A Short Conversation with Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard threw me for a loop last evening. I had bought his The Conspiracy of Art several years ago, but never quite got into the meat of it...I picked it up again last night, since I remembered he addressed some of the issues I'm currently mulling over, and (attempting) to write about. After last night and this morning; after reading several chapters, I have the following (initial) thoughts.

Baudrillard is adept at illuminating (or delineating, if you will) the problems; the issues...but, like most Modernist anthropologists, refuses to (in fact, cannot) posit or even offer a solution. Cannot, not because he is philosophically or spiritually adverse to any particular solution, but that as a Modernist and, I guess, atheist or at least agnostic, he is adverse to supplying any answers at all, as a basic life-value. It reminds me of the sign, ubiquitous in areas where Quakers are found, which reads "War is not the answer", with which my mind invariably counters, "well, what is the answer?" But of course, like Baudrillard, they (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, or PYM, the traditional and universalism-leaning branch of the Friends) cannot (and, I think I can say, will not) supply an answer. That is up to the individual -- or otherwise designated party. He is (in my American mind -- Disney-fied, as Baudrillard may say!) a prototypically French thinker, in that he senses deep irony, but will only comment, and is almost completely non-committal -- even, often, to his own conclusions. This, I suppose, is the philosopher mind in him; acting as governor to the social critic. Critically speaking, he is fairly conservative in that regard. Being a much better artist than I am anthropologist, or even social critic, I still agree with much of what Baudrillard has to say -- for example, that art has nearly ceased to exist; has become "null", through its saturated ubiquity, and its continued insistence on transcendence, despite the lack of obvious "form", that is, difference from life -- however, I have to believe that there is a way out of that quandary -- a solution, for a solvable issue. And perhaps its art's ancient answer, in part: keep making, and push through until the seed finally germinates. It's an answer I give myself often enough.

Have any of you read Baudrillard? I'd be fascinated to hear what you think.

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