The hyperbolic word “annihilate” is borrowed from Jean Baudrillard himself. In his book Symbolic Exchange and Death, he stated the following: “Referential value is annihilated.” The denial of the “referential” (or reference) is Baudrillard’s technical way of annihilating the world. His other related means to do this job included stressing “signs” rather than “things”, criticising realism, declaring “the death” of something or other, emphasising “hyperreality”/“simulacra”, and declaring that “indeterminacy holds sway”.
Jean Baudrillard’s prose style is flamboyant, rhetorical and difficult to understand. [See note 1.] Of course, not everything Baudrillard wrote is (in my view at least) pretentious and/or incomprehensible. If that were the case, then how would any postmodernist philosopher have become well known? Similarly, I can’t claim to have understood nothing in Baudrillard’s text. If that were the case, then I wouldn’t have been able to write this essay. However, parts of his text are indeed monumentally pretentious. Other parts are not quite so bad.
So there must be scraps of sense among the many literary flourishes. This must be the case in order to draw at least some people in. (Sometimes this is done by the simple use of various — and many — proper names and technical terms which will be already known by most readers.)
Is Baudrillard’s Philosophy Expressed in His Prose Style?
Baudrillard didn’t really argue his case or provide much evidence for his many categorical claims. Indeed, it’s written into Symbolic Exchange and Death that he didn’t need to. Instead, we have a simulacrum of philosophy that’s all style, exaggeration, prophesy, poeticism, generalisation and hype. As just hinted at, Baudrillard’s philosophy actually allows all this.
One reason why Baudrillard allowed himself to write in this way is that he believed that “[d]eterminacy is dead, indeterminacy holds sway”. Not only that, he also claimed that
“[t]here has been an extermination (in the literal sense of the word) of the real of signification”.
In more detail. Baudrillard told his readers that when it comes to “the operation of the sign [this is all we have] behind the empty allusion to what it designates”. All we have is signs referring to signs. Did this (almost?) allowed Baudrillard to say anything in any way?
Yet this philosophical position had enormous repercussions. In other words, because Baudrillard believed that signs only refer to other signs, then he could happily conclude that “[e]ven the concrete reality of exploitation, the violent sociality of labour [is nothing but] signification”.
Philosophical Realism Is Political
It’s clear that Baudrillard’s end game was the denial of “the world and the ‘real’”. He criticised all forms (i.e., not only philosophical) of realism. What’s more, no form of metaphysical anti-realism, instrumentalism, etc. can have any role in Baudrillard’s philosophy either.
In any case, Baudrillard told us about “the never innocent decision to objectify the world and the ‘real’”. He then continued:
“[Realism] postulates the coherence of a specific *discourse*, and scientificity is doubtless only the space of this discourse, never manifest as such, whose simulacrum of ‘objectivity’ covers over this political and strategic speech.”
So politics (as ever in postmodernism, poststructuralism, etc.) is the name of the game here. And that inclusion of politics in everything is justified (if it needs to be justified) because Baudrillard believed that politics is the name of the game for everyone else — and every discipline — too. Thus, there’s no guilt about politicising everything.
In that sense, then, Marxists can’t complain about Baudrillard and other postmodernists for not concerning themselves with politics. They did concern themselves with politics. However, Marxists can — and have — criticised postmodernist philosophers, theorists, etc. for not having the true, right or correct politics (i.e., Marxism).
To spell out the quoted passage above. It can be seen, and has been seen, that everything belongs to a discourse, and every discourse is political in some way. Of course, we can now use the common phrase: If everything is political, then nothing is political. [See note 2.]
Baudrillard on Philosophical Realism and Reference
Baudrillard’s main target was philosophical realism. That said, he used the words “the real” far more than the word “realism” (which he only used once or twice in the sections consulted in this essay).
Baudrillard talked of “[t]he rhetoric of the real”. Attached to the rhetoric of the real was “the golden age of the innocence of language”. Readers may presume that language was deemed innocent in the golden age primarily because of reference. That is, the innocent belief that the word “frog” refers to a frog, and the word “peace” refers to peace. Instead, in Baudrillard’s world, the words “frog” and “peace” refer to other words (or signs) in a system (or systems) of discourse. And once people realise that, then they’re no longer innocent.
It’s not surprising that Baudrillard used words like “rhetoric” and “golden age” when one bears in mind that his analysis was primarily political, not ontological.
One way of deconstructing the real is to tackle it via the pivotal role of reference. The nature of reference is a subject that analytic philosophers, particularly, have focussed on… or at least they did so from the 1960s to the 1990s. This interest can also be dated back to the work of Gottlob Frege in the 19th century.
In basic terms, Baudrillard took part in a “revolution” in which
“*[r]eferential value is annihilated, giving the structural play of value the upper hand*”.
“The structural dimension becomes autonomous by excluding the referential dimension, and is instituted upon the death of reference.”
What does all that mean?
In very simple terms, reference is what happens when a word, term or some other sign refers to something outside of itself, whether to an object, thing, event, condition, etc. Basically, a word doesn’t refer to itself (except in rare circumstances) or to other words (except in slightly less rare circumstances).
Take the word “frog”.
When someone uses the word “frog”, he’s referring to a frog, or, at the very least, to the idea or image of a frog. Usually, the word “frog” isn’t a reference to the word “frog”, and usually it’s not a reference to other words. Even an abstract noun such as “peace” is a reference to something outside the word itself — to an condition or state. Now, of course, the words “frog” and “peace” do get at least part of their semantic content (or meaning) via other words or concepts. But that still doesn’t mean that the word “frog” or “peace” refers to other words or even to a “system” in which those words occurs.
Now all this is complicated. However, that better be it for now.
Baudrillard categorically stated that “[r]eferential value is annihilated”. This means that the word “frog” doesn’t refer to a frog, and “peace” doesn’t refer to peace. Instead, “the structural play of value is given the upper hand”, which means that structures, and the play (or movements) within these structures, are given the upper hand. Basically, words other than “frog” or “peace” are given the upper hand. Consequently, “signs are exchanged against each other rather than against the real”. More clearly, the systems which include the words “frog”, “peace” and other words are given the upper hand.
Yet it’s still hard to decipher what all that means.
As already stated, it means that the word “frog” needn’t (or doesn’t) refer to a frog, and the word “peace” needn’t (or doesn’t) refer to peace. Instead, both “frog” and “peace” refer to other words within a system.
This may seem extreme. However, Baudrillard himself did say that “[t]he structural dimension becomes autonomous by excluding the referential dimension”. In other words, words, structures, and the movement (or play) within a structure are all autonomous. Basically, they don’t require reference. In fact, all this stuff portends “the death of reference”. Yes, frogs, peace, etc. completely drop out of the picture — at least if they’re seen as being “real”.
What of the word “play” in “structural play”?
Baudrillard believed that he was taking part in what he called “[t]he emancipation of the sign”. What did that involve? It
“remove[d] this ‘archaic’ obligation to designate something and it finally becomes free, indifferent and totally indeterminate”.
Elsewhere, Baudrillard announced that “[t]he whole aura of the sign and signification itself is determinately resolved”. How’s that? It’s because “everything is resolved into inscription and decoding”.
Now this may at least partly explain why Baudrillard’s prose style itself is hard to understand. And, no, I don’t mean that I-as-an-individual find it hard to understand. To explain. If what Baudrillard says about reference, realism, signs, discourse, etc. is correct, and he applies his philosophy to his own prose, then almost everyone — other than Baudrillard himself — would find his prose hard to understand. In other words, if Baudrillard “removed this ‘archaic’ obligation to designate something”, then he wouldn’t have required himself to designate anything. This enabled Baudrillard to be “free [and] indifferent” to making sense, offering meaning, etc. Indeed, it made Baudrillard’s own prose “totally indeterminate”. Consequently, Baudrillard allowed himself “to escape into infinite speculation” which was beyond “the real”.
Baudrillard on the Identity of Two Atoms
Baudrillard indulged in some philosophy of science (or philosophy of physics). Oddly (or characteristically), he focused on what he called “identity”.
Let’s put Baudrillard’s radical conclusion first:
“If the principle of identity is in any way ‘true’, even if this is at the infinitesimal level of two atoms, then the entire conventional edifice of science which draws its inspiration from it is also ‘true’.”
In detail, Baudrillard continued with the following words:
“Physics will testify that identity is not only a postulate, but that it is in *things*, since there is an ‘absolute identity of two atoms when they are found to be in the same quantitative state’.”
Usually, when the principle of the identity of indiscernibles is considered, it’s applied to either two objects or a single object. Put another way, it’s one way of determining whether two objects are actually one and the same object. Or, yet again, it’s about whether two different objects can (or cannot) share all their properties.
Firstly, identity will always be the case of a single object in that it will be self-identical regardless of whether two seemingly different objects are, in fact, the same object.
Remember that here Baudrillard was talking about “two atoms” sharing the “same quantitative state”. So atom A would be self-identical, and atom B would be self-identical, regardless of whether or not A and B share all their properties. So perhaps the law of identity is a law that Baudrillard accepted.
However, Baudrillard used (or quoted) the term “absolute identity”, not self-identity. This may create a problem for those readers who know more about analytic philosophy than Continental philosophy. The term “absolute identity” as used in the Continental tradition usually refers to the idea that “all is one”, etc. [See here.] This isn’t so in the analytic tradition. In the analytic tradition, absolute identity (among other things) is put up against relative identity, and squared with numerical identity. In turn, numerical identity is squared with absolute identity.
Now it certainly seems that Baudrillard used term “absolute identity” as it’s used in analytic philosophy. (It can be doubted that physicists themselves ever use such a term about atoms or about anything else.) But there’s a problem here. Was Baudrillard actually talking about two sets of properties being absolutely identical to each other? This is a reminder of what Baudrillard wrote:
“Physics will testify that identity is not only a postulate, but that it is in *things*, since there is an ‘absolute identity of two atoms when they are found in the same quantitative state’.”
The problematic phrase here is “same quantitative state”. And the problematic word is “quantitative”. What do these words mean? Although these words are in quotation marks in Baudrillard’s text (without any reference or note), did he mean the same qualitative state?
When speaking of two atoms, it’s hard to know what “the same quantitative state” means. Or, rather, wouldn’t it mean that two atoms are in fact one atom? So Baudrillard might have been referring to two sets of qualitative states. This is more likely because it would bring up the identity of indiscernibles. In other words, can atom A and atom B share all their qualities (or properties) and still be two atoms?
This issue has been extensively discussed, and it’s been discussed for a long time. However, this isn’t the place to go any further because it’s hard to decipher what Baudrillard actually meant. Worse, he may not have meant either.
Perhaps, instead, Baudrillard was confused by quantum theory in which two atoms cannot occupy the same quantum state. (This is down to the Pauli exclusion principle.) What’s more, if two atoms of the same element have the same electron configuration (i.e., same number of electrons in each energy level), then they will still differ in other properties such as spin and momentum…
[I may be wrong about some of this because some physicists use the phrase “the same quantitative state” in a similar way to those philosophers who use the phrase “the same qualitative state”. Any physicists on Medium, please chip in.]
But why bother with all this detail anyway?
It can be assumed that Baudrillard wouldn’t have been that interested in these “minor” technical points. So, again and in a strong sense, none of this matters because the reason why Baudrillard brought this subject up in the first place was to consequently ask: “[I]s it convention or is it objective reality?”
He answered his own question by stating that this isn’t about ontology: it’s about logic: Thus:
“The truth is that science, like any other discourse, is organised on the basis of a conventional logic.”
And Baudrillard believed that conventional logic is committed to identity, self-identity and absolute identity. (Unconventional logic, readers may conclude, isn’t committed to any of these things.)
Here again, politics enters the picture… Yes, even when discussing the nature of physics, two atoms, and logic, politics enters the picture. (Everything is political.) Indeed, Baudrillard classes all this as “ideological discourse”. And ideological discourse “requires a real, ‘objective’ reference within the process of substance in order to justify it”.
Modern logic — from the 19th century onward — didn’t require objective reference, and it virtually ignored any notion of substance. Of course, like a psychoanalyst, Baudrillard might have claimed that objective reference and substance underpinned modern logic, or lay hidden beneath it. Yet, even in the early 20th century, we had purely formal logics, modal logics, the logic of fictions, the logical of possibility, etc. which didn’t require objective reference, let alone substance.
Baudrillard then told his readers what objectivity is:
“Science explains things which have been defined and formalised in advance and which subsequently conform to these explanations, that’s all that ‘objectivity’ is.”
When anything is explained, isn’t it the case that the terms used “have been defined” (if not “formalised”) in advance? Surely this is as true of Baudrillard’s own Symbolic Exchange and Death as it is of anything else. Indeed, how could it be otherwise?
So, if that’s the case, then all statements, writings, texts, etc. must “subsequently conform to these explanations” too. This, again, isn’t this as true of Baudrillard’s own work as it is of anything else? If this weren’t the case, then no one would understand anything written or spoken. All that said, perhaps Baudrillard doesn’t abide by all this, and that’s why much of his work doesn’t make much sense… (‘Sense’! What do you mean by that word?)
Baudrillard then went political once again. He told his readers that
“[t]he ethics that come to sanction this objective knowledge are just systems of defence and misconstrual that aim to preserve this vicious circle”.
Thus, any claim to objectivity (or to truth or to knowledge or to the facts) is political (or ethical) by Baudrillard’s definition. In addition, the political moves which sanction all claims to objectivity, truth and knowledge are “just systems of defence and misconstrual that aim [to] preserve” various systems of power…
Again! None of this detail really matters because Baudrillard’s primary claim is that there is no “real world”. Thus, he finished off by quoting Nietzsche:
“‘Down with all hypotheses that have allowed belief in a real world.’”
In addition, despite some commentators being at pains to distinguish postmodernism from deconstruction/post-structuralism [see here], Baudrillard still claimed to have provided his readers with “[t]he detailed deconstruction of the real”.
Finally, the result of all Baudrillard’s philosophy is that it’s supposed to bring about (or simply note) “the collapse of reality into hyperrealism”. Of course, hyperrealism deserves its own essay.
Notes:
(1) Jean Baudrillard told his readers about “[t]he end of labour”, “[t]he end of production”, and “[t]he end of political economy”. Baudrillard finished off with “[t]he end of the classical era of the sign”. To Baudrillard, that final claim is the most important.
(2) Logically, the statement “Everything is political” may be problematic. Yet it’s still useful. That said, the socialist magazine Jacobin explicitly stated the following: “Today, everything is political, and fervently so.”
One take on this categorical and absolutist position on politics is to argue that if you believe that everything is political, then that gives you carte blanche to make everything political, or to make everything more political.
(*) To follow: ‘Jean Baudrillard on Marxism’.
(**) See my ‘Truth is Power: Foucault’s Battle to Create a New Regime of Truth’, ‘Derrida’s 1967 Groundwork for the Destruction of Western Metaphysics’ and ‘Jean-François Lyotard’s Language Games of Truth and Justice’.
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