Forget Baudrillard

In 2016, he marks 15 years since the tragedy of September 11. Since then, terrorism has changed and appeared, on the one hand, by quasi -state, and on the other - the attacks of loners, swearing it for loyalty. This phenomenon is actively discussed by the media, state men and the academic community. In this regard, the reprint under one cover of the two works of Jean Bodriyar (1929–2007) “The Spirit of Terrorism” and “War in the Bay” was not random. They seem to be told: re-read the classic, see how he paradoxically raised the question, expressed a provocative judgment, wisely predicted something there. However, there are texts that are considered to be analytical, but which much more tell us about their author than about their subject, and more often bad than good. Re -read them painful. The Spirit of Terrorism is one of them.

If you try to imagine this or that philosopher surrounded by Aidos of his thoughts, then we could find Baudrillaria sitting on a razor in a dark room in front of the TV turned on, with a heel on the knee and a remote control in his hand. With lazy hostility, he switches the channels and mutters after each click that "everyone is lying on the box." However, in the process of reading the “spirit of terrorism” before the reader, with some probability, a completely different image may arise: the image of a person who welcomes violence takes his side and preaches death, and does it quite consciously. The first critics of his work in 2001 were first seen in 2001, but since then a lot of time passed, almost everything was forgotten, and many public intellectuals popular today supported his main thesis. Since readers, commentators and authors of preface to his work are quite often amazing conformists who accept his statements about his own “humanism” for a pure coin, we are faced with the task of understanding what this humanism consists of and which of these two images is closer to reality.

According to the philosopher, terrorism is a proportional violent response to the violence of liberal democracy, that is, the violence of security, control and simulacra, and the answer that fell as if from within it itself as a necessary consequence, and not human arbitrariness. About the same was said by Derrida, Virillo and Zizhek, and there is still nothing particularly original. However, fiercely the Bodriyar hateing America not only does not hide his joy about what happened, but also peremptorily states that all of humanity shares it with him. Thus, he writes: “ The Holy Union against terrorism, moral condemnation are proportionate to the extraordinary glee, concluded in the contemplation of the destruction of this global omnipotence”, “One cannot help but dream of the destruction of all omnipotence, which has become so hegemonic,” and the conclusion that pleases the reader as a pin for the collection: “ They did it, but we did it, but we did it, but we did it, but we did it. They wanted. " Baudrillaria does not convince us that any Western man is sleeping and sees the fall of twin towers-he just knows this, because he feels that. However, this thesis says something only about the author himself: yes, he wanted this since 1976, when he allegedly predicted this fall, but why we should share joy with him is unknown.

However, the violence of terrorism, nevertheless, is essentially different from the violence of the system, because it is real, meaningful, sacrificial, in the terminology of the author - symbolic, not simulated: “ Mobilized violence of the system turns against it, because terrorist acts are both a mirror of its own prohibitive violence of the system, and a model of symbolic violence, which is prohibited in it, this is the only type violence that the system cannot carry out is violence of its own death. ” In his other works, Bodriyar often wrote that a person cannot even die properly - to die once and for all, completely, completely disappear. Even the death itself, in the order of simulacra, became a parody of itself, scattering, division, copying: the memory is prostheted by Google, a personality - an account in Facebook, a face and voice - a picture in Skype, etc., therefore, a person appears as a combination of information, is infinitely shared, copied and cannot completely die, since there is too much of it after the cessation of the brain of the brain. The inability to completely die for each individual person is mating and with the desire to expel death from society as a whole - less to lose in the war and knocked down in car accidents, to stretch old age as long as possible, to remove suffering from the very process of dying - here to recall the criticism of Huxley in his anti -utopia “The Widest New World”. However, it is the absolute, meaningful, suffered death of the body for Baudrillard is a value; Together with the terrorist attack, it is in the system, as it were, from the outside of it, from some other, parallel measurement.

To figure out what is symbolic, which breaks through the Hyperreal veil and reveals to us real death, fire and violence, we should return twenty -five years ago and turn to the work “Symbolic exchange and Death” (1976) - the first noticeable text of the philosopher. In it, referring to Georges Batay (1897–1962), distinguishes the modern illusory world of simulacra and the primitive true world of values: from the first death is expelled, in the second it is in harmony with life, so that there is not even life or living and the dead, but there is a vivid life. Batay himself, in the late period of his work, called these two worlds to profane and sacred, he believed that this second is a nature in its unity and total violence, since the galaxies rush into it into the distance, the lion devours the antelope and all the living dies. Expelled from his animal state, a person can return to him by sacrificing his humanity, that is, his ego, his subjectivity. So, it was from the sphere of this sacred, violent and sacrificial insanity that the terrorists came to us, according to Baudrillard, and he welcomes this phenomenon. However, Batai, with all his obsession with violence, war and victims, limited her only to the imaginary past and his own death, sharply condemning all that, the contemporary of which he happened to become, and primarily the second world. In the comments that followed the “spirit of terrorism”, Baudrillard returns to the idea of ​​domination (or sovereignty), which has gone a long way to interpret from Hegel through Kozhev to Batai: in relation to us, terrorists act as Hegelian gentlemen, because they are ready to risk the value of their own life. In addition to this sacrificial, terrorism has no other meaning, but that is why it can destroy the system.

To be surprised at this attitude of Baudrillard towards terrorism, however, it is not worth it. This is not at all Coming out, everything was already known for a long time, it was simply either not noticed or filtered. So, at the end of Simulakra and Simulation (1981) there is such a passage: “ ... this does not solve the urgent need to inflict a very definite defeat of the system. Only terrorism can do this. <...> To be a terrorist, this means to transfer, up to the border of intolerance to the hegemonist system, this radical line of mockery and violence, then I am a terrorist and nihilist of theory, like other terrorists and nihilists with weapons in their hands. ” The only thing that causes the author’s discontent is the impossibility of such terrorism that he would like to see, because “ in this system, even death affects its absence. Remember the major terrorist attacks of recent years: death is canceled by indifference, and in this terrorism is an involuntary accomplice of the system <...> for death - neither ritual nor violent - there is no longer the scene <...> where it could prove itself, play a role. " As you can see, nothing has changed in twenty years: he longed for sacrificial death back in 1981, and in 2001 such death was found and gained its approval. It seems that after that no words are needed: this is not an original thought, not a provocative thesis, and we were not mistaken: it simply with open text supports destruction, violence and murder, because he sees “less evil” or not even evil at all, because there is neither good nor evil. The paper with his signature is in our hands, but what to do now is incomprehensible. To begin with, probably, one should stop counting the “spirit of terrorism” “analysis” of the “problem” of terrorism: this is the same thing as to consider the works of Hans Gunte-Ra “analysis” of the “problem” of the race. We add that although Baudrillard writes everywhere about the expulsion of death in the modern world, he himself completely expels her from his own discourse: he not only does not say anything about three thousand victims on September 11, but the very word “death” in his use is some kind of plastic: in his texts there is no place for pain, blood, suffocation, crushed bodies, and injuries, injuries, injuries. Or anything like that, that in the texts of the same Batai constantly attracts attention and returns to the corporate measurement of human being.

Baudrillard’s gaze at terrorism in the general context of his philosophy, however, is not an anomaly at all: he really supports any violence to the extent that it is opposed to the “system”. In one of the footnotes in Simulakhrakh and Simulation, he, as it were, rehabilitates fascism. The original here is again eloquent than any comments: “ The fascism itself, the secret of its appearance and its collective energy, not a single interpretation of which is not successful <...> can now be interpreted as a“ irrational ”escalation of mythical and political referents, insane intensification of collective values ​​(blood, race, nation, etc.), repeated injection of death,“ political aesthetics Death ", which occurs at a moment when in the West, the process of disappointment in the values ​​and collective values, rational secularization and single -size of the entire being, and the operationalization of all social and individual life already makes itself felt. And again, everything is suitable to avoid this disaster of value, this neutralization and peace of life. Fascism is a resistance <...> something even worse. "

Criticizing the hidden systemic violence of Western liberal democracy, the influential French intellectuals of the 20th century counted many times in another extreme, justifying direct, revolutionary, liberation and so on, violence and supporting conservative, militaristic and repressive regimes. The turn of Sartre to the Soviet Union and its support for revolutions in Cuba and Cambodia are well known; Once he even stated that killing a European is to kill two birds with one stone: to destroy the oppressor and free the oppressed. Foucault enthusiastically met the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979 and spoke completely crazy things about her for several years that as a result, genuine freedom, equality, brotherhood, etc. would be achieved. When mass executions began, he was silent, but he never refused his words. Almost all the freedom -loving “sixties” were zealous Maoists and in every possible way supported the “cultural revolution”.

And this is only in France: the brackets of 93 remains behind the brackets in support of German militarism, apology for violent regimes, wars and violence from Sheler, Yung, Heidegger, Hamsun, Jungra, Schmitt, Choran, Eliade and dozens of other influential intellectuals. Baudrillard closes this sad procession, but at the same time it is at some distance from all others. “The Spirit of Terrorism” was written by him thirty years after the last more or less excusable illusions had to finally unwind. This, as we saw, did not happen. The halo of holiness, surrounding other thinkers, makes them almost invulnerable to any criticism or especially revaluation. Everyone always knew about the rector's performances by Heidegger of 1933-1934, but I had to wait for the publication of “black notebooks” in order to at least a little to scratch the bulletproof barrier of his greatness and almost the power of shaken from the academic public hypothesis that he was Nazi. Justification of fascism, violence and terrorism, obviously, is not enough to begin the revaluation of Baudrillard; Even during his lifetime, this was not possible Susan Umbable, who knew very well what he was, and which he accused of aggressive distribution of the new world order in the early 1990s to assist the Bosnians after the genocide. Bodriyar, unfortunately, has already entered the language of the mass reader who complains of television propaganda, American lies and generally on the dominance of simulacra - although this word itself does not describe reality, but determines our attitude towards it and in this sense creates it. It remains only the hope that over time this language itself will die and disappear, as the skin is dying and peeling.

Alexey Zygmont,
graduate student of the school of philosophy of the Faculty of Humanities of the Higher School
Photo from "Wikipedia"