Agonie des Realen.

by Jean Baudrillard

„Während so viele Generationen, und besonders die letzte, im Laufschritt der Geschichte gelebt haben, in der euphorischen oder katastrophischen Perspektive einer Revolution - hat man heute den Eindruck, daß die Geschichte sich zurückgezogen hat, einen Nebel der Indifferenz hinter sich zurücklend, durchquert zwar von Strömen, aber all ihrer Bezüge entleert.“

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Politics, Economics, Sociology, History

Paperback

First published December 3, 2010

About the author

Jean 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.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the death of Baudrillard ten years ago (has it really been that long?), the world lost perhaps the one post-Marxist voice that could have spoken most directly to the global crises we have faced in the last decade, from the world financial meltdown in the late-aughts to the global shift towards isolationism, nationalism, and populism in the past two years. Thankfully, we still have his writings, including this posthumous publication that gathers some of his last lectures (and one interview) before his death. Reading these words written twelve years ago can be startling. Baudrillard could have been writing in 2017. In some cases, his words ring more true today than they did in 2005.

It would be impossible for me to summarize these lectures, but perhaps I can hit the high points that seem most pertinent to me as an American reader in 2017. In Baudrillard's estimation, power has "ransacked" irony and parody, leaving us with only the ghost of truth. As a result, a dominant power can state its evil intentions in the open, or in the words of Baudrillard, "admit its 'crime' in broad daylight." Once the authority in power reveals its own corruption, then it upends any attempt at denunciation of those crimes. It's a stark revelation that speaks to the heart of Trumpism in the United States. Baudrillard answers the question we in the United States have been asking ourselves for months: how can such lies be espoused daily with no accountability? The answer: by stating their intention to lie quite openly, the administration has taken away the only weapon that Truth has: denunciation. Baudrillard offers a sobering analysis: critical intelligence, as developed throughout the Enlightenment and modernity, is no longer able to counter the evil of power because radicalness is on the side of evil. If a system of hegemony can only be tackled from the inside (which, according to Baudrillard, is different from an order of domination, which can be toppled from the outside), then Good is necessarily stifled (at best) or can only take on the voice of Evil (at worst); therefore, "only evil can speak to evil now -- evil is a ventriloquist."

The only recourse is that Enlightenment thinking must be abandoned. Power itself must be abolished -- not just the refusal to be dominated, but the refusal to dominate. Unfortunately, this can never happen through critical thought (including Baudrillard's own writing, which he freely admits). "Intelligence cannot, can never be in power," Baudrillard concludes, "because intelligence consists of this double refusal."

His prophetic words touch on everything from the split in Europe (which we are seeing play out twelve years later) to the rise of populism in the United States: "Absorbing the negative continues to be the problem. When the emancipated slave internalizes the master, the work of the negative is abolished. Domination becomes hegemony. Power can show itself positively and overtly in good conscience and complete self-evidence. It is unquestionable and global." At the time of his writing, he mentions the election of a celebrity -- Arnold Schwarzenegger -- as an example of the hegemonic order existing "deep in the masquerade, where politics is only a game of idolatry and marketing...This is the destiny of contemporary politicians -- those who live by the show will die by the show." If Baudrillard were alive today, he would agree that we are in the midst of dying by that very "show" on a level that makes Arnold Schwarzenegger seem quaint.

I am tempted to go on quoting the book and pointing to examples where Baudrillard was right on the mark, but instead, I will just offer my high recommendation. Read the book for yourself and marvel at Baudrillard's uncanny insight.

[v · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief late-period Baudrillard from Semiotext covering the usual ground of Evil, terrorism, machines and the end of power and politics. Nowhere near as somber and elusive as Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? from the same period, and actually quite conventional as far as Baudrillard goes, with "From Domination to Hegemony" slotting in easily amongst anything left-wingers have published in recent decades. Still some barbs here and there: "Now you must fight against everything that wants to help you."

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baudrillard is indulgent in this book; his own vocabulary of the hyper this, turbo that, sausurrian signs and symbols. He really does have his own metaphysics of what's real, what isn't, and you're left to own devices to make sense of it all, but In spite of this, he is far more insightful and profound than anything else.

The Agony of Power's main thread is this: We live in a highly governed, structured, and violent state. Yet, there is no longer anyone at the head, there is no clear objective, and there is no longer any alternative. It is more of a hostage situation than imprisonment.

This manifests by way of the complete disarmament of the negative. Irony, parody, satire, critique, argument. None of these have any effect anymore. Not even violence, terrorists attacks do nothing. Critique, and therefore thought are obsolete, but the system has no problem with making death obsolete to sustain itself. The politicians and officials have no trouble admitting their own callous and perhaps even evil cynicism about this. This is hegemony, not domination.

All forms of liberative and progressive politics for the past 200 years or so have been about resisting domination, resisting the power, fighting it. Therefore to understand that fighting does nothing is to feel completely powerless.

Yet, Baudrillard, in spite of this intensely masochistic nature he has, makes a triumphant conclusion. There is a way out from all of this, and it is the Agony of Power. The Marxist analysis of the Bourgeoisie as joyously getting fat and playing chess with the globe, on the back of the working and slave classes was as good as a fact in the 19th century, but, in the agonizing hegemony of the 21st century, the whole world is poisoned.

Only when the will to dominate is completely subverted by the agony of power, only when the notion of universalist conquering is seen as stupid and not just evil will sanity reappear

PS: The first essay; "From Domination to Hegemony" is a really good companion piece to Deleuze's "Postscript on the Societies of Control." Both trace the fundamental transformation Power has made in the past half-century or so.

[Tvrtko Balić · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is the most blackpilling Baudrillard book. You would think Fatal Strategies would be about how nothing can be done, but this takes it to a whole new level. I love depressing stuff sometimes, but maybe because pointing out how things are bad can move us to strive for an alternative or to at least find a way of living with it. Instead of offering a good analysis of postmodern culture that is depressive but makes you wish to find a solution, this is just demotivating.
The book starts with a criticism of Marxism. Which you would think would be like the Mirror of Production or For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign only short and therefore not so in depth. Instead there is an interesting turn and a more direct attack on Marxism. It even sounds like bootlicking with him saying that many problems of capitalism were done away with by capitalism itself, by its very excess which made it switch from a system of domination to a system of hegemony. So that at the beginning leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. Or not, depending on your ideological views, but it did in mine. But after a while it becomes a little more clear that this comes from a place of disappointment and not advocating some sort of a right wing position and you remember that you're reading Baudrillard as the text after a while gets back on track and criticizes this excess and the disappearance of negativity. And then hegemony replacing domination doesn't sound good at all since it just perverts what was before and then stabilises it. So that's good. But what is the solution? Should we accept the demons of the past, whether reactionary or Marxist, and attack this excess of good? Or is there some good to be taken from the current state of things? Should the system be accelerated and driven to its logical conclusion? Or should we slow down and clear or heads? None of that, different opposing solutions are brought up and then criticised and dismissed.
So at the end of the day there's just despair and a feeling that Baudrillard is taking a dump on any solutions you might offer. There's some hopeful parts in the book saying how as opposed to Marx who says that the world has been interpreted enough and needs to be changed, we should interpret it more because otherwise we are lost in a world that will change regardless. But does that really help? Are we any less lost? I feel more lost after reading this. Maybe I am too strict with the rating, there's stuff in it for how short it is, writing all of this out made me realize this, maybe it didn't catch me in the right state of mind. Still definitely not my favourite Baudrillard book to put it mildly so the rating is staying.

[Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

a frightening look at the america of 2005! sure glad we don't live in the previous decade no more !

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the best books ever read, but 1 star bc everybody will regard me as a zoomer if i admit to having read it (and more than that, even admit to have liked it)

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 2 out of 5]

Value, representation, and reality are falling apart at the seams.
Baudrillard observes that in our day and age where everything can be exchanged for everything else (generalized exchange) it is no longer DOMINATION but HEGEMONY that is the new game in town. Revolution, critique, insurrection, etc, are strategies of intervention and resistance proper to DOMINATION.
But in HEGEMONY these negativites are pre-empted by the system, where Evil announces its intention in "broad daylight" and thereby annulling critique's critical edge.
In other words, everyone is victimized by EVIL, such as terrorism.
But of course it is EVIL only from the point of view of GOOD.
Baudrillard contends that it is rather the excess of GOOD that generates EVIL.
The West's desires to do GOOD by imposing its vision of generalized exchange and instrumental rationality on other cultures that have yet to fall prey to the obselescence of value, representation and reality.
Sometimes the Other returns the favor, as in the case of fundamentalist jihadists who challenge the hegemon in the form of impossible exchange (death is a gift that cannot be reciprocated).

One can draw interesting parallels between Baudrillard's dialectic of the Good and Evil and the critique of liberal ethics outlined by Badiou in Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil.

[Rory Martin Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Domination" vs. "Hegemony". This was an interesting read. Many of the points made should be unsurprising to most, but he presents his thoughts in a way which tie them together in a way that makes it both accessible, and insightful. I ended up rereading works by Audre Lorde and James Baldwin after reading this book and was surprised by how drastically the internet, and other factors, have changed the world we live in, and our places in it.

Overall, this is a page turner and hard to put down once you start it.

[Nicolay Duque · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the better texts in the Intervention series

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wanted to read some Baudrillard and this short book was a nice introduction.

[… · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this several years ago for the first time, I understood all the enthusiasm around Baudrillard, who apparently became something of a philosopher rockstar in the latter part of his life. Written in 2005, before the ascent of what now appears to be the more insidious and accelerating trends he prophetically describes in this small volume of essays, this philosophy of power is perhaps one of the more important commentaries to help us understand and contend with our current situation. Part philosophy, part poetry.

Baudrillard, who is perhaps best known for the concept of the 'hyperreal', which can be crudely described as something that is in this world but is not of this world - a kind of instantiation of sociocultural, economic/financial, media etc systems that appear to possess certain indispensable features that make them appear to be authentically anthropological systems, organic and firmly anchored to the humanness of their participants, but which depart from 'the real' in the most fundamental ways, exposing them as phantom-like menaces to the human personality, who they vampirically capture for the processes of their own nourishment. In this sequence of events, the person is leeched of their vitality and this is then transferred into the system itself. Baudrillard apparently came to understand Freud's concept of the Death Drive as one of the cornerstones of his thought later in his career. In the simplest of terms, it can be described as that which "keeps unbinding energy and returning it to a prior, inorganic state." This fits nicely with the concept of the hyperreal describe above.

As the world moved into its explicitly industrialized form where technological mutation and advancement became the dominating powers presiding over all forms and methods of life, Freud's concept of the Death Drive seemed to provide an entry point into understanding man's new relationship to his environment and the sovereign (ie. dominating power) itself. Many of Baudrillard's ideas regarding this shift could be attributed to several of his contemporaries, namely Foucault, Artaud, and Bataille.

According to Baudrillard, we no longer live in the world of domination that is characterized by the master/slave relation. Instead, we have reached something of a terminal point of domination found in the specter of hegemony: a kind of encompassing, interweaving of networks that endeavors simultaneously for a multitude of lesser, stratified powers but which has been commissioned by a kind of ultimate, authoritative commandment - something along the lines of "Thou shall put no other God before me." It is power itself that wishes to be worshipped and it is the "internalization of the master by the emancipated slave." Hegemony is the tyranny of consensus, and calculation, and exchange, but within its contours there exists no single figure or individual or cabal vested with its authority - the humans who act as figureheads or manage to wield jurisdiction within the hegemonic matrix are easily interchangeable in that they can be replaced or even overthrown. The power of hegemony, lacking any determinate features as such that can be found in a human wielding authority is, paradoxically, an intensely amorphous yet overwhelmingly concentrated force. The net it casts is so boundless and crushing that it would be nearly impossible to properly identify or define, which is the primary source of its power, along with its pernicious ability to completely subdue and disintegrate individuals into its ether of nothingness.

This nothingness is the "liquidation of reality" - the erasure of symbols and meaning and their replacement with signs and simulations where reality itself becomes so deeply buried underneath manufactured cultural sediments that the entirety of existence becomes a masquerade. This, according to Baudrillard, is domination - it is severance from the real itself. It is the realm of parody, where one can only be a marionette. Where one represents an annexation to the system, an unconscious giving over of oneself to impressions and the faux phenomenons of mass culture. Where the messages and impressions reach you already emptied of their meaning, mere impersonations of the thing itself. Where man doesn't communicate authentically (because he genuinely doesn't know how) but only through affectation. The system has made all of us LARPers. "We have entered a hegemonic form of total reality, of closed-circuit global power that has even captured the negative."

Accepting this, we can begin to understand the different forms and methodologies of power. Politics, the most conspicuous mode of conventional power, seems like the most obvious place to start. So why is politics so unimaginative, myopic, and aggressively stupid? Based on the notion of parody and simulation, where the subject is at least subconsciously aware of how monstrously barren every vestige of sociocultural life is, Baudrillard seems to think we somehow relish this experience. Or maybe it's choosing political figures who most closely resemble the systems they presumably wield power within. If people must contend, whether consciously or not, with a moronic inferno of absurdity, what would have us believe they'd elect someone that purported to transcend the banality of such a system - "...a general disposition among people to delegate their sovereignty to the most inoffensive, least imaginative of their fellow citizens, a malin génie that pushes people to elect the most nearsighted, corrupt person out of a secret delight in seeing the stupidity and corruption of those in power. Especially in times of trouble, people will vote massively for the candidate who does not ask them to think."

Naturally, the starting point for the liquidation of all values comes in the form of an emergence of new terms and concepts introduced as guiding principles. For instance, the concept of the "Universal" and the discourse surrounding it provides the ethical grounding to pursue whatever ends (and means) necessary to realize this ideal. Ironic, considering that the "universal" appears to be a product of the Western intelligentsia, which is composed of a small sliver of the global population (smells like discrimination), and that the pursuit of such an ideal would demand mowing over and supplanting all other cultural systems and values (smells like more discrimination). It's almost like the elite have drawn a nice warm acid bath for all of humanity to marinate in, so their universal values can diminish any obstacles to consolidation of power. "The will of the people is an obstacle or at least an indifferent parameter or an alibi."

But we all know that "liberation" and "democracy," products of this cosmopolitan philosophy, are often touted as principles that obviously justify themselves, both possessing a fundamentally metaphysical essence within the Western psyche. This new hegemonic, globalized power has surpassed the previous confines where it was generally assumed to operate. Power always possessed tremendous psychic ramifications. Its effectiveness was a measure of how firmly it could anchor itself and animate the human personalities it was presiding over. Now, power has been spiritualized. While it can still illicit fear, its decrees are embraced and venerated and ritually practiced with fanatical zealotry. Worshipped, paradoxically, most enthusiastically and militantly by the most aggressively secular people.

A 'total reality' has been established, which is actually a fully achieved dismantling of the real; a carnivalization of all that which claims to be serious, or which suggests it possesses a kind of primordial integrity that's immutable. The new 'hegemonic configuration' is inescapable -it "metabolizes any function to serve its own purpose." Nothing stands above it or beside it, and anything that claims to be a superior or oppositional force, like politics, for instance, is likely more thoroughly captured by simulacra.

We all know to some degree that the overarching culture of the West is idiotic and irresponsible, a mandate from heaven to gorge ourselves like fucking pigs on whatever is available until we become these embarrassingly inert, slack wastes of carbon that lumber around looking for a new troughs. These are the predilections of technical rationality - itself a kind of hegemonic, all-encompassing disposition toward the entirety of life, metaphysically barren, aggressively generating spiritual impoverishment at scale. Our disincarnate bodies, distended and chronically ill, are the material sites of our metaphysical deformities. Values sacrificed, the yoke cast off, our bodies begin to spill over, blobby fleshsacks become doughy minds. We are only left with the new holy trinity of seduction, pornography, and prostitution. We must give ourselves away to the hegemonic antichrist and in doing so we abolish any and all sovereignty we may possess. We must desecrate ourselves on its altars, whore ourselves out for its approval, seduce ourselves so that we may seduce others. We now abide by the dictates of pornography - fully possessed, humiliated, denigrated.

Quotes

"The concept of "cruelty," inspired by Nietzsche, involved strict rules that had to be applied with an implacable rigor."

"The real sovereign is noble, in the Nietzschean sense. He doesn't derive his power from his subjects, but from his own death."

"Unlike Artaud and Bataille, his older contemporaries, Baudrillard never yearned for an inner experience of death reach through anguish, terror, or eroticism, yet he remained convinced that death as a form internal to the system was the only way to offset it. As labor was a slow death, only an instant and violent challenge could possibly free one from it. Against every "revolutionary" view, he insisted, 'we must maintain that the only alternative to labor is not free time or non-labor, it is sacrifice."

"Every relation of power is oppressive, regardless of who, cruel or benevolent, comes to assume it."

"There was something that nothing could subdue, even under the most vicious tortures: the power that death affords. Montaigne, an exile like him in his own time, wrote: 'Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom... Acknowledging death frees us from every subjection and constraint.' Only death resists domination."

"Only those who show no concern for contradiction or critical consideration in their acts and discourse can, by this very means, shed full light, without remorse or ambiguity, on the absurd and extravagant character of the state of things, through the play of objective irony."

"Yet any action that tries to slow capital or power, that tries to keep them from accomplishing all of their possibilities is their last hope, their last chance to survive just short of their end. And if we let them, they will rush headlong to their end (taking us with them)."

"In simulation, you move beyond true and false through parody, masquerade, derision to form an immense enterprise of deterrence. Deterrence from every historical reference, from all reality in the passage of signs. This strategy of destabilization, of discrediting, of divestment from reality in the form of parody, mockery, or masquerade becomes the very principle of government, is also a depreciation of all value."

"After the sacrifice of value, after the sacrifice of representation, after the sacrifice of reality, the West is now characterized by the deliberate sacrifice of everything through which a human being keeps some value in his or her own eyes."

"The terrorists' potlatch against the West is their own death. Our potlatch is indignity, immodesty, obscenity, degradation and abjection. This is the movement of our culture - where the stakes keep rising. Our truth is always on the side of unveiling, desublimation, reductive analysis - the truth of the repressed - exhibition, avowal, nudity - nothing is true unless is is desecrated, objectified, stripped of its aura, or dragged onstage."

[xDEAD ENDx · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. My only other primary exposure to Baudrillard is Simulacra and Simulations, and The Agony of Power seemed much more lucid and more focused on the implications of challenging the loss of the real. The ideas behind domination giving way to hegemony echo Debord and Camatte, as Capital/hegemony now exist through us (the slave taking on the mentality of the master).

Another point that stands out to me is the part on terrorism and how terrorism wagers death. Suicide-as-terrorism is the (seemingly) final step in the evolution of this wager against power, following the Luddites destroying their machines, Blacks in the 60s destroying their communities, etc. A more anarcho-nihilist rhetoric may fulfill this death in the destruction of the world. ("We must destroy everything.") But how does this play out in reality?

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This rearranged my brain. Lectures and interviews from 2005 that describe our current state of affairs better than anything I’ve yet to come across. In short, the traditional master/slave dynamic has been replaced by a globalization that has destroyed any sense of value such that master and slave are in the shit together. All value has been leveled to zero. This is why a dominant power can “admit its ‘crime’ in broad daylight,” basically undermining any attempts at denouncing those crimes. Sound familiar? The only way out of this shitstorm is to refuse to be dominated and to refuse to play any part in domination. It is the only way in which power can be abolished. Gah.

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting perspectives of domination vs hegemony (extrinsic vs. intrinsic control), and how this relates to capital - as 'total exchange', where there is no outside for transgressive leverage.

"Domination can be overthrown from the outside. Hegemony can only be inverted or reversed from the inside. Two different, almost contrary paradigms: the paradigm of revolution, transgression, subversion (domination) and the paradigm of inversion, reversion, auto-liquidation (hegemony) . They are almost exclusive of each other, because the mechanisms of revolution, of antidomination, as history demonstrated, can become the impetus or the vector for hegemony" (p.34).

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting discussion of the ideas of hegemony and its interaction with modern technology and political thought. I found particularly good the waysin which Baudrillard discusses the symbolic powerlessness of the west in the face of terrorism, especally in that "evil" is an idea that exists as a reaction against an overabundanceof good. Also, I really liked the parts on the subject of society turning nature into an evil in the wake of natural disasters. I mean, we do give hurricanes names and all.

[Sara Avi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a cryptic and abstruse text. From my understanding, Baudrillard critiques power dynamics and methods of social control. He believes that any kind of power is destined to "cannibalize" itself and self-destruct, then be replaced by new power methods.

I think he suggests that power should be abolished completely, however, he doesn't suggest an alternative. He did mention something about power and intelligence being contrary forces, I found that part to be confusing in particular.


"power itself is an embarrassment and there is no one to assume it truly”.

[Rene Walter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Out of date and full of made up stuff. Interesting read and partly usable as food-for-thought, though, regarding contemporary issues surrounding "Fake News" and media manipulation, distortions of perceived reality by media mechanics and so forth. These ideas need an update.

[Ricardo Vega · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always, Braudrillard makes you think hard in unsuspecting and innovative ways.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This system should worry much less about revolution than about what is developing in the void, at the heart of the anthropological fracture.The more intense this hegemonic process of forced integration and integral reality is, the more singularities will rise against it. There will be more "rogue states" —states (like Iran, Palestine) that deliberately exclude themselves from the international community without waiting to be excluded, that exclude themselves from the universal and play their own game, at their own risk and peril. There will be more "rogue events and more refusal of society by individuals.”

“we can see in the images of barbed wire in Melilla, the wall on the US-Mexican border or the one in Israel—the wall that contains and provokes a human wave, a backlash of discrimination. The Universal is not for everyone. Only discrimination is universal. In the past, totalitarian powers were the ones who enclosed themselves behind walls (the best historical example being the Berlin Wall) to escape the wave of "democracy." Now these "democra-cies" are building protective walls to preserve the correct use of freedom from the hordes of immigrants or fanatics. If oppression was only possible behind the Soviet Iron Wall, today, freedom is only possible behind the iron wall of democracy. However, we can be sure that any wall-even a transparent one—is the sign of a dictatorship or a totalitarian system. We must therefore recognize that the West has become a totalitarian space-the space of a self-defensive hegemony defending itself against its own weakness. A wall is always suicidal: as soon as communism raised the Berlin Wall, it was virtually lost. It could only crumble in the end like the wall that it erected against itself. The same is true of the Israelis and their security fence. Any protection only leaves the field open for deadly impulses from the inside.”

“an imaginary Axis of Evil is created to justify the Axis of Good. This is a strategic mistake. When you try to target Evil in its unfindable axis, when you fight it militarily, with a frontal attack, you can only miss it. Because this Axis of Evil is within the order of discourse. It only exists in the mouths of Western leaders and serves as self-legitimization: the ones who speak about the Axis of Evil need to show that they work for Good and for everyones happiness in order to exist. No individual fights in the name of Evil. Of course. To a certain extent, the imputation of Evil always comes from the Good, from the sanctuary that, in principle, houses the rules of the game, the law, the truth. But Evil is indefinable, and therein lies its power. Yet through a twisting or retaliation of Evil against Good, those who defend Good feel themselves obliged to define this inde-finable Evil. It is not a Manichean position -1 prefer Manichaeism-because Good and Evil are not playing the same game. On the one side, there is that breaks through is an event. The definition of an event is not to be unpredictable but to be pre-destined. It is an irrepressible movement: at one moment, it comes out, and we see the resurgence of everything that was plotted by the Good. It makes a break, it creates an event. It can be on the order of thought or of history. It may take place in art. And, of course, it assumes the form of what is called terrorism. But, again, it is not a frontal opposition, but more like a reversal in the heart of Good. The event comes from Good, not from Evil, and in it Good turns into its opposite.”

"History that repeats itself turns to farce. But a farce that repeats itself ends up making a history”

“The shadow of capital is value. The shadow of power is representation. The shadow of the system is reality. They respectively move beyond Value, Representation and Reality—in a hyperspace that is no longer economic, political or real but rather the hegemonic sphere. Capital is both the total realization of Value and its liquidation. Power is now the final form of representation: it only represents itself. The system is the total version of the Real and at the same time its liquidation through the Virtual. This is the hegemonic form.

…From there, the system works exponentially:
- not starting from value, but from the liquidation of value.
- not through representation, but through the liquidation of representation.
- not from reality but from the liquidation of reality.

Everything in the name of which domination was exercised is terminated, sacrificed, which should logically lead to the end of domination. This is indeed the case, but for the sake of hegemony. The system doesn't care a fig for laws; it unleashes deregulation in every domain.”

“When domination becomes hegemony, negativity becomes terrorism…Thus hegemony is a meta-stable form because it has absorbed the negative-but by the same token, lacking the possibility of dialectical balance, it remains infinitely fragile. Its victory, therefore, is only apparent, and its total positivity, this resorption of the negative, anticipates its own dissolution. It is therefore both the twilight of critical thought and the agony of power. Through a reverse effect, however, the system enters a catastrophic dialectic. But this dialectic is a far cry from the Marxist dialectic and the teleological role of negation. For this strategy of development and growth is fatal. As it entirely fulfills itself, in a final achievement that no negativity can hinder, it becomes incapable of surpassing itself "upwards" (Aufhebung) and initiates a process of self-annihilation (Aufhebung in the sense of dissolution). For the system (in the context of global power), this strategy of development and growth is fatal.
The system cannot prevent its destiny from being accomplished, integrally realized, and therefore driven into automatic self-destruction by the ostensible mechanisms of its reproduction. Its shape is similar to what is called "turbo-capitalism." The term "turbo" should be taken literally in this expression. It means that the system as a whole is no longer driven by historical forces but is absorbed by its final conditions…It may be the fatal destination of capital to go to the end of exchange-toward a total consumption of reality.“

“What would the maximum rate of reality be?”

“The real only exists to the extent that we can intervene in it. But when something emerges that we cannot change in any way, even with the imagination, something that escapes all representation, then it simply expels us.”

“We know that terrorism will not overthrow the world order. Its impact is much more subtle: a viral and elusive form that it shares with world power. This is what makes the question of terror so complex: it is increasingly detached as a form from its visible actions and actors. World power does not exactly need political power to ensure its hold. It exercises it in a very diffuse manner, through the mental diaspora of networks (which is why political actors and people in power are no longer part of it, even though they think they govern the world). Terror does not exactly need terrorists now either. It is latent, infiltrating and virulent everywhere.“

“Terrorism has become a leitmotiv, a universal focal point, a nebula not a political or strategic reality, but a black hole, a blind spot. Having infiltrated all of the networks of imag. ination and information, it might only exist as a specter. If, according to Marx, the specter of communism haunted Europe, today the specter of terror haunts the entire planet.
Even if there were no more living terrorists, the global psychosis would remain the same. In any case, Bin Laden does not need to be alive or to do anything; he only needs a phantom video from time to time. The system itself exploits the hyper-imagination of terror. Terror is like a rumor: self-prophesying, self-realizing. Once it moves to the other side, and grows more violent than violence, it becomes an autonomous form without origin-like Evil itself. It is irrepressible as well, because every form of "vigilance" aggravates the specter of terror. It is the paradox of every principle of precaution”

“The depths of terror are inseparable from the extension of farce. The terror of the Good much more than of Evil, which only follows like a shadow. The parody of the sacred union is taking hold everywhere, under the sign of a full preventive war against the slightest infectious molecule-but also against the least anomaly, the least exception, the least singularity.”

“total liberation. Nothing is less certain.
This is the true break, not a social fracture but a symbolic one: in the advent of an integral reality that absorbs all aspirations towards dreaming, surpassing or revolt.
- The despair of having everything.
- The despair of being nothing.
- The despair of being everybody.
- The despair of being nobody.”

“The West, after passing through a (his-toric) 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 Borgès' fable.”

“Three simultaneous dimensions form the passage from domination to hegemony. It is a perilous triple jump, a three-part sacrifice:

1. Capital surpasses itself and turns against itself in the sacrifice of value (the economic illusion).
2. Power turns against itself in the sacrifice of representation (the democratic illusion).
3. The entire system turns against itself in the sacrifice of reality (the metaphysical illusion).”

“Baudrillard warned Deleuze and Guattari that "all the freed energies will one day return to it... For the system is the master: like God it can bind or unbind energies;, what it is incapable of (and what it can no longer avoid) is reversibility."

“This revolution is not economic or political. It is an anthropological and metaphysical one. And it is the final revolution"

[Clinton Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Agony of Power” is one of Baudrillard broad-sides against a specific topic or concept, given on the back of the book as “intelligence” consisting of the double refusal: the refusal to be dominated and the refusal to dominate. Intelligence can never be in power, then, because the existence of power as it is understood requires both people who are willing to dominate, and others who are willing to be dominated. In this book, Baudrillard stringently observes the encroaching effects of globalization and technology, the interconnected nature of communication that refuses to allow out of its unseen grip a vice-like yet simultaneously unperceived level of control of both groups.
Some of the concerns he raises have emerged from the somewhat-siloed practice of philosophy into more common, everyday concern. His first detail is to describe the difference that existed in the past between the domination/slave relationship (say, of a definable set of “masters” and their workers, indentured servants, slaves, colonialized subjects, etc) and the current nature of what “hegemony” or “domination” signifies. The theory expressed herein (and in other Baudrillard books) is that the new, manifested-through-technology world order (on all levels, from global finance through to protest that’s expressed through anti-government activities, culture, etc) is controlled not by the domination/slave duality, but rather by the emergence of technology-mediated rules, if you will, that subsume everyone that exists, both the would-be powerful and the would-be dominated. Perhaps these two denominations still clearly exist in the technology-mediated world, but all of them are subsumed by the larger “over-structure” (my word). This “over-structure” turns everything into “simulacra”, as actions and intentions that persist beneath it are simply simulations of the intent… as everything is subsumed by the “hegemony” of order, which can “only be inverted” from within. Given this, in the absence of such inversion (which, in any event, would be possessed by the hegemonic order), the concept of a system of values is rendered impotent/non-existent:
“Classical, historical domination imposed a system of positive values. Contemporary hegemony, on the other hand, relies on a symbolic liquidation of every possible value. The terms “simulacrum,” “simulation,” and “virtual” summarize this liquidation, in which every signification is eliminated in its own sign, and the profusion of signs parodies a now unobtainable reality.”
Three potential observations:
Would one unaware of the over-structure be able to be reduced to a sign? Does level of “awareness” matter?
Do both the rational and emotional (call them “thinking”/”feeling”) reactions individuals or groups have lose their potential in such an environment? Is there no individual action that could break the grip of hegemony in such a way that it wouldn’t qualify truly as an inversion, but rather as some new thing, some new passage into another model of domination and subservience? Could the possibility of such a thing be truly eliminated?
Does individual awareness matter on a higher level than the individual if the collective is this much stronger (if values-neutral… driven by motives that not only are not knowable, but rather aren’t even relevant) than the individual? What sort of collective consciousness is possible?
To name a few…
The book moves forward to explore the passage from domination to hegemony along the lines of three tenets: capital, which “turns against itself in the sacrifice of value”; power, which “turns against itself in the sacrifice of representation”; and the entire system, which “turns against itself in the sacrifice of reality”. Baudrillard uses these frames to attempt to put a different over-structure over items such as the understanding of the purpose of terrorists. Terrorists are so possessed by the overarching structure of hegemony that they have “internalized their masters”, who in turn have “carnivalized their power” through desperate conveyances of military might; terrorists and those who would kill them, the inevitable impotence of the negation as swallowed up by a hegemonic order that renders both as simulacra of oppressor and oppressed…
As with much philosophy, many might object, “and I need to know this”, or (for the particularly hateful or homicidal, I suppose… but people do talk this way) “we should just kill all the [fill in the blank]”, or “the other is not the same as me… we are not just a positive/negative dyad acting out a simulation against a larger hegemonic order determined by capitalism consuming itself”. Etc etc etc. Still, “The Agony of Power” is a worthwhile mental exercise, and one that at times goes further and touches the “heart” of something, if one is allowed for a second to say that.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I must say that I do not know the internal rules of the game for this world, and I do not have the means to play it. This is not a philosophical or moral disavowal or prejudice on my part. It is just that I am situated somewhere else and I cannot do otherwise. From the outside, I can see that everything works and that the machine allows everything to function. Let us allow that system to proceed normally---or abnormally--until it runs its course; let us leave to the machine what belongs to the machine without trying to humanize it or make it an anthropoid object. For me, I will always have an empty, perfectly non-functional and therefore free space where I can express my thoughts. Once the machine has exhausted all of its functions, I slip into what is left, without trying to judge or condemn it. Judgment is foreign to the radicality of thought. This thinking has nothing scientific, analytic or even critical about it, since those aspects are now all regulated by machines. And maybe a new space-time domain for thought is now opening?" (Baudrillard, pg. 127).

Thus the author, esteemed French thinker Jean Baudrillard, expresses what passes for hope for him, for the plight of the human subject in a world where networks, and the 'machine,' have obviated the need for all things human, except for this small sliver of existence that Baudrillard inhabits. As the 1980s band "The Police" famously intoned, "When the World is running down/ You make the best of what's still around"?

Cobbled together from seemingly random articles written before the author passed on in the early aughts (2000s), this amalgamation of essays and articles expresses many concepts and ideas whose veracity could be doubted by our more techie brothers, to those concerned with 'facts." I, on the other hand, found the 'truth' content questioning of limited use, for the essays, to my untrained mind, touch upon trends, movements, and 'facts' that are as obvious as they are worthwhile to consider. Bemoaning the tendency of the systems of the West to homogenize the World, Baudrillard diagnoses the problem to the difference between 'domination,' the old style of control that bifurcates the world between oppressed and oppressor, and the new system, termed "Hegemony," where all beings, even those at the 'top,' are equally pawns in systems, networks, the Globalized reality we live in, and therefore equally suffer the outcome of an overly rationalized, digitized existence. Indeed, Baudrillard's diagnosis of the "War on Terror," found in the middle of the book, timely due to the date of the publication of these articles (2005), and his discussion of "Absolute Evil" (a form where Absolute Good creates its own maelstrom of destruction), is both perspicacious and forward looking, a perfect antidote to our anodyne times. In my eyes, in these pieces, there is just enough 'truth content' to satisfy the 'veracity' quotient, and it is twinned by glorious diction and verbiage, which satisfies the intellectual nerd in me need for mental stimulation and elaboration. Baudrillard was truly onto something clear and true here, and his passing has removed a clear-eyed interlocutor of our troubled times from the scene. May his memory be honored, if the machines decide to allow his words to exist in our 'hyper-real,' simulation of a World!

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baudrillard is extremely funny. During the interview at the end, talking about the objective of clones and the disappearance of disappearing (aka death), he says 'Ethically, I am against it. But I am against ethical positions in general'. This is one of like 10 examples during the final chapter where I was almost giggling at this silly man.

The book itself? I found the first two lectures - both on domination (old school power) vs hegemony (kind of conceiving this as Deleuzian 'control' - where we're all simultaneously complicit and victims) - to be very similar in content and maybe a little diffuse though they set the stage for what is, imo, the main piece of this book, and I didn't get as much about power from this short book as I'd have expected.

If I was reviewing Where Good Grows on it's own however, I'd say this is a straight up 5/5. Incredible essay - I certainly have points of disagreement with Baudrillard and I struggle to see what to do with his thought (though, so does he - he's not even sure we can act against this hegemonic system!) - but the discussions on Good and terrorism here are enlightening, and it's extremely hard to not think of the 'Good' of the two parties in America. The interview at the end is also quite fun and helps to clarify some of his other points I think!

One of the bigger points of tension for me is where he outlines the constitution of global power on networks, simulacra, and parody but specifically not economic power, in the interview. I don't see how he seperates that participation in the global system is brought in via the IMF/World Bank and the very degradation (selling) of symbols/values locally, in fact it seems explicitly as a result of prior economic domination that hegemonic power and the degradation of any/all values in the name of growth [which he astutely decouples from development at one point - love you Jean] can occur. Marx precipitates this with 'all that is solid melts into air'. I'm not sure how to reconcile that, and at points it's hard to not see Baudrillard as a a particularly conservative figure? But still - incredibly fascinating essay. Certainly one to read and re-read.

[hweatherfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

relevant notes taken today [brett kavanaugh's hearing] while reading baudrillard's 'agony of power' (essays from 2005):

"...caught in a vast Stockholm syndrome, the alienated, the oppressed, and the colonized, are siding with the system that holds them hostage. Power has ransacked all the strategies of simulation: parody, irony, self-mockery - leaving the Left with only a phantom of the truth. This is why [the dominating powers] can admit their crimes in broad daylight.

Doesn't this shameless flippancy manifest a greater freedom than the stonewalling of critical contestation? They steal our denunciation - and 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 is the real scandal.

Truth must be on the side of good - there can be no intelligence on the side of evil. Yet all those who outdo themselves with arrogance, cynicism, pornography, mythomania, unmask the truth of the system in their abuse of it. We must look to the side of evil for the harshest reality.

Just as religion throughout history has been reduced to symbols applied in an artificial revival (an example would be the adaptation for the death of God), this has left society with no reason to believe in anything."

In my opinion, Baudrillard successfully predicted our present condition. We are entering a period of reality shift, an observance of the simulation, and a mass critique of the observed patterns leading up to this moment. Now, more than ever, is the time to establish your own autonomous convictions. "You can deliver yourselves by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed."

Incredible explanation of current affairs and I look forward to finishing it.

[C. Varn · Rating 3 out of 5]

While theoretically powerful at some points and this is beautifully and clearly translated, Baudrillard peppers these essays with assertions he doesn't back up except in extending his normal categories of simulation, simulacra, and the virtual. The critique of Marxism is based partly on the idea that capitalism has overcome its own problems and Baudrillard also seems to take this up on the virtuality of the internet. Of course, these essays are released in French leading up to a worldwide recession that proves some of Baudrillard's assertions just wrong, and it reads contextually even more awkwardly in 2010 when it was published and doubly so now that things Baudrillard said were non-commodified--most of the social media--now have been. There is also a move conventional of late Baudrillard, which is the use of moral categories while also insisting on nihilism. That said, Baudrillard, does hit hurt with this or that assertion, and he is seemingly aware of how much public legitimacy has not just been undermined by cynical self-acknowledge but also undoes protest against it has some sting even now.

[lille rev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vi befinner oss i en interessant posisjon: selve virkeligheten er fragmentert, banal og dum. Vi er ikke så mye slaver av en dominerende makt som gisler av et hegemoni beint satt på å orgasmisk kjøre alt i grøfta. Historien har båret frem en vestlig universalisme som fyller alle daler og jevner hver en hammer. En tautologisk spiral formet av en minoritet som i sitt eget syn holder all moral og universale mål. En lås vi ikke kommer oss ut av. Total tåke.


Siterer Thure Erik Lund, Fra Identitet:

“Og det hadde vært tragisk om vi ikke hadde prøvd dette, grepet sjansen til å sette fyr på verden, i stedet for å bare krype sammen inne i en digital selvtilfredshetsboble, i endeløse spillsekvenser, klimatilpasset, ukrenkelige, statskontrollert, i en lukket klode, og der sikret oss, og bare lot en sementerende form for stabil, rolig teknologi omklamre og fasttømre kloden til den dør av seg selv, og forblir meningsløs, i det uendelige …”

Spørsmålet er fortsatt hvordan?

[Yasemin Bertel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jean Baudrillards “Die Präzession der Simulakra” bleibt ein faszinierender und hochaktueller Text, der die moderne Welt in ihrem Umgang mit Realität und Simulation prophetisch beschreibt.
Baudrillard analysiert, wie sich unser Verhältnis zur Wahrheit durch die Überlagerung von Bildern und Zeichen verändert und diese das Reale zunehmend ablösen. In einer Zeit, in der Deepfakes, Filterblasen und manipulative Medieninhalte die Wahrnehmung des politischen und sozialen Weltgeschehens massiv beeinflussen, gewinnt Baudrillards Theorie der Hyperrealität eine beklemmende Relevanz.
Der Text bietet wertvolle Einsichten in die Mechanismen, mit denen künstlich erschaffene Realitäten gezielt zur Manipulation genutzt werden und stellt eine kritische Grundlage für das Verständnis digitaler Medien und ihrer Wirkungsmacht dar.

[Gulliver's Bad Trip · Rating 4 out of 5]

The world becomes a total tragedy. Nothing is to be expected of swindlers, exploiters and dominators in general, since neither do they play their respective roles accordingly in this completed forgery. The Left is replaced by Antigone while the world is her family, dead and apparently cursed, from which she inherits a heavy and 'immense work of mourning'. In the meantime, those in an 'empty, perfectly nonfunctional and therefore free space' keep surviving and breathing not to augur or to premeditate anymore but to see what's left of it all.

Also, Sylvère Lotringer is one of the few people who owns a press and makes introductions actually knowing about who and what he's talking about. I guess that's certain death in intelectual circunstances i.e. to be utterly understood.

[Johannes Duckeck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baudrillard analyzes society in ways that seem almost unreal for the time of his writing (2005). By today, many of the things that he is contemplating have turned out to become even more extreme versions of themselves. I think his analysis is sobering, and I want to spend a lot of time thinking about what he says and figure out how to be a difference (if not in society, than at least in some of the conversations I’m having).

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of my favorite Baudrillard collections. The first three parts are collected speeches he gave near the end of his life, edited down to essays for this edition. As such, they feel a bit repetitive and rambling. The last part is an interview that I think does a much better job of summing up the ideas in the book. That said, each essay has a line or two that really sings Baudrillard's brilliance.

[Wan Feng An · Rating 3 out of 5]

"When you try to target Evil in its unfindable
axis, when you fight it militarily, with a frontal attack, you can only miss it."

Still don't quite understand wtf this man is saying sometimes but the symbolic dimension is hardly explored in other writers - a much needed perspective in this oft-ignored area. Also a lot more readable than his other books.