Introduction to The Simulacrum of Objectivity

 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1

A survey of the work of Jean Baudrillard results in an inevitable sense that the world is facing a catastrophe. His work suggests this problem lies with reality itself. If he is not wrong, where is this catastrophe? One answer is that it is a silent disaster which Baudrillard's words have failed to draw attention to. This answer is easily refuted. Baudrillard's cry was picked up by the Wachkowski siblings in the 1999 film, The Matrix, and that film's impact has spread through popular culture to the point where bullet-time is now a visual cliche.

However well or badly the film represents Baudrillard's work, the pill scene from the first installment in the trilogy nicely illustrates the way reality is always in question in a contemporary world which has sped along spiraling further and further from the real gaining speed by feeding on the consequences of the catastrophe. These consequences have been muffled and translated and reordered through the emergence of the Simulacrum of Objectivity.

Reality remains in question, but the ways in which it may be questioned are limited, and these limitations suggest the shape of the Simulacrum of Objectivity. If one replaces "the matrix" with "a catastrophe for reality" during Neo and Morpheus' dialogue,  the Pill Scene demonstrates the limitations of questioning reality in the contemporary world.

Firstly, the protagonist, Neo, must desperately search for one to ask this question, and the person he finds to answer it is a criminal, Morpheus. Morpheus is the most-wanted criminal of the institutional authorities. The importance of this is not that questioning reality is a criminal act, but rather that there is no legitimate authority for one to turn with questions of reality without compromising one's position as an upstanding citizen.

Secondly, Morpheus offers Neo a choice. He may accept that there is a catastrophe or he may deny it. When asking questions of reality, the answers are always structured as a binary. Things are either real or they are not. The binary structure of the response to questioning reality limits the range of the consequences of the act of questioning. It places the question within safe bounds. Binary answers are calculable, measurable, performative.

Thirdly, Neo must make his decision by taking a pill. Anti-psychotics alone bring in 14.6 billion dollars a year. The only legitimate institution which deals with those who question reality actively profits by medicating those with questions into answering the questions correctly.

Reality can be questioned but not in a way that threatens anyone or anything. The catastrophe that Baudrillard's work points to has become the absence against which the Simulacrum of Objectivity defines itself.

Functionality is for the Simulacrum of Objectivity what Faith was for God. Functionality meets man's needs for evidence of things not seen by replacing the unseen with an objective universe in which everything is either observable or unreal. While functionality meets man's need for explanation in the way that faith used to, it fails to address human emotional needs in the way that faith does. This failure manifests in the contemporary state of religion, Dawkins-esque atheism, and certain kinds of mental illness.

Religion persists because functionality cannot fully replace faith. It is not the substance of things hoped for, and yet it more than meets the need for evidence of things not seen by removing from the category of "real" things anything which is not potentially measurable. This category of "real" things is guaranteed by the Simulacrum of Objectivity which displaces God by exerting His comforting authority without all the bother of a beard to be tugged or mocked.

In precisely the ways that theologians seed believers with miracles and harvest faith, technology fills users with the certainty of its functionality which seems to be evidence of an objective guarantor, but is after a close analysis proof of nothing but functionality itself.

The Simulacrum of Objectivity can best be understood through an analysis of the photograph. Every photographic image is always also a simulacrum of objectivity. After developing the Simulacrum of Objectivity with the photograph, the Simulacrum of Objectivity's role in the American Education and Mental Health Systems will be explored.

I. The Simulacrum of Objectivity
 A. Simulacrum Defined
 B. Simulacrum and Reality
 C. The Photographic Image as a Simulacrum of Objectivity
 D. A Photograph Analysed as a simulacrum of objectivity

II. Objectivity and Education
 A. Learning as a Human Endeavor
      1. Deleuze and Freire on Learning
 B. Education as Learning Made Objective
       2. Description of the Leaning Focused Approach
 C. The Simulacrum of Objectivity in Teaching Writing
       3. Writing Practices - The Rubric as an instance of the Simulacrum of Objectivity

III. Objectivity and Madness
  A. The Clinic as a Producer of Mental Illness
  B.  Clinical Practices as Instances of the Simulacrum of Objectivity