The Map Is Not The Territory Quotes

“Whatever the case may be, there is a major inconsistency in continuing to use a discourse of the universal as a discourse of reference when it has no meaning or effect anywhere - neither with global power nor in opposition to it.
To relativize our concept of the universal: with the increasing globalization of the world, discrimination becomes more ferocious.
The cartography should not confuse these zones beyond reality with those that still give signs of reality in the same hegemonic system of globalization, even though they do not function in the same way. We could even say that the gap separating them is growing and something that was only a cultural singularity in a non-unified world becomes real discrimination in a globalized universe. The more the world is globalized, the worst the discrimination.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Agony of Power

“One should not believe that reality is equally distributed over the surface of the globe as if we were dealing with an objective world that was equal for everyone. Zones, entire continents have not seen the appearance of reality and its principle: they are underdeveloped in this generic sense that is more profound than the economic, technical or political. The West, after passing through a (historic) stage of reality, entered the (virtual) stage of ultra-reality. By contrast, a majority of the "rest of the world" have not even reached the stage of reality and (economic, political, etc.) rationality. Between the two, there are zones of reality, interstices, alveoli, shreds of reality that survive in the heart of globalization and the hyper-reality of networks-a bit like the shreds of territory that float to the surface of the map in Borges' fable. One could speak of an index of reality, a rate of reality on the planet that could be mapped out like birthrates or the levels of atmospheric pollution.What would the maximum rate of reality be?”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Agony of Power

“What exactly is he trying to sell?’ Ignoring Catherine Austin, Dr Nathan walked over to the photographs of the isolation volunteers on the enamel wall beside the window. The question revealed either astonishing ignorance or a complicity in that conspiracy of the unconscious he had only now begun to unravel. He turned to face the young woman, irritated as always by her strong, quizzical gaze, an overlay of her own potent sexuality. ‘ You, Dr Austin. These advertisements constitute an explicit portrait of yourself, a contour map of your own body, an obscene newsreel of yourself during intercourse.’ He rapped the magazines with his gold cigarette case. ‘These images are fragments in a terminal moraine left behind by your passage through consciousness.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

“Sometimes it is, unbeknown to us, the name or the nickname, not the person or the thing, that is unknown to us.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana