self-awareness, who need a Frenchman to explain their country and their lives? Is it any wonder he presents America as a place that is without depth and human relationships?
Maybe it can take an outsider to understand a culture, to look at it with different assumptions and perspectives. Baudrillard seems weirdly unaware of his own perspective though. In the best example, he talks about how rather than movies being the representation of America, movies actually prefigure the country. He doesn't stop to consider that the perspective of someone from France who was first introduced to America through movies might be different to someone who was born there. Or if he does consider it he decides it's not worth mentioning. Predictably, he later contradicts this impression, showing, briefly, some awareness of his viewpoint.
In America, like Simulations, the high points usually make you go "I'm not entirely convinced that is true but it is a very interesting way of looking at things, and worth thinking about some more." Little in America is obviously correct or incorrect. The question is whether it's worth your time and effort to figure out what is what. My guess is probably not.
April 13, 2020
Na trenutke duhovito (verovatno bez autorove namere), sa određenim lirskim naletom, pa čak nije ni dosadno, ali sa godinama sam sve ubeđeniji da je Mis Karanfila živela u Parizu i da se našla u pravom krugu ljudi, sigurno bi postala vodeći poststrukturalista.
July 16, 2022
Rarely does a book remind me of the joy of reading.
October 1, 2016
I generally dislike Baudrillard's smugness and his pissy nihilism, so I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book, which I can only describe as a sort of post-modern rumination/travelogue of Reagan-era America.
The thesis here, America as an achieved utopia, is pretty meager, and seems dated and almost offensively naive by 2016 standards. But he still manages to wring some sharp, humerous observations out of it.
What most surprises about this is how earnest Baudrillard seams about his own attraction and admiration for America, especially compared to what he views as the feckless intellectual cynicism of European high culture. Baudrillard is usually full of spleen and contempt in his writings, it's refreshing to read him in a (somewhat) less cynical tone. And as an American, there's always a sort of voyeuristic pleasure in hearing your country described by a foreigner.
The thesis here, America as an achieved utopia, is pretty meager, and seems dated and almost offensively naive by 2016 standards. But he still manages to wring some sharp, humerous observations out of it.
What most surprises about this is how earnest Baudrillard seams about his own attraction and admiration for America, especially compared to what he views as the feckless intellectual cynicism of European high culture. Baudrillard is usually full of spleen and contempt in his writings, it's refreshing to read him in a (somewhat) less cynical tone. And as an American, there's always a sort of voyeuristic pleasure in hearing your country described by a foreigner.
May 2, 2009
Baudrillard is a maniac.....but this made me want to visit the desert so bad.
May 16, 2018
The first two thirds is a set of hilarious cultural collision fish out of water vignettes directed by Jarmusch or someone. The rest is some rather straight up commentary which suggests that Baudrillard was probably aware of how ridiculous he portrayed his initial impressions, like his incredulity of jogging, his exegesis on road signs being omnipotent mandates, and that one time he went to a bank and couldn't comprehend what's so weird about getting the entirety of his check out in cash. There's likely hammed up spectacle in it. His views in America are something of a reformulation of the Old World-New World split, that America is a purposefully naive lived out artifice, like the still continuing ideal of American exceptionalism. Baudrillard isn't apt to dismiss American exceptionalism as mythology because as he sees it America is built on the execution of these fictional ideas, hence hyperreality. We can sleep at night even full well conscious of the bones of Native Americans beneath us. Baudrillard isn't terrified by the mass conformity, obsession with appearances and ideology, the violent underpinnings, and so on because it's a new and fascinating culture, almost analogous to Nietzsche's newborn, which is entirely divorced from the burdens of European history. America is an active simulation of ideas, so history is irrelevant to America.
Baudrillard wrote this in 80s Reagan America, more or less the perfect time to have these sorts of ideas. They are themselves naive in various ways, which I think is counterbalanced by E Unibus Pluram and various fringe elements. But I think for Baudrillard these might not pose a challenge as they just get subsumed into the simulation: the hippies shave their hair and become CEOs; jazz, rock, punk, metal, hip-hop go from "counterculture" to million dollar industries; minority representation in billion dollar films; this is all part of it. Things have changed since the 80s but this remains cogent. A startling example, in light of the current administration, is Baudrillard's insistence that political scandal is now simulation. A bad policy, the wrong words coming out of a leader's mouth, "mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible, and that the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction. The 'marketing' immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder" (109). The book leaves off on his speculations about what place the universal American power has to go aside from spinning the wheels of its simulation, and if you squint that could be more or less accurate considering the war on terror.
What's incredible is none of this terrifies him in hindsight, that America is a bewildering and amazing development in comparison with Europe which is stuck in the 19th century as far as he's concerned. When he is terrified, it's because of break dancers. Again, the comedy of a self conscious French intellectual in America makes up the bulk of this, and it's entertaining if you don't take him too seriously. The commentary ties it together, but it's never hard philosophy, just a bridge between his more serious stuff and his impressions of America. Mostly fun and occasionally insightful, I'd recommend it.
Baudrillard wrote this in 80s Reagan America, more or less the perfect time to have these sorts of ideas. They are themselves naive in various ways, which I think is counterbalanced by E Unibus Pluram and various fringe elements. But I think for Baudrillard these might not pose a challenge as they just get subsumed into the simulation: the hippies shave their hair and become CEOs; jazz, rock, punk, metal, hip-hop go from "counterculture" to million dollar industries; minority representation in billion dollar films; this is all part of it. Things have changed since the 80s but this remains cogent. A startling example, in light of the current administration, is Baudrillard's insistence that political scandal is now simulation. A bad policy, the wrong words coming out of a leader's mouth, "mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible, and that the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction. The 'marketing' immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder" (109). The book leaves off on his speculations about what place the universal American power has to go aside from spinning the wheels of its simulation, and if you squint that could be more or less accurate considering the war on terror.
What's incredible is none of this terrifies him in hindsight, that America is a bewildering and amazing development in comparison with Europe which is stuck in the 19th century as far as he's concerned. When he is terrified, it's because of break dancers. Again, the comedy of a self conscious French intellectual in America makes up the bulk of this, and it's entertaining if you don't take him too seriously. The commentary ties it together, but it's never hard philosophy, just a bridge between his more serious stuff and his impressions of America. Mostly fun and occasionally insightful, I'd recommend it.
December 4, 2025
literally whatever lol
August 2, 2020
درسته که به نوعی مجبور بودم بخونمش؛ ولی به هر حال توفیقی بود خوندنش. :))
May 20, 2012
Assorted and assembled quotes:
On desert: "The inhumanity of our ulterior, asocial, superficial world immediately finds its aesthetic form here, its ecstatic form. For the desert is simply that: an ecstatic critique of culture, an ecstatic form of disappearance. (pg.5)
On speed: "Speed is simply the rite that initiates us into emptiness, a nostalgic desire for from to revert to immobility, concealed beneath the very intensification of their mobility. Akin to the nostalgia for living forms that haunts geometry." (7)
On America: "Its primitivism has passed into the hyperbolic, inhuman character of a universe that is beyond us, that far outstrips its own moral, social, or ecological rationale." (7)
On the importance of traveling in heat: "That is why [travel] is best done in extreme heat, the orgasmic form of deterritorialization. The acceleration of molecules in the heat contributes to a barely perceptible evaporation of meaning." (9)
"Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. (9)
"The form that dominates the American West, and doubtless all of American culture, is a seismic form: a fractal, interstitial culture, born of a rift with the Old World, a tactile, fragile, mobile, superficial culture - you have to follow its own rules to grasp how it works: seismic shifting, soft technologies." (10)
"It is the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do the honor of sharing or disputing each other's food. He who eats alone is dead (but not he who drinks alone. Why is this?)" (15)
On skyscrapers (BITEXCO TOWER): "... the pure architectural object is born, an object beyond the control of architects, which roundly repudiates the city and its uses, repudiates the interests of the collectivity and individuals and persists in its own madness."
On competitive running: "The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide, suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it... to prove what? That you are capable of finishing...free publicity for existence.
"Carrying out any kind of program produces the same sense of futility that comes from doing anything merely to prove to yourself that you can do it: having a child, climbing a mountain, making some sexual conquest, committing suicide."
On Exercise (pg.38): There is a direct line that runs from the medieval instruments of torture, via the industrial movements of production-line work, to the techniques of schooling the body by using mechanical apparatuses. Like dieting, bodybuilding, and so many other things, jogging is a new form of voluntary servitude (it is also a new form of adultery).
…like everything that has lost the formula for stopping itself. This entire society, including its active, productive part – everyone- is running straight ahead, because they have lost the formula for stopping. (pg.39)
On Californian violence (pg. 45) The violence is autistic and reactional. There are no crimes of passion…this is a foetal violence, as gratuitous as “automatic writing”. It seems an expression not so much of real aggression as of nostalgia for the old prohibitions (why does the number of rapes increase with the degree of sexual liberation?)
On the ambiguity of modern sex (vis a vis Michael Jackson, David Bowie, etc) (pg. 48): …sexuality might become a merely secondary problem, as it was in most earlier societies, and be eclipsed by stronger symbolic systems (birth, hierarchy, asceticism, glory, death).
Vietnam (49): Vietnam on television (a pleonasm, since it always was a television war). The Americans fight with two essential weapons: air power and information… the physical bombardment of the enemy and the electronic bombardment of the rest of the world… that is why the war was won by both sides: by the VN on the ground, by the US in the elec. mental space.
TV Set (50): There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.
(There is nothing to match) Flying over LA at night (51): A sort of luminous, geometric, incandescent immensity, stretching as far as the eye can see, bursting out from the cracks in the clouds. Only H. Bosch’s hell can match this inferno effect.
LA and Walking (58): If you get out of your car in this centrifugal metropolis, you immediately become a delinquent; as soon as you start walking, you are a threat to public order, like a wandering dog. Only immigrants from the 3rd world are allowed to walk.
LA (60): They don’t look at other people here. They are much too afraid they will throw themselves upon them with unbearable, sexual demands, requests for money or affection. Everything is charged with somnambulistic violence and you must avoid contact to escape its potential discharge.
Banks (61): It is true that ownership of money burns your fingers, like power. We need people to take the risk for us and we should be eternally grateful to them. That is why I hesitate to deposit money in a bank. I am afraid I’ll never dare take it out again….Money is dirty; that you must admit. And we really do need these concrete and metal sanctuaries to protect us from it. So banks fulfill a crucial social function, and it is quite logical that these buildings should form the monumental heart of every town and city.
Deserts (63): They form the mental frontier where the projects of civilization run into the ground. They are outside the sphere and circumference of desire. We should always appeal to the deserts against the excess of signification, of intention and pretention in culture. They are our mythic operator.
The luminous insignificance of Sunday morning. (66)
GAMBLING (67): There is a mysterious affinity between the sterility of wide open spaces and that of gambling, between the sterility of speed and that of expenditure. That is the originality of the desert of the American West; it lies in that violent, electric juxtaposition.
…Silence is not what remains when all noise has been suppressed. (69)
The secret of true modernity [is] to be found in artifice, the only natural spectacle that is really gripping is the one which offers both the moving profundity and at the same time the total simulacrum of that profundity. (E.g: Monument Valley: geology of the earth > the mausoleum of the Indians > the camera of John Ford) All three are mingled in the vision we have of it. And each phase subtly terminates the preceding one. (70)
On desert: "The inhumanity of our ulterior, asocial, superficial world immediately finds its aesthetic form here, its ecstatic form. For the desert is simply that: an ecstatic critique of culture, an ecstatic form of disappearance. (pg.5)
On speed: "Speed is simply the rite that initiates us into emptiness, a nostalgic desire for from to revert to immobility, concealed beneath the very intensification of their mobility. Akin to the nostalgia for living forms that haunts geometry." (7)
On America: "Its primitivism has passed into the hyperbolic, inhuman character of a universe that is beyond us, that far outstrips its own moral, social, or ecological rationale." (7)
On the importance of traveling in heat: "That is why [travel] is best done in extreme heat, the orgasmic form of deterritorialization. The acceleration of molecules in the heat contributes to a barely perceptible evaporation of meaning." (9)
"Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. (9)
"The form that dominates the American West, and doubtless all of American culture, is a seismic form: a fractal, interstitial culture, born of a rift with the Old World, a tactile, fragile, mobile, superficial culture - you have to follow its own rules to grasp how it works: seismic shifting, soft technologies." (10)
"It is the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do the honor of sharing or disputing each other's food. He who eats alone is dead (but not he who drinks alone. Why is this?)" (15)
On skyscrapers (BITEXCO TOWER): "... the pure architectural object is born, an object beyond the control of architects, which roundly repudiates the city and its uses, repudiates the interests of the collectivity and individuals and persists in its own madness."
On competitive running: "The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide, suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it... to prove what? That you are capable of finishing...free publicity for existence.
"Carrying out any kind of program produces the same sense of futility that comes from doing anything merely to prove to yourself that you can do it: having a child, climbing a mountain, making some sexual conquest, committing suicide."
On Exercise (pg.38): There is a direct line that runs from the medieval instruments of torture, via the industrial movements of production-line work, to the techniques of schooling the body by using mechanical apparatuses. Like dieting, bodybuilding, and so many other things, jogging is a new form of voluntary servitude (it is also a new form of adultery).
…like everything that has lost the formula for stopping itself. This entire society, including its active, productive part – everyone- is running straight ahead, because they have lost the formula for stopping. (pg.39)
On Californian violence (pg. 45) The violence is autistic and reactional. There are no crimes of passion…this is a foetal violence, as gratuitous as “automatic writing”. It seems an expression not so much of real aggression as of nostalgia for the old prohibitions (why does the number of rapes increase with the degree of sexual liberation?)
On the ambiguity of modern sex (vis a vis Michael Jackson, David Bowie, etc) (pg. 48): …sexuality might become a merely secondary problem, as it was in most earlier societies, and be eclipsed by stronger symbolic systems (birth, hierarchy, asceticism, glory, death).
Vietnam (49): Vietnam on television (a pleonasm, since it always was a television war). The Americans fight with two essential weapons: air power and information… the physical bombardment of the enemy and the electronic bombardment of the rest of the world… that is why the war was won by both sides: by the VN on the ground, by the US in the elec. mental space.
TV Set (50): There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.
(There is nothing to match) Flying over LA at night (51): A sort of luminous, geometric, incandescent immensity, stretching as far as the eye can see, bursting out from the cracks in the clouds. Only H. Bosch’s hell can match this inferno effect.
LA and Walking (58): If you get out of your car in this centrifugal metropolis, you immediately become a delinquent; as soon as you start walking, you are a threat to public order, like a wandering dog. Only immigrants from the 3rd world are allowed to walk.
LA (60): They don’t look at other people here. They are much too afraid they will throw themselves upon them with unbearable, sexual demands, requests for money or affection. Everything is charged with somnambulistic violence and you must avoid contact to escape its potential discharge.
Banks (61): It is true that ownership of money burns your fingers, like power. We need people to take the risk for us and we should be eternally grateful to them. That is why I hesitate to deposit money in a bank. I am afraid I’ll never dare take it out again….Money is dirty; that you must admit. And we really do need these concrete and metal sanctuaries to protect us from it. So banks fulfill a crucial social function, and it is quite logical that these buildings should form the monumental heart of every town and city.
Deserts (63): They form the mental frontier where the projects of civilization run into the ground. They are outside the sphere and circumference of desire. We should always appeal to the deserts against the excess of signification, of intention and pretention in culture. They are our mythic operator.
The luminous insignificance of Sunday morning. (66)
GAMBLING (67): There is a mysterious affinity between the sterility of wide open spaces and that of gambling, between the sterility of speed and that of expenditure. That is the originality of the desert of the American West; it lies in that violent, electric juxtaposition.
…Silence is not what remains when all noise has been suppressed. (69)
The secret of true modernity [is] to be found in artifice, the only natural spectacle that is really gripping is the one which offers both the moving profundity and at the same time the total simulacrum of that profundity. (E.g: Monument Valley: geology of the earth > the mausoleum of the Indians > the camera of John Ford) All three are mingled in the vision we have of it. And each phase subtly terminates the preceding one. (70)
August 7, 2018
This was my second Baudrillard book and I will repeat myself in saying that his natural talent does not lie in explaining complex ideas in easily digestible terms. With that being said, the format of this book worked well for his writing type. It's more or less organized rambling about different aspects of American culture. If you're a fan of his theories, you'll love this book. I really enjoyed reading his unique perspective on America, and if you're willing to ignore his sometimes arrogant comments then you'll find lots of engrossment in the small details. I wrote entire sections of this book to save (it's very quotable) I'll post a few quotes here,
"“As soon as you set foot in America, you feel the presence of an entire continent- space there is the very form of thought” 16
“Why do people live in New York? There is no relationship between them. Except for an inner electricity which results from the simple fact of their being crowded together. A magical sensation of contiguity and attraction for an artificial centrality. This is what makes it a self-attracting universe, which there is no reason to leave. There is no human reason to be here, except for the sheer ecstasy of being crowded together. “ 15
“More sirens here, day and night. The cars are faster, the advertisements more aggressive. This is wall-to-wall prostitution. And total electric light too. And the game-all games- get more intense. It’s always like this when you’re getting near the center of the world.”
"“As soon as you set foot in America, you feel the presence of an entire continent- space there is the very form of thought” 16
“Why do people live in New York? There is no relationship between them. Except for an inner electricity which results from the simple fact of their being crowded together. A magical sensation of contiguity and attraction for an artificial centrality. This is what makes it a self-attracting universe, which there is no reason to leave. There is no human reason to be here, except for the sheer ecstasy of being crowded together. “ 15
“More sirens here, day and night. The cars are faster, the advertisements more aggressive. This is wall-to-wall prostitution. And total electric light too. And the game-all games- get more intense. It’s always like this when you’re getting near the center of the world.”
March 23, 2023
travel diary of Los Santos by guy who has only watched playthroughs on youtube
December 10, 2024
Baudrillard op zijn Baudrillardst. Je moet wel een haat-liefderelatie hebben met de geschriften van deze man. Ja, hij is een one-trick pony, altijd weer dezelfde centrale obsessies recyclerend vanuit nieuwe invalshoeken, altijd zichzelf veel te slim vindend, altijd een gitzwarte wanhoop projecterend op maatschappij en cultuur. Hij durft in zijn kritieken weleens (hot take?) bij reactionair rechts aanschurken zonder het zelf toe te geven. Zo ook in dit boek. Als je de exotiserende raciale opmerkingen al dubieus vindt, wacht dan tot je bij de reflecties over gender belandt. Ook het culturele fatalisme wordt al snel afgezaagd. Europa dat nooit echt "modern" kan zijn, Amerika dat nooit contradicties en sociale kritiek kan bevatten, het Zuiden dat zich nooit democratiseert... het leest als een soort postmoderne Huntington.
Maar het zou zijn cultuurkritiek onrecht aandoen om die tot de minst savoureuze kantjes te herleiden. Baudrillard is het type schrijver die schrijft alsof hij het allemaal niet zélf bedenkt, alsof hij heel de tijd losse profetieën ingefluisterd krijgt van een geheimzinnig bovennatuurlijk orakel dat nu eens wartaal uitslaat en dan weer de ziel van de wereld doorgrondt. Voor elke verwaande woordenstroom krijg je een flard genialiteit in ruil, zoals deze:
Le marathon de New York est devenu une sorte de symbole international de cette performance fétichiste, du délire d'une victoire à vide, de l'exaltation d'une prouesse sans conséquence.
J'ai couru le marathon de New York: I did it!
J'ai vaincu l'Annapurna : I did it!
Le débarquement sur la lune est du même ordre: We did it! Un événement moins surprenant au fond que programmé d'avance dans la trajectoire du progrès et de la science. Il fallait le faire. On l'a fait. Mais cet événement n'a pas relancé le rêve millénaire de l'espace, il l'a en quelque sorte épuisé.
Il y a le même effet d'inutilité dans toute exécution d'un programme, comme dans tout ce qu'on fait pour se prouver qu'on est capable de le faire : un enfant, une escalade, un exploit sexuel, un suicide.
Le marathon est une forme de suicide démonstratif, de suicide publicitaire : c'est courir pour montrer qu'on est capable d'aller au bout de soi-même, pour faire la preuve... la preuve de quoi? Qu'on est capable d'arriver.
Les graffiti eux aussi ne disent rien d'autre que: Je m'appelle Untel et j'existe! Ils font une publicité gratuite à l'existence!
Faut-il continuellement faire la preuve de sa propre vie?
Maar het zou zijn cultuurkritiek onrecht aandoen om die tot de minst savoureuze kantjes te herleiden. Baudrillard is het type schrijver die schrijft alsof hij het allemaal niet zélf bedenkt, alsof hij heel de tijd losse profetieën ingefluisterd krijgt van een geheimzinnig bovennatuurlijk orakel dat nu eens wartaal uitslaat en dan weer de ziel van de wereld doorgrondt. Voor elke verwaande woordenstroom krijg je een flard genialiteit in ruil, zoals deze:
Le marathon de New York est devenu une sorte de symbole international de cette performance fétichiste, du délire d'une victoire à vide, de l'exaltation d'une prouesse sans conséquence.
J'ai couru le marathon de New York: I did it!
J'ai vaincu l'Annapurna : I did it!
Le débarquement sur la lune est du même ordre: We did it! Un événement moins surprenant au fond que programmé d'avance dans la trajectoire du progrès et de la science. Il fallait le faire. On l'a fait. Mais cet événement n'a pas relancé le rêve millénaire de l'espace, il l'a en quelque sorte épuisé.
Il y a le même effet d'inutilité dans toute exécution d'un programme, comme dans tout ce qu'on fait pour se prouver qu'on est capable de le faire : un enfant, une escalade, un exploit sexuel, un suicide.
Le marathon est une forme de suicide démonstratif, de suicide publicitaire : c'est courir pour montrer qu'on est capable d'aller au bout de soi-même, pour faire la preuve... la preuve de quoi? Qu'on est capable d'arriver.
Les graffiti eux aussi ne disent rien d'autre que: Je m'appelle Untel et j'existe! Ils font une publicité gratuite à l'existence!
Faut-il continuellement faire la preuve de sa propre vie?
May 30, 2014
Wow this book is fantastic. Probably reading it right after I came back from the eponymous America made it all the more resonant. Even though it was written like 30 years ago so many of his observations still strike the reader as very perceptive and pertinent. I actually smiled at some of his more incisive critiques, especially on the phenomenon of smiling in America. His main thrust is making a distinction between Europe and the USA, where in Europe, and France specifically, they are all obsessed with concepts and ideas, trying to translate reality into ideology. But in America they do the opposite, and are obsessed with making everything a reality, with materiality, practicality. His comments on how the USA was/is an achieved utopia, and how many symptoms emerge from that belief were also very perceptive. Some of the analysis is very rooted to the Reagan era and are thus a bit dated, but a lot of it addresses America as a whole and still rings true.
June 1, 2015
من در مورد این کتاب صرفا می تونم سکوت کنم. شاید ده درصدش رو "فکر می کنم" متوجه شدم. تازه اون ده درصد هم دلائلش نامعلومه - یعنی حرفی را زده ولی معلوم نیست چرا من باید آن حرف را قبول کنم.
کتاب غیر قابل فهم نوشتن اتلاف عمر خواننده که هست هیچ، اتلاف عمر نویسنده هم است؛ چون یا خودشم نمی فهمه یا خودش می فهمه. در حالت اول که واضحه اتلاف عمرش در حالت دوم از اولی بدتره چون آن چیزی رو که می دونه نمی تونه منتقل کنه
مترجم در پشت جلد نوشته این کتاب به گمان بسیاری جذاب ترین و قابل فهم ترین کتاب بودریاره. اگه اینجوریه یادم باشم هرگز سراغ باقیش نرم....
کتاب غیر قابل فهم نوشتن اتلاف عمر خواننده که هست هیچ، اتلاف عمر نویسنده هم است؛ چون یا خودشم نمی فهمه یا خودش می فهمه. در حالت اول که واضحه اتلاف عمرش در حالت دوم از اولی بدتره چون آن چیزی رو که می دونه نمی تونه منتقل کنه
مترجم در پشت جلد نوشته این کتاب به گمان بسیاری جذاب ترین و قابل فهم ترین کتاب بودریاره. اگه اینجوریه یادم باشم هرگز سراغ باقیش نرم....
November 8, 2015
"امريكا نه روياست، نه واقعيا. نوعي حاد واقعيت است. زيرا ارمانشهري است كه از همان ابتدا طوري رفتار كرده كه انكار بيشابيش تحقق يافته است"
تمام كتاب نشان دادن هاي ملموس و روزمره به زبان خاص و منحصر به فرد بودريار از ترازدي ارمان تحقق يافته امريكاست كه به معناي بايان هر ارمان در بي معناست.
بشت كتاب نوشته شده بود اين از اسان فهم ترين اثار بودرياره ولي به نظرم همراه شدن با كتاب صبر و حوصله زياد مي خواهد...شايد هم دليلش اين باشد كه ما تصوري از توصيف هاي جزيي ساختمان ها و خيابان ها و محله هاي نيويورك و منهتن نداريم...
تمام كتاب نشان دادن هاي ملموس و روزمره به زبان خاص و منحصر به فرد بودريار از ترازدي ارمان تحقق يافته امريكاست كه به معناي بايان هر ارمان در بي معناست.
بشت كتاب نوشته شده بود اين از اسان فهم ترين اثار بودرياره ولي به نظرم همراه شدن با كتاب صبر و حوصله زياد مي خواهد...شايد هم دليلش اين باشد كه ما تصوري از توصيف هاي جزيي ساختمان ها و خيابان ها و محله هاي نيويورك و منهتن نداريم...
Read
April 15, 2025There are a few good passages regarding hyperreality in here, but about halfway through the book I started reading Baudrillard's musings like he was Rorschach from Watchmen and couldn't unhear it. I will also not stand for anti-New York slander. On a serious note, his analysis misses the mark more often than not in this one, or at least, it no longer holds up post-USSR.
kurgudışı-kitaplar
August 25, 2023AMERİKAN GÜZELLİĞİ
Keyifli bir okumaydı. Son bölümün birkaç sayfası dinamit doluydu, bir taraftan da bombardıman vardı, moral bozuculuğundan ötürü bu son sayfalarda epeyce bir süründüm ama genelde keyifle okudum Amerika’yı.
Hey birader, bu Amerika denen kitap savaşı mı anlatıyor; dinamitler, bombalar n'oluyor bunlar? Yok be yaaa, lafın gelişi, kitapta silahın ‘s’inden dahi bahsedilmiyor. Amerika deyince aklıma hep silah geliyor. Hepsi bu. Onların da aklında hep silah var, merak etme. Yardım diye silah yardımını biliyorlar.
Silah ve gözyaşı Amerikan güzelliklerindendir.
Yuhh be kardeşim; onca film, onca roman, onca müzik, onca belgesel, onca şey neyse, onca güzellik varken, sersemin dediğine bak. Jodie Foster’dan utanır insan be! Bardağın boş tarafını gören nankör herifin tekisin sen!
Hadi hadi çek arabanı. Pışt pışt. Yüzyıllardır boş bardak hikayesiyle yığınları kandırıyorsunuz. Neymiş, bardağın boş tarafını görüyorsan kötümser, dolu tarafını görürsen iyimsersin. Bak sen! Çocuk mu kandırıyorsun? İnsan susuzluk çekiyorsa bardağın dolu tarafını görür. Anladın mı? Görüşün karakterle bir ilgisi yok yani, hangi durumda olduğunla ilgisi var. Senin o sevgili bardağını sabah başka, öğlen başka, akşam da bambaşka görürsün. Seni sersem! Dolayısıyla dünya çürüyorsa ve Amerika’da süper güçse, kusura bakma ama ben Amerika’da Jodie Foster’i göremem. Bütün o sanatsı güzellikleri mantar tabancası bile tuz buz eder. Git bunu Foster’cığına söyle. Hadi çek arabanı! Pışt pışt...
Şaka maka, Amerika'yı okurken habire tabanca kokusu alıyordum. Sonra düşündüm dedim ki, acaba parfüm olarak silah kokusu var mı? Hiç duymadım görmedim. Düşünsene, üstün başın barut kokar halde bir ortama giriyorsun. Otorite takıntısı çekenler bu kokuya hasta olur valla. El bombası kokusu mesela. Yürü git işine ya!
Amerika kitabında çevirmen Yaşar Avunç çok iyi iş çıkarmış. Amerika sonuçta sosyolojik bir metin. Ve Türkiye’de yüzyıllardır sosyoloji (de) çalışmıyor. Dolayısıyla kavram da üretmiyoruz. Çevirilerde yararlanacağın ‘kavram havuz’un yok, bütün yükü çevirmenler çekiyor haliyle. İşin yoksa kavram uydur. Baudrillard kitabında kendi özel kavramlarını da kullanmış üstelik. Şikayeti bırakıp paragrafı toparlarsak, kelimelerin Türkçede karşılıksız çıkmasıyla bazı cümleler havada kaldı. Fakat biz karşılıksız işlerde yaşamaya alışkınız. Karşılıksız çek, aşk, belge, ücret, artık ne varsa. Sorun yok yani. Karşılıklı idare ettik!
Kitabın anlaşılabilir kısımlarında keyifle okunan bir kitap ortaya çıkaran Yaşar Aytunç'a saygılarımı sunuyorum.
Kitabı tanımlarsak: Amerika’yı anlamanın uğraşısına girişmenin kitabıdır, Amerika. Ve sonrasında kılıçlar çekilip gerekli hesaplaşmalar yapıldıktan sonraki süreci ne sen sooor ne de ben bahsini edeyim.
Pardon, neyin girişmesi dediniz, anlamadım, biraz açar mısınız?
Jean Baudrillard salondan yazmıyor yani, masasına kurulup da bir iki kitap karıştırarak “Avrupalılar şöyledir Amerikalılar da böyledir” diye sallamıyor yani. Ne yapıyormuş peki yani(!)? Sahaya iniyor. Amerika kırsalında yollara düşüyor. Çöllerde yatıp kalkıyor. Şehre vardığında binaları, mekanları inceliyor, oradan kalabalıklara karışıp insanların yüzlerine dikkat kesiliyor. Ha bu arada, sık sık memleketi Paris geliyor aklına, ordan kıyaslamalar yapıyor ister istemez. YANİ.
Amerika’yı anlıyor mu peki? Bir paragrafta veya sayfada anlatacak şekilde anlıyor mu, anlatıyor mu? Hani demek istiyorum ki, yormasın bizi.
Cevabı biliyorsun, mümkün değil. Başka kapıya. Baudrillard, Amerika’ya dair yüzlerce cümle kuruyor ama fotoğraf kareleri gibi duruyor bu anlatımlar ve bu kareleri birleştirmeye kalkışmak aptalların işidir; ömür yetmez, gerek de yok zaten.
Fotoğraflara biraz bakalım mı?
Avrupa sokakları canlı diye bilinirmiş; hiç alakası yok diyor Baudrillard, Amerikan sokaklarındaki curcunayı görünce. Avrupa’da oyalanılmadan gelip geçilen sokaklar devrim, barikat kurma gibi tarihi anlarda canlanırmış.
Başarmak, Amerikalıda bir takıntı; aklınıza gelebilecek her durumu “başarı ” konusu yapıyorlar. Dağa tırmanırlar, maraton koşarlar, binlerce ton ağırlığın altına spor olsun diye yatarlar, gökdelen damlarında ip üzerinde gösteri yaparlar... Senin kitap okuduğunu öğrense, “var mısın yarışmaya, beş dakikada hangimiz daha fazla okuyacağız” der ve gider günlerce çalışır, beş dakikada beş yüz kitabı okumayı öğrenir ve karşına dikilip “hadi var mısın” der. En çok karelerden biridir bu.
‘Ya ışıklar sönerse’ korkusu Amerikalıların yenemediği sayısız korkulardan biri ve bu yüzdendir ki, şehirleri Işıl ışıldır. Bu fotoğrafa da bayılıyorum. Bak şu binayı görüyor musun, orası otel; odalarda kimse yok ama ışıkları yanıyor ve televizyonlar açık.
Amerika’da saygın bir yaşam sürmek isteyen vatandaşlar ne yapıp edip ekranda görünmeye bakıyor. On saniyeliğine bile olsa ekranda görünmediyseniz yüzünüze bakılmayan zavallı birisinizdir... “Ay şekerim, seni geçen günü ekranda görür gibi oldum. Sana hayranım.” “Sorma bebeğim, biraz aceleye geldi. Sen epeydir ekranda görünmüyorsun. Böyle devam edersen kapılar yüzüne kapanır, markete bile giremezsin, haberin olsun.”
Bu kadar yeter. Aslında bu fotoğraflar eski, yaklaşık kırk yıl önce çekilmiş. Amerika 80’li yıllarda yazılmış bir kitap ve o dönemde henüz cep telefonu, Google yoktu; Dünya Ticaret Merkezi saldırıya uğramamıştı; arı kovanına çomak sokar gibi Ortadoğu nüfusu dünyanın dört bir tarafına henüz dağıtılmamıştı.
Evet, Amerika kitabı güncelliğini yitirmiş gibi duruyorsa da Baudrillard bu yolculuğu günümüzde yapsaydı Amerika kitabını sil baştan yazacağını hiç zannetmiyorum, metin ‘ne diyorsak o’ kalitesinde; sanırım sayfa adedini artırırdı.
Son paragrafları ne sen sooor ne de ben bahsini edeyim.
Keyifli bir okumaydı. Son bölümün birkaç sayfası dinamit doluydu, bir taraftan da bombardıman vardı, moral bozuculuğundan ötürü bu son sayfalarda epeyce bir süründüm ama genelde keyifle okudum Amerika’yı.
Hey birader, bu Amerika denen kitap savaşı mı anlatıyor; dinamitler, bombalar n'oluyor bunlar? Yok be yaaa, lafın gelişi, kitapta silahın ‘s’inden dahi bahsedilmiyor. Amerika deyince aklıma hep silah geliyor. Hepsi bu. Onların da aklında hep silah var, merak etme. Yardım diye silah yardımını biliyorlar.
Silah ve gözyaşı Amerikan güzelliklerindendir.
Yuhh be kardeşim; onca film, onca roman, onca müzik, onca belgesel, onca şey neyse, onca güzellik varken, sersemin dediğine bak. Jodie Foster’dan utanır insan be! Bardağın boş tarafını gören nankör herifin tekisin sen!
Hadi hadi çek arabanı. Pışt pışt. Yüzyıllardır boş bardak hikayesiyle yığınları kandırıyorsunuz. Neymiş, bardağın boş tarafını görüyorsan kötümser, dolu tarafını görürsen iyimsersin. Bak sen! Çocuk mu kandırıyorsun? İnsan susuzluk çekiyorsa bardağın dolu tarafını görür. Anladın mı? Görüşün karakterle bir ilgisi yok yani, hangi durumda olduğunla ilgisi var. Senin o sevgili bardağını sabah başka, öğlen başka, akşam da bambaşka görürsün. Seni sersem! Dolayısıyla dünya çürüyorsa ve Amerika’da süper güçse, kusura bakma ama ben Amerika’da Jodie Foster’i göremem. Bütün o sanatsı güzellikleri mantar tabancası bile tuz buz eder. Git bunu Foster’cığına söyle. Hadi çek arabanı! Pışt pışt...
Şaka maka, Amerika'yı okurken habire tabanca kokusu alıyordum. Sonra düşündüm dedim ki, acaba parfüm olarak silah kokusu var mı? Hiç duymadım görmedim. Düşünsene, üstün başın barut kokar halde bir ortama giriyorsun. Otorite takıntısı çekenler bu kokuya hasta olur valla. El bombası kokusu mesela. Yürü git işine ya!
Amerika kitabında çevirmen Yaşar Avunç çok iyi iş çıkarmış. Amerika sonuçta sosyolojik bir metin. Ve Türkiye’de yüzyıllardır sosyoloji (de) çalışmıyor. Dolayısıyla kavram da üretmiyoruz. Çevirilerde yararlanacağın ‘kavram havuz’un yok, bütün yükü çevirmenler çekiyor haliyle. İşin yoksa kavram uydur. Baudrillard kitabında kendi özel kavramlarını da kullanmış üstelik. Şikayeti bırakıp paragrafı toparlarsak, kelimelerin Türkçede karşılıksız çıkmasıyla bazı cümleler havada kaldı. Fakat biz karşılıksız işlerde yaşamaya alışkınız. Karşılıksız çek, aşk, belge, ücret, artık ne varsa. Sorun yok yani. Karşılıklı idare ettik!
Kitabın anlaşılabilir kısımlarında keyifle okunan bir kitap ortaya çıkaran Yaşar Aytunç'a saygılarımı sunuyorum.
Kitabı tanımlarsak: Amerika’yı anlamanın uğraşısına girişmenin kitabıdır, Amerika. Ve sonrasında kılıçlar çekilip gerekli hesaplaşmalar yapıldıktan sonraki süreci ne sen sooor ne de ben bahsini edeyim.
Pardon, neyin girişmesi dediniz, anlamadım, biraz açar mısınız?
Jean Baudrillard salondan yazmıyor yani, masasına kurulup da bir iki kitap karıştırarak “Avrupalılar şöyledir Amerikalılar da böyledir” diye sallamıyor yani. Ne yapıyormuş peki yani(!)? Sahaya iniyor. Amerika kırsalında yollara düşüyor. Çöllerde yatıp kalkıyor. Şehre vardığında binaları, mekanları inceliyor, oradan kalabalıklara karışıp insanların yüzlerine dikkat kesiliyor. Ha bu arada, sık sık memleketi Paris geliyor aklına, ordan kıyaslamalar yapıyor ister istemez. YANİ.
Amerika’yı anlıyor mu peki? Bir paragrafta veya sayfada anlatacak şekilde anlıyor mu, anlatıyor mu? Hani demek istiyorum ki, yormasın bizi.
Cevabı biliyorsun, mümkün değil. Başka kapıya. Baudrillard, Amerika’ya dair yüzlerce cümle kuruyor ama fotoğraf kareleri gibi duruyor bu anlatımlar ve bu kareleri birleştirmeye kalkışmak aptalların işidir; ömür yetmez, gerek de yok zaten.
Fotoğraflara biraz bakalım mı?
Avrupa sokakları canlı diye bilinirmiş; hiç alakası yok diyor Baudrillard, Amerikan sokaklarındaki curcunayı görünce. Avrupa’da oyalanılmadan gelip geçilen sokaklar devrim, barikat kurma gibi tarihi anlarda canlanırmış.
Başarmak, Amerikalıda bir takıntı; aklınıza gelebilecek her durumu “başarı ” konusu yapıyorlar. Dağa tırmanırlar, maraton koşarlar, binlerce ton ağırlığın altına spor olsun diye yatarlar, gökdelen damlarında ip üzerinde gösteri yaparlar... Senin kitap okuduğunu öğrense, “var mısın yarışmaya, beş dakikada hangimiz daha fazla okuyacağız” der ve gider günlerce çalışır, beş dakikada beş yüz kitabı okumayı öğrenir ve karşına dikilip “hadi var mısın” der. En çok karelerden biridir bu.
‘Ya ışıklar sönerse’ korkusu Amerikalıların yenemediği sayısız korkulardan biri ve bu yüzdendir ki, şehirleri Işıl ışıldır. Bu fotoğrafa da bayılıyorum. Bak şu binayı görüyor musun, orası otel; odalarda kimse yok ama ışıkları yanıyor ve televizyonlar açık.
Amerika’da saygın bir yaşam sürmek isteyen vatandaşlar ne yapıp edip ekranda görünmeye bakıyor. On saniyeliğine bile olsa ekranda görünmediyseniz yüzünüze bakılmayan zavallı birisinizdir... “Ay şekerim, seni geçen günü ekranda görür gibi oldum. Sana hayranım.” “Sorma bebeğim, biraz aceleye geldi. Sen epeydir ekranda görünmüyorsun. Böyle devam edersen kapılar yüzüne kapanır, markete bile giremezsin, haberin olsun.”
Bu kadar yeter. Aslında bu fotoğraflar eski, yaklaşık kırk yıl önce çekilmiş. Amerika 80’li yıllarda yazılmış bir kitap ve o dönemde henüz cep telefonu, Google yoktu; Dünya Ticaret Merkezi saldırıya uğramamıştı; arı kovanına çomak sokar gibi Ortadoğu nüfusu dünyanın dört bir tarafına henüz dağıtılmamıştı.
Evet, Amerika kitabı güncelliğini yitirmiş gibi duruyorsa da Baudrillard bu yolculuğu günümüzde yapsaydı Amerika kitabını sil baştan yazacağını hiç zannetmiyorum, metin ‘ne diyorsak o’ kalitesinde; sanırım sayfa adedini artırırdı.
Son paragrafları ne sen sooor ne de ben bahsini edeyim.
March 14, 2025
۳,۵/۵
البته که امریکایی که بودریار برای ما شرح میده و مبتذل میخونتش، امریکای الان نیست ولی میتونیم بگیم بعد از ریگان، ما با امریکای فرا مبتذل مواجهیم.
این رو هم در نظر بگیریم که اگر بودریار به وجود فرانسوی خودش میگه جهان سوم، پس ما در این جهان جایی نداریم.
البته که امریکایی که بودریار برای ما شرح میده و مبتذل میخونتش، امریکای الان نیست ولی میتونیم بگیم بعد از ریگان، ما با امریکای فرا مبتذل مواجهیم.
این رو هم در نظر بگیریم که اگر بودریار به وجود فرانسوی خودش میگه جهان سوم، پس ما در این جهان جایی نداریم.
May 9, 2015
I had hoped this book would be a sort of postmodern De Tocqueville reflection of America, and was rather disappointed that this turned out to be a sort of postmodern De Tocqueville reflection of America. Billed as a "collection of traveller's tales" from "France's leading philosopher," the book establishes itself as a work of postmodernism as the reader struggles to determine whether Baudrillard ever actually stepped foot in America. Despite a brief name-check of Minneapolis, generic descriptions of New York's architecture, and a rather underwhelming/unconvincing account of the California desert, it's painfully obvious that Baudrillard had already sketched out his book before his "arrival."
Doubly so, because the framework for his "observations" are little more than conjecture. For example, his assertion that "the real crisis of American power, that of a potential stabilization by inertia, of an assumption of power in a vacuum" (128) following World War II somehow neglects decades of Cold War era arms race.
Similarly, his discussion of the American experience of Vietnam -- "...as something remote from them, a television war, with no understanding of the world's condemnation of their actions and only to see their enemy" (118) -- somehow neglects the notion that the Vietnam War was a direct result of the Indochina War, which Baudrillard's homeland only abandoned due to impending bankruptcy from the rest of their empire crumbling beneath them.
Furthermore, his entire notion that America exists as a paradoxical achieved utopia (esp. his description on p. 83) is not only ridiculous for idolizing a sustained successful democracy (because that's totally a static achievement), but fails to note that America never came close to achieving any form of equality requisite for a true democracy to occur.
And then there are the other, laughable/WTF moments like: : "America has never been short of violence, nor of events, people, or ideas, but these things do not of themselves constitute a history" (87).
Having read and enjoyed "Simulacra and Simulation" and "The Spirit of Terrorism," I had high hopes for a more informal snapshot of Baudrillard's philosophy; what it turned out to be was the recurring themes of "America is the desert" and "America lacks history." Essentially, it read like DeLillo, but without any form of plot progression or denouement. That's not to say that this book is without merit. For every five ahistorical statements, Baudrillard presents one interesting (although, perhaps, unoriginal) thought. For example, "it is, therefore, in America and nowhere else that modernity is original" (87) ties together his (problematic) notions of American freedom of space with the American lack of tradition by arguing that modernity is the obvious response to an advanced culture populating a previously uncivilized urban space. (Though even this is obviously wrong, yet Baudrillard simply disregards this.)
Perhaps his point that America is endless like the desert was simply form mirroring function, as he repeats his theories for 138 pages while somehow failing to produce substantive, factual examples to develop his ideas before he finally cuts himself off.
If you're considering reading this book, I'd recommend one of DeLillo's shorter novels instead (Point Omega, perhaps), as it spends a proportional amount of time talking about time in the desert, and is a much more interesting read.
Doubly so, because the framework for his "observations" are little more than conjecture. For example, his assertion that "the real crisis of American power, that of a potential stabilization by inertia, of an assumption of power in a vacuum" (128) following World War II somehow neglects decades of Cold War era arms race.
Similarly, his discussion of the American experience of Vietnam -- "...as something remote from them, a television war, with no understanding of the world's condemnation of their actions and only to see their enemy" (118) -- somehow neglects the notion that the Vietnam War was a direct result of the Indochina War, which Baudrillard's homeland only abandoned due to impending bankruptcy from the rest of their empire crumbling beneath them.
Furthermore, his entire notion that America exists as a paradoxical achieved utopia (esp. his description on p. 83) is not only ridiculous for idolizing a sustained successful democracy (because that's totally a static achievement), but fails to note that America never came close to achieving any form of equality requisite for a true democracy to occur.
And then there are the other, laughable/WTF moments like: : "America has never been short of violence, nor of events, people, or ideas, but these things do not of themselves constitute a history" (87).
Having read and enjoyed "Simulacra and Simulation" and "The Spirit of Terrorism," I had high hopes for a more informal snapshot of Baudrillard's philosophy; what it turned out to be was the recurring themes of "America is the desert" and "America lacks history." Essentially, it read like DeLillo, but without any form of plot progression or denouement. That's not to say that this book is without merit. For every five ahistorical statements, Baudrillard presents one interesting (although, perhaps, unoriginal) thought. For example, "it is, therefore, in America and nowhere else that modernity is original" (87) ties together his (problematic) notions of American freedom of space with the American lack of tradition by arguing that modernity is the obvious response to an advanced culture populating a previously uncivilized urban space. (Though even this is obviously wrong, yet Baudrillard simply disregards this.)
Perhaps his point that America is endless like the desert was simply form mirroring function, as he repeats his theories for 138 pages while somehow failing to produce substantive, factual examples to develop his ideas before he finally cuts himself off.
If you're considering reading this book, I'd recommend one of DeLillo's shorter novels instead (Point Omega, perhaps), as it spends a proportional amount of time talking about time in the desert, and is a much more interesting read.
February 28, 2022
Baudrillard wreaks of nostalgia for a past that never was here. Still, his writing is exceptional, and even when he is at his most bitter, one feels a sense of wonder in his words. Wonder at how far things have been led astray from old forms of justice and goodness, and at America as a completion of the human project to dominate the real, or the completion of the Simulacra.
I was reminded of Minima Moralia, intentionally I think. They both have this old-mannish apocalypse-bringer tone, but Baudrillard's project has a narrower thesis. I think that worked out for the best. I wouldn't be convinced either way, but I loved the ride.
I was reminded of Minima Moralia, intentionally I think. They both have this old-mannish apocalypse-bringer tone, but Baudrillard's project has a narrower thesis. I think that worked out for the best. I wouldn't be convinced either way, but I loved the ride.
December 12, 2016
He talks so much bollocks, some of it quite objectionable, but then there is sparkling insight too. And somehow the bollocks still manages to be interesting.
Oh, and it's very funny that in a book so determined to describe some cultural essence of America, positively contrasted with the European, Baudrillard doesn't escape for one minute from everything characteristically French in his writing and theorising.
Oh, and it's very funny that in a book so determined to describe some cultural essence of America, positively contrasted with the European, Baudrillard doesn't escape for one minute from everything characteristically French in his writing and theorising.
February 7, 2026
Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ analysed American culture better and in fewer words. It’s also less pretentious, and dismantles the kind of Europhile pretension rife within this text. While I found this book very well written and parts of it still prescient, it was hard to ignore the more dated or outright hypocritical aspects. On the whole, I really enjoyed reading this - I won’t get into the good parts because they are worth reading and speak for themselves without needing my contribution. However, I found Baudrillard’s arrogant condescension quite unbearable at times and undermined the lucidity and depth of his arguments.
Baudrillard’s capitalism takedown of New York rings hollow for me: what Baudrillard observes as the pathological loneliness and ubiquitous pursuit of wealth in New York, can also be attributed to every major city in the world. His pronouncement that New York is particularly indifferent to its inhabitants - like many of his pronouncements - is only supported with mawkish allegories: he describes the tragedy of seeing people eating alone in NY as a supposed symbol of late stage capitalist individualism and alienation, this comes up a few times later in the book. You will find people eating alone in different environments all over the world, even societies where food is hugely culturally significant. People are busy and alienation is not necessarily a symptom of that - for some, eating alone is meditative and enjoyable. This repetitive motif for American society reads as a very flimsy, shallow take.
Later on, Baudrillard describes the American revolution as a success, unlike the European revolutions:
“When all is said and done, it is on the murder of Kennedy that Reagan's current reign is founded. That murder has been neither avenged nor elucidated, and with good reason. And this is not to mention the murder of the Indians. It is the energy of Kennedy's murder which radiates out over present-day America. I say this to illustrate not only the indulgence, but the self-publicizing, self-justificatory violence of this society, that triumphalist violence which forms part of all successful revolutions.”
The “this society” is ironically hilarious. This seems like a major projection coming from a French man, a member of one of the most brutal European colonial powers responsible for some of the worst “self-justificatory” “triumphalist violence” in history. To frame this as the genesis of American society is not wrong, but it is a lineage inherited from Europe. Baudrillard’s self-awareness is not apparent.
Moreover, Baudrillard argues that America lacks the prestige in transgression present in France. I found this quite reductive considering the valorisation of being a “rebel” in American culture, especially cinema. Greasers had been a thing in the suburban consciousness decades before this book was written; there is a reason the Italian mafia is romanticised in America as opposed to Italy. Aside from this point, Baudrillard consistently chooses to overlook the fringes of American society as inconsequential in the formation of the cultural makeup. Every dominant culture in a society is conformist, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to transgress.
“Here in America only what is produced or manifested has meaning; for us in Europe only what can be thought or concealed has meaning. Even materialism is only an idea in Europe.”
This is an absurd thing to say hailing from the wine, cosmetics and fashion capital of the world…the country with Versailles and foie gras! Perhaps Baudrillard considers these consumable goods as refined, sophisticated cultural heirlooms, not to be lumped in with the gaucheness of American materialism. It is the old money society that has extracted wealth through centuries of colonial imperialism, looking down on the nouveau riche society as parvenu hucksters. A lot of these types of ‘observations’ throughout the book make me believe that the critical differences between Western European and American society do not lie in their values but in their aesthetics; it is a brand issue for snobs.
Towards the end, Baudrillard demonstrates some self awareness: he relents that America is a hyperreal reflection of European decadence, a simulacrum whose origins accusingly point back on Europe. However, this intellectual concession is betrayed by the enduring tone of French superiority throughout the text.
I found the inclusion of Isabelle Huppert’s line about the American perception of the French accurate and funny: “They have everything. They don’t need anything. Admittedly, they envy us our past and our culture and admire them, but deep down to them we are a sort of elegant Third World.” In turn, Baudrillard views America as the ignorant, ugly relation Europe tries (and fails) to conceptually distance itself from.
Baudrillard’s capitalism takedown of New York rings hollow for me: what Baudrillard observes as the pathological loneliness and ubiquitous pursuit of wealth in New York, can also be attributed to every major city in the world. His pronouncement that New York is particularly indifferent to its inhabitants - like many of his pronouncements - is only supported with mawkish allegories: he describes the tragedy of seeing people eating alone in NY as a supposed symbol of late stage capitalist individualism and alienation, this comes up a few times later in the book. You will find people eating alone in different environments all over the world, even societies where food is hugely culturally significant. People are busy and alienation is not necessarily a symptom of that - for some, eating alone is meditative and enjoyable. This repetitive motif for American society reads as a very flimsy, shallow take.
Later on, Baudrillard describes the American revolution as a success, unlike the European revolutions:
“When all is said and done, it is on the murder of Kennedy that Reagan's current reign is founded. That murder has been neither avenged nor elucidated, and with good reason. And this is not to mention the murder of the Indians. It is the energy of Kennedy's murder which radiates out over present-day America. I say this to illustrate not only the indulgence, but the self-publicizing, self-justificatory violence of this society, that triumphalist violence which forms part of all successful revolutions.”
The “this society” is ironically hilarious. This seems like a major projection coming from a French man, a member of one of the most brutal European colonial powers responsible for some of the worst “self-justificatory” “triumphalist violence” in history. To frame this as the genesis of American society is not wrong, but it is a lineage inherited from Europe. Baudrillard’s self-awareness is not apparent.
Moreover, Baudrillard argues that America lacks the prestige in transgression present in France. I found this quite reductive considering the valorisation of being a “rebel” in American culture, especially cinema. Greasers had been a thing in the suburban consciousness decades before this book was written; there is a reason the Italian mafia is romanticised in America as opposed to Italy. Aside from this point, Baudrillard consistently chooses to overlook the fringes of American society as inconsequential in the formation of the cultural makeup. Every dominant culture in a society is conformist, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to transgress.
“Here in America only what is produced or manifested has meaning; for us in Europe only what can be thought or concealed has meaning. Even materialism is only an idea in Europe.”
This is an absurd thing to say hailing from the wine, cosmetics and fashion capital of the world…the country with Versailles and foie gras! Perhaps Baudrillard considers these consumable goods as refined, sophisticated cultural heirlooms, not to be lumped in with the gaucheness of American materialism. It is the old money society that has extracted wealth through centuries of colonial imperialism, looking down on the nouveau riche society as parvenu hucksters. A lot of these types of ‘observations’ throughout the book make me believe that the critical differences between Western European and American society do not lie in their values but in their aesthetics; it is a brand issue for snobs.
Towards the end, Baudrillard demonstrates some self awareness: he relents that America is a hyperreal reflection of European decadence, a simulacrum whose origins accusingly point back on Europe. However, this intellectual concession is betrayed by the enduring tone of French superiority throughout the text.
I found the inclusion of Isabelle Huppert’s line about the American perception of the French accurate and funny: “They have everything. They don’t need anything. Admittedly, they envy us our past and our culture and admire them, but deep down to them we are a sort of elegant Third World.” In turn, Baudrillard views America as the ignorant, ugly relation Europe tries (and fails) to conceptually distance itself from.
January 20, 2026
This yap is coming at you in 3D with Dolby surrond sound.
This book is ~30 pages of (admittedly really interesting and often beautiful) poetics interspersed with the remaining 100 pages of nothingness passing as analysis (which requires arguments, evidence, etc).
This not specific to this book, but I really need to get it off my chest; I hate how (I believe intentionally) elusive and immune the Postmodernist framework is to criticism. Through denial of meaning and conventionality there is absolutely no standard by which to judge the work or its analysis (even this statement could be said to be appealing to convention!!!). Additionally, any points or comments become almost fatalistic as they are genuinely unchallengable (any observation, trend, claim, etc written down becomes law; at the same time, its' truth value is negated- once again, the circularness returns). The entire framework can be summarized to be self destructive and paradoxical simultaneously. Thus, any discontent of the work can so easily be dismissed with: "that's the point!", or equally so: "you missed the whole point" (ironically they mean the same thing). So this is what I say in response: Whatever, shut up. This is not a movement or a serious literary thought, it is an aesthetic- which is a shame considering how relevant it is.
Finally, I find it pretty hilarious he had the gall to reference Arendt in the midst of his jargon ramblings in order to make some vague, (and, remarkably, by intention) nothing point. There's nothing wrong with writing on pure vibes (most of my favorites are), but don't try and call it criticism or analysis; throw in some adjectives and you've got yourself a hell of a poem.
This book is ~30 pages of (admittedly really interesting and often beautiful) poetics interspersed with the remaining 100 pages of nothingness passing as analysis (which requires arguments, evidence, etc).
This not specific to this book, but I really need to get it off my chest; I hate how (I believe intentionally) elusive and immune the Postmodernist framework is to criticism. Through denial of meaning and conventionality there is absolutely no standard by which to judge the work or its analysis (even this statement could be said to be appealing to convention!!!). Additionally, any points or comments become almost fatalistic as they are genuinely unchallengable (any observation, trend, claim, etc written down becomes law; at the same time, its' truth value is negated- once again, the circularness returns). The entire framework can be summarized to be self destructive and paradoxical simultaneously. Thus, any discontent of the work can so easily be dismissed with: "that's the point!", or equally so: "you missed the whole point" (ironically they mean the same thing). So this is what I say in response: Whatever, shut up. This is not a movement or a serious literary thought, it is an aesthetic- which is a shame considering how relevant it is.
Finally, I find it pretty hilarious he had the gall to reference Arendt in the midst of his jargon ramblings in order to make some vague, (and, remarkably, by intention) nothing point. There's nothing wrong with writing on pure vibes (most of my favorites are), but don't try and call it criticism or analysis; throw in some adjectives and you've got yourself a hell of a poem.
March 29, 2020
100mph thoughts from a giant of French philosophy. The book is full of profoundly astute observations - Baudrillard captures thoughts and feelings I wasn’t even aware I had, and beautifully. Would read again.
March 14, 2021
A European journeying through America and finding a vast amount of natural beauty along with interesting cultural remarks and insights. The descriptions of the desert, highways, and cities have a Ballardian feel to them. Filled with interesting remarks and observations that feel absurdly similar to the America I’m living in fifty years later. Overall, good stuff.
Read
January 14, 2026"Nothing will be done to save them and perhaps nothing can be done, since enfranchisement, emancipation, and expansion have already taken place. There are therefore none of the elements here for a future revolution; what we see here are merely the inescapable results of an orgy of power, and an irreversible concentration of the world that has followed upon its extension."
December 6, 2023
Very intelligent and interesting... I just don't agree with him
January 11, 2023
While some of this was definitely outdated and went over my head, a lot of this book resonated with me. So many things I had thought but could not put into words about how I felt about America where explained perfectly. So fractal!!!
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