Baudrillard and counter arguments

Baudrillard and Counter arguments to his theory of Simulcra

It is the obscenity of what no longer has any secret ,of what dissolves completely in information and communication...The schizo is bereft of every scene ,open to everything in spite of himself ,living in the greatest confusion ...He is himself obscene ,the obscene prey of the worlds obscenity...He is now only a pure screen ,a switching centre for all the networks of influence'.(Baudrillard 'The ecstasy of Communication ' in Foster (1985) Postmodern Culture.

On reading this extract ,I am actually examining how unaware as a consumer of information ,how much information is absorbed sub-consciously.For example have we really looked closely at the information we absorb from seeing a shop logo e.g Top Shop.Where is the original as a consumer we merely absorb the copies,situated in each town, like global icons of the place to shop ,creating a hybridity of

simulation ,occurring in the mass marketing of hundreds and thousands of copies ,no longer with an original.Yet does this not again reproduce itself in the human identity of people wearing the same copied product thus become a sea of identical people creating the same fluidity among humans, in essence become almost bad copies of each other.

'This would be the successive phases of the image:

It is the reflection of a basic reality

It masks and perverts a basic reality

It masks the absence of a basic reality

It bears no relation to any reality whatsoever ;it is its own pure simulacrum.

(Baudrillard ,The evil of images and precession of simulacra in Docherty(ed)(1993,Postmodernism ;A reader)

The Precession  of Simulcra
This evidently refers to the way that simulcra has preceded the real.A modern example of this is the map of the gulf war  preceded the real war. 

The first point I am going to make is that there are many negative connotations to the way Baudrillard thinks  and this is due to the fact that he believes that society ,in particular western,control 'human liberation' as they are suffocating the individual out of free thought by bombarding them with mass media messaging.Yet this is in retrospect one main theoretical observations which is a counter action to modernism.I'm next going to look at theorists  who are positive thinkers about post modernism.

1.

According to Norris ,Baudrillard does not look at the bigger picture of social living and despair,but seems to lock himself in cycle of looking at everything as a multiple of signs-which do not look at reality ,but simulated reality.

(Norris (1990)Whats wrong with Postmodernism;Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy)

2.According to Lyotard he sees postmodernism as a 'incredulity towards metanarratives'. Thus the genre is fusing together reality and truth and creating meta narratives.I shall look at these meta narratives in relationship to the Kiss Of The Spider Woman.Yet Lyotard wants to reject these meta narratives 'the local specific ,the provisional'. Thus a reverting to modernity a safe ,calm realist option.

(Lyotard (1979) Postmodernism,or The Cultural Logic of Late-Capitalism )

3.According To Jameson ,he gives a Marxist analysis on postmodernism and is realistically stating that the 'contemporary world reflects a new economy-post industrial capitalism.Key characteristics :multinational corporations beyond government control;depthlessness,the image/simulacrum ;weakening of historically ;new technologies ,globalisation  

In conclusion,

post modernity is deconstructing our perception of the world and how it was perceived from a  modernist perspective and it is evident that literature is effected by social and historical events.In particualr I shall look at metanarratives next. Yet it is also relevant to remember that these are only conceptual view points as according to Jenkins we are looking at ways history has been historicised post modernism.Thus the need for logical and coherent narrative has changed ,making or creating a metanarrative ,full of conflicting ideas and contradictions.(Malpas 2005:91)