110 The Anti-Aesthctic

Ill:llched: ralhcr, Ihey appcar lo he two Idl ~h(lcs- Icft hchind, in any case, lik NicI7, .. d1l' 's umorclla, rúr Ihe nc)(llI~cr . or wriTer. Sec Derrida. "Rcslilutions ofTrUlh ,: Si/c," transo 101m 1'. Lcavcy, Jr .. in R" .\'f'/lfC/¡ illl'/¡¡'l1oml'I1IIItIKY X ¡197M): 32 (a partíal tran .~btion uf " Rcslitutinm , de la vérit(, l'n pnintllTc," in V/;r;/é ,'/1 Pálllllff'J .

. 14 . 1. Hilli~ Millcr. "Thc Cr¡¡ jl: a~ !-los!." Crilic(lllfll/,liry J (19771: 4:19 .

. t:" . Michcl Scrrc.~, nI!' Pr/raúf¡', trans o Lawrcncc Schchr (1nhns Hopkim: Raltimnrc, 19821 - Schchr 's inlrodllctinl1. p. )(.

.¡fi . lohn Cagc (in C(ln\'cr.~ali(Jn wilh Danil'J C harles), rilr 11/1' IJi,rls (Boyars: Boston, 19R 1J,

p . 151. -17 . Jnhn Cagc. Sill'l/('I' (M.I : r.: C Ullhr idgc. Massachu",clIs. 1961. IY70l, p. 194 . 4K. C;¡gc, M : W,.ilillg.l' '(¡7-'71 (Wcslcyan Univcrsity: Middlctown, 1(74). p . i.

o.l9 . Cag.e . bU!,I.\' IVrlrd.\ (Wcsll'yan Univcr~i t y : Middktl)wn. 19~11. p . 3. ~O . Roland Barthcs, SIl . tran~ . Richard M illcr(Hill & Wang : Ncw York, 1974). pp. 184-85 .

~I. Fnr a dist"ussion n1" M Yl"ll logy. sec G.c. Ainsworth, /lIImd'lclioll lo r}¡f' Hislory 01 Myn¡/ogl" (Cmnhridgc Uniwfsily: Camhr idgc, 11)761.

~2. Jolm Cagc, A.;",,. Fmm MOlida.\" t Wcskyan Un i\'cr ~ it y: Middl ctow n. 1%9), p. 150.

Postmodernism and Consumer Society

FREDRIC JAMESON

The concept of postmodernism is nol widely accepted or even understood wday. Sorne of lhe resislance lo it may come fmm the unfamiliarity of the works it covers . which can be found in all the arts: the poetry of Joho Ashbery. ror instance. but al so the much simpler tal k poetry that came out of the reaction against complex, imnic. academic modernist poetry in the '60s: the reaction against modern architecture and in particular against the monumental buildings or the International Style. the pop buildings and decorated sheds celebrated by Robert Venturi in his maniresto, Learning ¡roln Las Vegas; Andy Warhol and Pop art, but also the more recent Photo­re.lism; in music. the moment of John Cage but also the later synthesis of classical and "popular" styles found in composers like Philip OIass and Terry Riley, and al so punk and new-wave rack with such groups as the elash, the Talking Heads and the Gang of Four; in film, every!hing that comes out or Godard-contemporary vanguard film and video-but a1so a whole new style of commercial or fiction films, which has its equivalent in contemporary novels as well, where the works of William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon and Ishmael Reed on the one hand, and the French new novel on the other, are also to be numbered among the varieties of what can be called postmodernism.

This I ist would seem to make two things clear at once: first, most of the POstmodernisms meotioned aboye emerge as specific reactions against the established forms of high modernism, against this or that dominant high modernism which conquered the university, !he museum, the art gallery network, and the foundations. Those formerly subversive and embattled Styles_ Abstract Expressionism; the great modernist poetry of Pound, Eliot

ihis essay was originally a lalk, parlions of whicb were presented as a Whitney Museum LeCture in fall, 1982; il is published bere essentially unrevised.

llI

11 2 The Anli -Aeslhclic

or Wallacc SIcvens; Ihe Inlernalional SIyle (Le Corbusier, Frank L10Yd Wrighl, Mies); Stravinsky; Joyce, Prousl and Mann - felt lO be scandalou¡ or shocking by OUT grandparents are, for (he generarian which arrives at the gale in Ihe 1960s, fe lt lo be Ihe eSlablishmenl and Ihe enemy-dead, slifling. canonical. (he reified monuments onc has lO destroy lO do anything new. This Illcans (ha! there will be as many different forms of postmodern. ism as there wcre high moderni sms in place. since the former are at leasl initially specific and local reaclions againsl (hose model s. That obviously does nOI make (he job of describing postmoderni sm as a coheTen! thing any easier. since the unity of this new impulse- if il has one - is given nOl in itself bUl in lhe very modernism it seeks to displace.

The second feature of this 1 ¡st of postmodernisms is the effacement in it of sorne key boundaries or separations, most notably the eros ion of the older distinction belween high culture and so-called mass or popular culture. This is perhaps the most distressing development of all from an academic stand· point , which has tradilionally had a vested interest in preserving a realm of high or el ile cu lture agai nst lhe surrounding environment of phi listinism, of schlock and kilsch, of TV series and Reader's Digest culture , and in transmitting difficult and complex ski lis of reading , lislening and seeing lo its inil iales. But many of lhe newer postmodernisms have been fasci nated precisely by Ihal whole landseape of advertising and mOlels, of Ihe Las Vegas strip, of Ihe lale show and Grade-B Hollywood film , of so-called paraliteralure with its airporl paperback calegories of the gothic and the romance, Ihe popular biography, Ihe murder myslery and Ihe seience ficlion or fanlasy novel. They no longer "quole" such "IeXls" as a Joyee mighl have done , or a Mahler; Ihey incorporate Ihem, lo Ihe poinl ",here Ihe line between high art and commercial forms seems increasingly difficult 10 draw.

A ralher differenl indicalion of Ihis effacemenl of Ihe older calegories 01 genre and discourse can be found in what is sometimes called contemporary theory. A generation ago there was still a technical discourse of professional philosophy-Ihe greal syslems of Sartre or Ihe phenomenologisls, Ihe work of Wittgenslein or analylieal or eommon language philosophy-alongside which one could sli ll dislinguish Ihal quile differenl discourse of Ihe olher academic disciplines-of political science, for example, or sociology or Iiterary criticismo Today, increasingly, we have a kind of writing simply called "Iheory" which is all or none of those Ihings al once. This new kind of diseourse, generally associaled wilh France and so-called French Iheory, is becoming widespread and marks Ihe end of philosophy as sueh. Is Ihe work of Miehel Foueault, for example, lO be called philosophy, history, social Iheory or polilical seience? lt's undecidable, as Ihey say nowadays; and I will suggesl Ihal sueh "Iheorelieal diseourse" is also lo be numbered among the manifeslations of postmodernism. ' .

Now I musl saya word about Ihe proper use of Ihis con ce pI: it is nol JuSI

• Poslmodernism and Consumer Sociely 113

another word for the description of a particular style. It is also, at least in my use, a periodizing concept whose funClion is to correlate the emergence of new formal features in culture with the emergence of a new type of sociallife and a new economic order-what is often euphemistically called modern­ization , post industrial or cansumer society, the society of the medía or the spectacle, or multinational capitalismo This new momenl of capitalism can be daled from Ihe poslwar boom in Ihe Uniled SIales in Ihe lale 1940s and early '50s or, in Franee, from Ihe eSlablishmenl of Ihe Fiflh Republie in 1958. The 1960s are in many ways Ihe key transilional period, a period in which the new international order (neocolonialism , the Green Revolution , computerization and electronic information) is al one and the same time sel in place and is swept and shaken by its own internal contradictions and by external resistance . 1 want here to sketch a few of the ways in which the new postmodernism expresses the inner truth of that newly emergent social ord.er of lale capilalism, bul will have lO Iimil Ihe descriplion lo only Iwo of lIS significanl fealures, which I will eall pasliche and sehizophrenia: Ihey will give us a chance to sense the specificity of the postmodernist experience of space and time respectively.

One of the most significant features or practices in postmodemism today is pasliehe . I musl firsl explain Ihis lerm, whieh people generally lend lo confuse wilh or assimilale lo Ihal relaled verbal phenornenon called parody. Both pastiche and parody involve the imitation or, better st~lI: the ~imicry of olher slyles and parlieularly of Ihe mannerisms and slyhsttc IWllehes of other styles. It is obvious that modero literalure in general offers a very nch field for parody, since the greal modern wrilers have all been defined by Ihe invention or produetion ofralher unique slyles: Ihink oflhe Faulknenan long sentence or of D.H. Lawrence's characteristic nature Imagery ~ thlOk of Wallace SIevens's peculiar way of using abstraclions; Ihink also of Ihe mannerisms of Ihe philosophers, of Heidegger for example, or Sartre; Ibtnk of Ihe musical slyles of Mahler or Prokofiev. AII of Ihese slyles,. however different from each ather, are comparable in this: each IS qUite unmlstakable; once one is learned it is oot likely to be confused with something clse.

Now parody capi'talizes on the uniqueness of the~e ~ty~es ando seizes 00

their idiosyncrasies and eccentricities to produce an Imlt~tlO~ whlch mocks the original. 1 won't say that the satiric impulse is conSClOUS 10 all forros of parody. In any case, a good or greal parodisl has lo have sorne seeret sym­palhy for Ihe original, jusI as a greal mimie has lo have Ibe eapaclty to put himself/herself in Ihe place oflhe person imitaled_ Still, the general effeet of parody is-whelher in sympathy or wilh malice-to casI ndleule on Ibe private nature of these stylistic mannerisms and their excess~veoess and eccentricity wilh respeet lo the way people normally speak or wnle. So Ibere

114 The Anti·Aesthctic

rema ins somcwhere bchind all parody (he feeling thal t,here is a Jinguistic norm in conlrasl 10 which Ihe slyles of lhe great modernists can be mocked.

Bul whal would happen ir one no longer believed in Ihe existence or normal language . of ordinary speech. of the lingui stic norm (the kind of clarily and comll1unicati ve power celebrated by Orwell in his famous essay say)? One could think of it in th is way: perhaps the immense fragmentatio; and privatizatian of modern I iterature- il s explosion into a host of distinct private slyles and mannerisms- foreshadows deeper and more general tendencies in sociallife as a whole. Supposi ng Ihal modern art and modern­ism- far from being a kind of spec ialized aesthetic curiosily-actualJy anticipated social developments along these ¡ines; suppos ing thal in Ihe decades si nce the emergence of the great modern styles socíety has itself begun to fragment in thí s way, each group coming 10 speak a curíous prívate langu3ge of it s own, each profess ion developing its private code or idiolect , and finally each ind ividual coming to be a kind of I inguistic island, separated from everyone else? But then in that case, the very possibility of any linguistic norm in terms of which one could ridicule pri vate languages and idiosyncratic styles would vanish. and we would have nOlhing bUI stylistic diversity and heterogeneity.

That is the moment at which pastiche appears and parody has become impossible . Pastiche ¡s, like parody, the imitaríon of a peculiar or unique style . the wearing of a stylistic mask . speech in a dead language: but it is, neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody 's ulterior motive, withaut the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that stilllatent feeling th,t there exists something normal compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic . Pastiche is blank parody, parody that has lost its sense of humor: pastiche is to parody what that curious thing, the modern practiceof a kind of blank irony, is to what Wayne Booth calls the stable and comic ironies of, say, the 18th century.

But now we need to introduce a new piece into this puzzle, which may help explain why classical modernism is a thing of the past and why posl· modernism should have taken its place. This new component is what is generally called the "death of the subject" or, to say it in more convention,l language , the end of individualism as such . The great modernisms were, as we have said , predicated on the invention of a personal, private style, as unmistakable as your fingerprinl , as incomparable as your own body. But Ihi s means thal the modernist aesthetic is in sorne way organically linked 10 the conception of a unique self and private identity, a unique personality and indi viduality, which can be expected lo generate its own unique vision ofthe world and to forge its own unique, unmistakable style.

Yet today, from any number of distinct perspectives , the social theorists, the psychoanalysts, even the Iinguists, not to speak of those of us who work

Postmodernism and Consumer Society 115

in the area of culture and cultural and formal change , are all exploring the notion that that kind of indi vidualism and personal identity is a thing ofthe past; that the old indi vidual or individualist subject is "dead"; and that one might even describe the concept of the unique individual and the Iheoretieal basis of indi vidualism as ideological. There are in faet two positions on all Ihis, one of which is more radical than the other. The first one is content to say: yes, once upon a time , in the c1ass ic age of competitive capitalism. in the heyday of the nuclear family and the emergence ofthe bourgeoisie as the hegemonic social c1ass, there was such a thing as individualismo as individ· ua l subjects. But today, in the age of corporate capitalism, of the so·called arganization man, of bureaucracies in business as well as in the state, of demographic explosion-today, that older bourgeois individual subject no Jonger exists.

Then there is a seeond position, the more radical of Ihe two , whal one might call the poststructiJralist position. lt adds: not only is the bourgeois individual subject a thing ofthe past , it is al so a myth; it never really existed in (he first place; there have never been autonomous subjecls of Ihal type. Ralher, this construet is merely a phi losophical and cultural mystifieation which sought to persuade people that they " had " individual subjects and possessed this unique personal identity.

For our purposes, it is not particularly important to decide which of these positions is correel (or rather, which is more interesting and productive). What we have to retain from all this is rather an aesthetic dilemma: because if the experience and the ideology of the unique self, an experience and ideology which informed the stylistic practice of elassical modernism, is aver and done with , then it is no longer clear what the artists and writers of the present period are supposed 10 be doing. What is clear is merely that the older models - Picasso, Proust, T5. Eliot-do not work any more (or are positively harmful), since nobody has that kind of unique private world and style to express any longer. And this is perhaps not merely a "psycho· logical" malter: we also have to take into account the immense weight of seventy or eighly years of elassical modernism itself. There is another sense in which the writers and artists of the present day will no longer be able to invent new styles and worlds-they've already been invented; only a Iimited number of combinations are possible; the most unique ones have been thought of already. 50 the weight of the whole modernist aesthetic tradition - now dead-also "weighs like a nightmare on the brains oflbe living." as Marx said in another context.

Hence, once again. pastiche: in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak Ibrough Ibe masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum. But lhis means that contemporary or postmodernist art is going to be about art itself

116 The Anli -Aeslhelie

in.'l ~ew kind of way; even m,orc. jI mcans Ihal one oC ils essential messages wllllllvolvc Ihe neccssary faJlurc of art and lhe aestheti c. Ihe fai/ure oflhe new, Ihe imprisol1mcnl in the past.

As Ihi s may secm very abstracl. I wan! lo give a few examples. one of which is so omnipresent (hal we rarcly link il with Ihe kinds of devclopments in high arl discussed here. This particular practice of pastiche is nOI high. cultural bUI very Illuch wilhin mass culture. and il is generally known as Ihe "nostalgia film" (what Ihe French neally callla mode rétro- retrospecti ve styling). We musl concei ve of Ihis ca tegory in Ihe broadest way: narrowly no dOU~I , jI consists merely of films about Ihe pas! and about s p'ecifi~ generatlOnal moments of that past. Thus. one of the inaugural films in this new "" genre" (if that's what ir is) was Lucas's American Grajfiti, which in 1973 sel OUI lo reeaplure all Ihe almosphere and slyl iSlie peeuliarilies of Ihe 1950s Uniled Slales, Ihe Uniled Slales of Ihe Eisenhower era . Polanski's great film China(OlVlI does something similar for the 1930s, as does Bertolucci's The Conjormisf for the Italian and European context of the same period , Ihe fasei sl era in Italy; and so fonh . We eould go on lisling Ihese film s for sorne lIme: why ealllhem pasliehe? Are Ihey nOI ralher work In rhe more lraditional genre known as the historical filrn-work which can more simply be Iheorized by eX lrapolaling Ihal olher well-known form which is lhe historical novel?

1 have rny reasons for thinking that we need new categories for such films. BUllel me firsl add sorne anomaJies: supposi ng I suggesled Ihal Srar Wars is also a nOSlalgiafilm . Whal eould Ihal mean? I presume we can agree Ihallhis IS not a hl s.toncal film about our own intergalactic past. Lel me pUl il somew~at dlfferently: one of the most important cultural experiences of Ihe generallOns Ihal grew up from Ihe ' 30s lo Ihe '50s was Ihe Salurday after­noon senal of the Buck Rogers type - alien villians, true American heroes, heraines in dislress, Ihe dealh ray or Ihe doomsday box, and Ihe eliffhanger al the end whose miraculous resolution was to be wilnessed next Saturday ~fternoo~ . Star Wars reinvents this experience in the form of a pastiche: that IS, Ihere IS no longer any poinllo a parody of sueh serials sinee Ihey are long extmc!. Star Wars, far from being a pointless satire of such now dead forms . salisfies a deep (mighl leven say repressed?) longing lO experienee Ihem agatn: 1I IS a eomplex objeel in whieh on sorne firsl level ehildren and adoleseents can lake the advenlures slraighl, while Ihe adull publie is able 10 gralJfy a deeper and more praperly noslalgie desire lo relurn lo Ihal older period and lo live ils slrange old aesthetie anifaels Ihraugh once again. This film IS thus metonymlcally a hlstoflcal or nostalgia film: unlike American Graffiri, il does nOI reinvenl a pieture of Ihe pasl in ils Iived 101alily; ralher, by retnvenltng Ihe feel and shape of eharaelerislie art objeels of an older pertod (Ihe sertals), 1I seeks 10 reawaken a sense of Ihe pasl assoeialed wilh Ihose objeels . Raiders oflhe LOSI Ark, meanwhile, oeeupies an intermediary

•

Postmodernism and Consumer Society 117

posilion here: on. sorne level it. is about the '30s and '40s, bUl in reality it too conveys that penod metonymlcally through its own characteristic adventure stories (which are no longer ours).

Now let me discuss another interesting anomaly which may take us further towards understanding nostalgia film in particu lar and pastiche generall y. This one involves a reeenl film ealJed Body Hear, whieh , as has ,bundanlly been poi nled oul by Ihe erities, is a kind of dlslanl remake ofThe post11la" Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity. (The allusive and elusive plagiarism of older plOls is, of eourse, al so a fealure of pastiche .) Now Body Heal is leehnieally nol a noslalgia film, si nee illakes place in a contemporary setting , in a liule Florida vi llage near Miami . On the olher hand, this technical contemporaneity is most ambiguous indeed: the credits - always our firsl eue-are lellered and seripled in a '305 Art-Deeo slyle which cannot bUI Irigger nostalgic reactions (first lo Chinatown, no doubt, and Ihen beyond it lO sorne more hislorieal referenl). Then Ihe very slyle of Ihe hero hi mself is ambiguous: Will iam Hurl is a new slar bUI has nOlhing of Ihe disli nelive slyle of Ihe preceding generalion of male superslars like Sleve McQueen or even Jaek Nieholson, or ralher, his persona here is a kind of mix of their eharaeterislies wilh an older role of Ihe Iype generalJy associaled wilh Clark Gable . So here too Ihere is a fainliy arehaie feel to alJ Ihis. The speelalor begins to wonder why this slory, whieh eould have been silualed anywhere, is set in a small Florida town , in spite of its contemporary refer­enee . One begins to realize after a while Ihallhe smalJ town sening has a crucial stralegie funetion : il allows Ihe film lo do wilhoul mosl of Ihe signals and referenees whieh we might assoeiale with Ihe eonlemporary world, wilh consumer soeiely - Ihe applianees and artifaets, Ihe high rises , Ihe objeet world of late eapitalism. TeehniealJy, Ihen, ils objeels (ils ears , for inslance) are 1980s praduels, bul everylhing in Ihe film conspires 10 blur Ihat irnme­di ate contemporary reference and to make it possible 10 receive this too as nostalgia work-as a narrative set in sorne indefinable nostaJgic past, an elernal '30s, say, beyond hislory. lt seems 10 me exeeedingly symplomatie lO find Ihe very slyle of nostalgia films invading and eolonizing even Ihose movies loday whieh- have eonlemporary seuings: as Ihough, for sorne reason , we were unable toclay 10 focus our own present, as though we have become ¡ncapable of achieving aesthetic representations of our own Current experienee. But if that is so, Ihen it is a lerrible indielmenl of eonsumer capilalism itself - or al the very leasl, an ~Iarming and palhologieal symp-10m of a soeiety Ihat has beeome ineapable of dealing with time and history.

So now we come baek to the question of why nostalgia film or pastiche is lo be eonsidered different from the older hislorieal novelar film (1 should .Iso inelude in Ihis diseussion Ihe major lilerary example of all this, to my mrnd Ihe novels of E-L. Doelorow-Raglime, wilh ils lurn-of-the-eentury almosphere, and Loan Lake, for Ihe most par! about our 1930s. Bu! these

118 The Anti-Aesthetic

are, to rny mind, historical novels in appearance ooly. Doctorow is a serious artist and one of the few genuinely Left or radical novelists at work today. It is no disservice to him, however, to suggest that his narratives do not represent our historical past so much as they represent our ideas or cultural stereotypes about that past.) Cultural production has been driven back inside the mind, within the monadic subjec!: it can no longer look directly out ofits eyes at the real world for the Teferent but must, as in Plato's cave, trace its mental images of the world on its confining walls. If there is any realism left here, it is a "realism" which springs from the shock of grasping that confinement and of realizing that, for whatever peculiar reasons, we seem condemned to seek the historical past through our own pop images and stereotypes about that past, which itself remains forever out of reach.

1 now want to turn to what I see as the second basic feature of postmodern­ism, namely its peculiar way with time- which one could call "textuality" or "écriture" but which 1 have found it useful to discuss in terms of current theories of schizophrenia. I hasten to forestall any number of possible misconceptions about rny use of this word: it is meant to be descriptive and not diagnostic o I am very far indeed from believing that any of the I1)ost significant postmodernist artists-John Cage, John Ashbery, Philippe Sollers, Robert Wilson, Andy Warhol, Ishmael Reed, Michael Snow, even Samuel Beckeu himself-are in any sen se schizophrenics. Nor is the point sorne culture-and-personality diagnosis of OUT saciety and its art: there are, one would think, far more damaging things to be said about our social system than are available by the use of pop psychology. I'm not even sure that the view of schizophrenia I'm about to outline-a view largely developed in the work ofthe French psychoanalystJacques Lacan-is clini­cally accurate; but that doesn't malter either, for my purposes.

The originality of Lacan's thought in this area is to have considered schizophrenia essentialIy as a language disorder and to have Iinked schizo­phrenic experience to a whole view of language acquisition as the funda~ mental missing link in the Freudian conception of the formation of the mature psyche. He does this by giving us a I inguistic version of the Oedipus complex in which the Oedipal rivalry is described in terms not of the bio­.Iogical individual who is the rival for the mother's auention, but rather of what he calls the Name-of-the-Father, paternal authority now considered as linguistic function. What we need to retain from this is the idea that psychosis, and more particularly schizophrenia, emerges from the failure of the infant to accede fully into the realm of speech and language.

As for language, Lacan's model is the now orthodox structuralist on., whieh is based on a conception of a Iinguistic sign as having two (or perhaps three) components. A sign, a word, a text, is here modelled as a relationship

Postmodernism and Consumer Society 119

between a signifier-a material objoct, the sound of a word, the script of a text - and a signified, the meaning of that material word or material texto The third component would be the so-called "referent," the "real" objeet in the "real" world to which the sign refers- the real cat as opposed to the concept of a cat or the sound "cal." But for structuralism in general there has been a tendency to feel that reference is a kind of myth, that one can no longer talk about the "real" in that external or objective way. So we are left with the sign itself and its two components. Meanwhile, the other thrust of structuralism has been to try to dispel the old conception of language as naming (e.g., God gave Adam language in order to name the beasts and plants in the Garden), which involves a one-to-one correspondence between a signifier and a signified. Taking a structural view, one comes quite rightly 10 feel that sentences don't work that way: we don't translate the individual signifiers OI words that make up a sentence back into their signifieds 00 a Ofie-to-one basis . Rather, we read the whole sentence, and it is from the interrelationship of its words or signifiers that a more global meaning-now called a "meaning-effect" -is derived. The signified-maybe even the illusion or the mirage of the signified and of meaning in general-is an effect produced by the interrelationship of material signifiers.

AII of this puts us in the position of grasping schizophrenia as the break­down of the relationship between signifiers. For Lacan, the experience of temporality, human time, past, present, memory, the persistence of per­sonal identity over months and years-this existential or experiential feeling of time itself - is also an effect of language. It is because language has a past and a future, because the sentence moves in time, that we can have what seems to us a concrete or lived experience of time. But since the schizophrenic does not know language articulation in that way, he or she does not have our experience of temporal continuity either, but is con­demned to live a perpetual present with which the various moments ofhis or her past have Iiule connection and for which there is no conceivable future 00 the horizon. In other words, schizophrenic experience is an experience of isolated, disconnected, discontinuous material signitiers which fail to link up into a coherent sequence. The schizophrenic thus does not know personal identity in oursense, since our feeling ofidentity depends on oursense ofthe persistence of the "1" and the "me" over time.

On the other hand, the schizophrenic wiII cIearly have a far more Íntense experience of any given present of the world than we do, sinee our own present is always part of sorne larger set of projects which force us selec­tively to focus our perceptions. We do nol, in other words, simply globally receive the outside world as an undifferentiated vision: we are always engaged in using it, in threading certain paths through il, in attending lo Ihis Or that object or person within il. The schizophrenic, however, is nol only "no one" in the sense of having no personal identity; he or she also does

120 The Anti-Aesthetie

nothing. since to have a project means lo be able to cornmit oneself to a certain continuity Qver time . The schizophrenic is thus given over to an undifferentiated vision of the world in the presento a by no mean s pleasant

• expenence:

1 remember very well (he day it happencd . We wcrc staying in (he country and I had gone for a walk alone as I did now and lhen. Suddenly. as 1 was passi ng (he school.1 heard a German seng; (he children were having a singing lesson. 1 stopped 10 listen. and al Ihal instan! a strange feeling ca me over me , a feeling hard lO analyze but akin to somclhing 1 was lo know too welllater-a disturb­ing sense of unrealit y. TI seemed to me thal 1 no longer recognized the school, it had become as large as a bar rack s; Ihe singing children were prisoners, compelled 10 sing. lt was as though Ihe school and (he children's song were aparl from Ihe resl of Ihe world. At the same lime my eye encountered a field of wheat whose limils 1 could nOI see . The yellow vastness, dazzling in the sun . bound up wilh the song of lhe children imprisoned in the smoolh stone school-barracks. filled me with such anxiely Ihal 1 broke inlo sobs. 1 ran home lO our garden and began 10 play " lo make lhings seem as lhey usually were," Ihal is. lo return lo realit y. It was the first appearance of lhose elemenls wh ich were always presenl in later sensations of unrealily: illimitable vaSlness, brilliant Iight. and the gloss and smoothness 01' materiallhings. (Marguerite Séchehaye. Autobiography of a Schizophrcllic Cirl.)

Note that as temporal continuities break down , the experience of the presen! becomes powerfully, overwhelmingly vivid and "material": the world comes before the sehizophrenie with heightened intensity, bearing a mys­terious and oppressive eharge of affect, glowing with hallucinatory energy. But what migh! for us seem a desirable experience - an ¡ncrease in our perceptions, a libidinal or hallucinogenic intensification of our normally humdrum and familiar surroundings-is here felt as loss, as "unreality."

What 1 want to underscore, however, is precisely the way in which the signifier in isolation becomes ever more material-or, better still, literal­ever more vivid in sensory ways, whether the new experience is attractive or terrifying . We can show the same thing in the realm of language: what the schizophrenie breakdown of language does to the individual words that remain behind is to reorient the subject or the speaker to a more literalizing attention towards those words. Again, in normal speech, we try to see through the materiality of words (their strange sounds and printed appear­ance, my voiee timbre and peculiar accent, and so forth) towards their meaning. As meaning is lost, the materiality ofwords becomes obsessive, as is the case when children repeat a word over and over again until its sense is lost and it becomes an incomprehensible incantation . To begin to link up with our earlier description, a signifier lhat has lost its signified has thereby beeo transformed iota ao i mage.

This long digression on schizophrenia has allowed us to add a feature that

Postmodernism and Consumer Society 121

we eould not quite handle in our earlier description-namely time itself. We must therefore now shift our discussion of postmodernism from the visual arts to the temporal ones-to music, poetry and certain kinds of narrative texts Iike those of Beekett. Anyone who has listened to Jo~n Cage's music may well have had an experience similar to those just evoked: frustration and desperation-the hearing of a single chord or note followed by a silenee sO long that memory eannot hold on to what went before, a silence then banished into oblivion by a new straoge sonorous present which itself disappears . This experience eould be illustrated by many forms of cultural production today. 1 have chosen a text by a younger poet, partly because his "group" or "school"-known as the Language Poets-has in many ways made the experience of temporal discontinuity-the experience described here in terms of schizophrenic ¡anguage-central to their language experiments and to what they like to call the "New Sentence." This is a poem eaHed "China" by Bob Perelman (it can be found in his recent collection Primer, published by This Press in Berkeley, California):

We ¡ive on the third world from the sun. Number three. Nobody te lis us what lo do. The people who taught us to caunt were being very kind.

It's always time to ¡eave.

If il rains, you either have yOllr umhrella or you don'!.

The wind blows your hat off.

The sun rises also. l'd rather the stars didn 'l describe us to each other; l'd rather we do il for ourselves .

Run Lo fronl of your shadow. A sister who points to the sky al leasl once a decade is a good sister. The landscape is motorized.

The train takes you where it goes.

Bridges among water. Folks straggling along vast stretches of concrete, heading ioto the planeo Don'{ forget what yOllr hat and shoes willlook Iike when you are nowhere to he found . Even the words Hoating in air make blue shadows.

lf il lastes good we eal ir.

The leaves are falling . Poinl things out.

Pick up the right things.

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122 The Anl i-Aeslhel ir

H e\" ~IH'SS wlWI ? Whal '? 1' 1'(' /{'(ln/('d hOIl ' 10 lalk. Grcal. . ,

The perso n whase head \Vas inl"o mplclc bu rs ( ¡nlO tears.

As il fel l. whal could Ihe doll do'! NOlh ing .

Go 10 slcep.

You look greal in shorts. And Ihe flag look ... grcat too.

Everyone enjoyed Ihe explosions.

Time 10 wake up.

Bu! belter gel uscd lo dreams.

Now one may object that this is nOl exact ly schi zophrenic writing in the clínical sense; it does nol seem qu ite right 10 say that these se ntences are free­ftoating material signifiers whose sign ified s have evaporated . There does seem lO be sorne global meaning heTeo Indeed . ¡nsa far as this is in sorne curious and secret way a polítical poem , il does seem lo capture sorne of the excitement of the immense and unfi nished social experiment of the new China . unparalleled in world history: the unex pected emergence. between [he [Wo superpowers. of "number three:" the freshness of a whole new object-world produced by human beings in sorne new control over lhei r Qwn collecti ve destiny: the signal evento aboye all , of a collecti vity which has become a new "subject of histo ry" and which, after the long subjection of feudali sm and imperiali sm, speaks in its own voice, for itself, for the firsl lime ("Hey guess whal? .. rve learned how to lalk ."). Yel sueh meaning fl oats over the text or behind it. One cannot, 1 think . read this text according to any of the older New-Critical categories and find [he complex inner rela­tionships and texture which characterized the older "concrete universal" of cla:><;ical modernisms such as Wallace Stevens's .

Perelman 's work, and Language Poetry generalIy, owes something to Gertrude Stein and , beyond her, to certain aspects of Flaubert. So it is nol inappropriate at this point to insert ao old account of Flaubert's sentences by Sartre, which conveys a vivid feeling of the movement of such sentences:

His seOlence clases in on the object, seizes it, immobilizes ¡t , and breaks its back. wraps itself around it , changes into stone and petrifies its object along wilh itself. It is blind and deaf, bJoodJess , not a breath of life; a deep si lence separates il from the sentence which folJows; it fall s iOlO the void, eternally, and drags its prey down into that infin ite fall. Any reality, once described, is struck off the inventory. (Jean-Paul Sartre , Wharls Lirerarure? )

The deseription is a hostile one, and the I iveliness of Perelman is historieally rather differenl from lhis homieidal F1aubertian praetiee. (For Mallarmé, Barthes once observed in a similar vein, the sentence, the word, is a way of murdering the outside world .) Yet it eonveys sorne of the mystery of sen­tences that fal! iOlo a void of silence so great that for a time one wonders

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Postmoderni sm and Consumer Society 123

whether any new sen ten ce could possibly emerge to take their place. But now lhe seeret of lhis poem must be diselosed. It is a Iittle like Photo­

realism, which looked like a returo to representation after the anti-repre­sentational abstractions of Abstraet Expressionism , uOlil people began to realize that these paintings are not exactly realistic either, since what they ,epresenl is nol the outside world but rather only a pholograph of the oUlSide world or, in other words, the latters image . False realisms. they are really art about other art, images of other images. In the present case, the repre­senled objeet is not reall y China after all: what happened was lhat Perelman carne across a book of photographs in a stationery slore in Chinatown , a book whose captions and characters obviously remained dead letters (or should one say material signifiers?) lO him . The sentences of the poem are his captions to those pictures. Their referents are other images . another text , and the " unity" ofthe poem is not in the text at all but outside it in the bound unity of an absent book .

Now I must try ver y rapidly in conclusion 10 characterize the relationship of cultural produetion of lhis kind to sociallife in lhis eoun!ry today. This will . Iso be lhe momen! to address the prineipal objeetion to eoneepls of post­modernism of the type I have sketehed here: namely that all the features we have enumerated are not new at all but abundantly characterized modernism proper or what I eall high-modernism. Was nol Thomas Mann , after all, interested in the idea of pastiche, and are not certain chapters of Ulysses its most obvious realization? Oid we nOl mention Flaubert, Mallarmé and Gertrude Stein in our accouOl of postmodernist temporality? What is so new . bout all of this? Do we really need the eoneept of a postmodernism?

One kind of answer to this question would raise the whole issue of peri­odization and of how a historian (Iilerary or other) posits a radieal break between Iwo heneeforth distinet periods. I must Iimit myself to the sugges­tion that radie al breaks between periods do not generally involve eomplete changes of content but rather the restructuration of a certain number of elements already given: features that ~n an earlier period or system .were subordinate now become dominant , and fealures that had been domlOant again beeome seeondary. In this sense, everything we have deseribed here can be found in earlier periods and most notably within modernism proper: my point is that until the present day lhose things havé been seeondary or minor fealures of modernist art, marginal rather than central, and that We have something new when they beeome the eentral features of eultural production.

But l ean argue lhis more eoneretely by turning to lhe relationshipbe­lween eultural produetion and soeial life generally. The older or c1assleaJ modernism was an oppositional art; it emerged within the business soclety of

124 The Anti·Aesthetic

Ihe gilded age as sCi.mdalous and offcnsive 10 Ihe middle.cla.ss public_ uel y. dissonant. bohem ian , sexually shocking . It was somelhlllg to make f~n of (when the police were nol ca llcd in lo seize Ihe books or c10se the exhibitions); an offensc to good laste and lO common sense . or, as Freud and Marcuse wou ld have pUl il, a provocative challenge 10 lhe reigning reality. and perform ance-principies of early 20lh-eenlury middle-class soc iely. Modernism in general did nOI go well wi th overstuffed Vlctorl an furn uurc, wilh Victorian moral taboos. or wi lh the convenlions of polite soc iety. This is lo say thal whatever Ihe explicit political content of the great high modernisms. Ihe lalter were always in sorne mostly impl id l ways dangerous and explosivc. subversive wi lhin the establ ished order.

¡f then we suddenly return to Ihe present day. we can measure the immen­sily of Ihe cultura l ehanges Ihal have laken place . NOI only are Joyce and Picasso no longer weird and repulsive, Ihey have become class ics and now look rather realistic 10 us o Meanwhile. Ihere is very linle in ei ther the form or the content of contemporary art lhal contemporary society fi nds intolerable and scandalous. The mosl offensive forms of th is art - punk rock, say, or whal is ealled sex ually expl ieil malerial -are alllaken in Slride by soc iely, and Ihey are eommereially suecessful. unlike Ihe produclions of Ihe older high modernismo BUI Ihis means Ihal even if conlemporary art has all Ihe same formal features as the older modernismo it has still shifted its position fundamenlall y wi lhin our cullure. For one Ihi ng, eommod ily produelion and in particular our c1olhing. furniture, buildings and other artifacts are now intimately tied in wi lh styling changes which derive from artistic experi­mentation; our advertising. for example, is fed by poslmodernism in all the arts and inconceivable wi thout il. For another, Ihe classics of high modern­ism are now part of Ihe so-ealled canon and are laughl in sehools and uni­versities-which at once empties them of any of their older subversive power. Indeed, one way of marking Ihe break belween Ihe periods and of daling Ihe emergence of pOSl modernism is preeisely lO be found lhere: in lhe momenl (lhe early 1960s, one would lhink) in whieh lhe posilion of high modernism and its dominant aesthetics become established in the academy aod are heneeforlh felt lo be aeademie by a whole new geoeralioo of poels, pai nters and musicians.

But one can also come at Ihe break from the other side. and describe it in lerms of periods of reeeol sociallife. As I have suggesled , noo-Marxisls and Marxists alike have come around 10 lhe general feeling that at sorne point following World War 11 a oew kind of soc iely begao lO emerge (variously described as postindustrial sociely, multinational capitalism, consumer soeielY, media soeiely aod so forlh) . New Iypes of eonsumplion; planned obsolescenee; an ever more rapid rhylhm of fashioo and slyl ing chaoges; lhe penetration of advertising, television and the media generally lO a hithe.rto unparalleled degree lhroughoul sociely; lhe replacemenl of lhe old leoSlOn

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Poslmodernism and Consumer Soeiely 125

betwcen ci ty and country, cenler and provi nce, by the suburb ando by uni · versal slandardizalion: lhe growlh of lhe greal nelworks of superhlghways and the arri val of aulomobile culture - Ihese are sorne ofthe fealures which would seem lO mark a radical break with that older prewar society in which high moderni sm was still an underground forc~ . .

I believe lhallhe emergenee of poslmoderlllsm IS elosely relaled lo lhe emergence of this new moment of late , consumer or mult inational capital­ism. I believe also Ihat its formal fealures in many ways express the deeper logie of lhal particu lar social syslem . I wi ll only be able, however, lO show Ihis fo r one major Iheme: namely lhe dlSappearanee of a sense of hlSlory, lhe way in whieh our enlire conlemporary social sySlem has liule by liule begun to lose its capacily to retain ilS own past o has begun lO "ve m a perpetual presenl and in a perpelual ehange Ihal obl ilerales lradil ions of lhe kind whieh 311 earlier social formations have had in one way or another to preserve . Think onl y of Ihe media exhauslion of news: of how Nixon and, eveo.more so, Keooedy are figures from a oow dislanl pas!. One is lempled 10 say lhal the ver y function of the news media is to relegate such recen! histori.cal experienees as rapidly as possible inlo lhe pas!. The informalional funellOn oflhe media would lhus be 10 help us forgel, 10 serve as lhe very agents aod mechanisms for our historical amnesia.

BUl in lhal case Ihe lwo fealures of poslmodernism on which I have dwelt here- lhe lransformalion of real ily inlo i mages, lhe fragmenlalion of lime inlO a series of perpetual presents-are both extraordinarily conso~ant with lhis process . My owo eonelusioo here musllake lhe form of a quesllOn aboul Ihe critical value of Ihe newer art. There is sorne agreement that the older modernism functioned against jts society in ways which are variously described as critical. negali ve, contestatory, subversive . oppositional and Ihe like. Can aoylhiog of lhe sorl be affirmed aboul poslmodernism and ilS social moment? We have secn that there is a way in which postrnodermsm replicates or reproduces-reinforces-the logic of consumer capitalisrn; the more significant question is whelher there is also a way in which it resists lhal logie . BUllhal is a queslioo we muSl leave open.

The Ecstasy of Cornrnunication

lEAN BAUDRILLARD

There is no tonger any system olobjects. My jirsf book comains a critique 01 Ihe ohjee, as obviolis Jact, subtaflce. · reality, use va/ue.1 There rhe ohjeel was token as sign, bul as sign still heavy willl meaning . In this critique two principal logics inlerfered >vil/¡ each olher: a phantasmatic logic Ihal

J:.eferred principally 10 psychoanalysis-its identifica/ion$, projections, and r¡j'e entire imaginary rea/m oftranscendence, power and sexuality oper­ating Qf ,he level olohjeels and Ihe environment, \Vilh a privilege accorded ro ¡he hOllse/auromohile axis (immanenceftranscendence); and a differen­tial social logic Ihal made disli/l clions by referring 10 a sociology, ilself derivedfrom anihropology (consumplion as Ihe produclion of signs, differ· entiation, status and prestige ).'Behind these logles, in sorne way descriptive and analylic, Ihere >vas already Ihe dream of symbolic exc/¡ange, a dream of Ihe sla/ilS oflhe objecl and consumplion beyond excha/lge and use, beyond value and equivalence. In otller words, a sacrificíallogic o/ consumption. gift, expendilure (dépense), pOllalch, and Ihe accursed porlion'

In a certain way all this still exists, and yet in other respects it is all dis· appearing . The description of this whole intimate universe-projective, imaginary and symbolic-still corresponded 10 the object's status as mirror of the subject, and that in tum to the imaginary depths of the mirror and "scene": there is a domestic scene, a scene of interiority, a private space­time (correlative, moreover, to a public space). The oppositions subject! object and public!private were still meaningful. This was the era of the discovery and exploration of daily life, this other scene emerging in the shadow of the historie scene, with the former receiving more and more symbolic investment as the latier was politically disinvested.

But today the scerte and mirror no Jonger exist; instead, there is a screen and network . In place of the reHexive transcendence of mirror and scene,

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126

The Ecstasy of Communication 127

(here is a nonreHecting surface , an irnrnanent surface where operations unfold-the smooth operational surface of cornmunication.

Something has changed , and the Faustian, Promethean (perhaps Oedipal) period of production and consumption gives way to the "proteinic" era of networks, to the narcissistic and protean era of connections, contact, contiguity, feedback and generalized interface that goes with the universe of cornmunication . With the televi sion image-the television being the ultimate and perfect object for this new era-our own body and the whole surrounding universe become a control screen.

If one thinks about it, people no longer project themselves into their objects, with their affects and their representations, their fantasies of possession, loss, mouming, jealousy: the psychological dimension has in,a sense vanished, and even if it can always be marked out in detail, one feels that it is not really there that things are being played out. Roland Barthes already indicated this sorne time ago in regard to the automobile: Iittle by Iittle a logic of "driving" has replaced a very subjective logic ofpossession and projection .' No more fantasies of power, speed and appropriation Iinked to the object itself, but instead a tactic of potentialities Iinked to usage: mastery, control and command, an optimalization of the play of possibilities offered by the car as vector and vehicle, and no longer as object of psycho­logical sanctuary. The subject himself, suddenly transformed, becomes a computer at the wheel, not a drunken demiurge of power. The vehicle now becomes a kind of capsule, its dashboard the brain, the surrounding land­scape unfolding like a televised screen (instead of a Iive·in projectile as it was before).

(But we can conceive of a stage beyond this one, where the car is stíll a vehicle of performance, a stage where it becomes an information network. The famous Japanese car that talks to you, that "spontaneously" informs you of its general state and even of your general state, possibly refusing to function if you are not functíoning well, the car as deliberatíng consultant and partner in the general negotiation of a Iifestyle, something-or sorne­one: at this point there is no longer any difference- witb which you are connected. The fundamental issue becomes the communicatíon witb the car itself, a perpetual test of the subjec!'s presence witb his own objects, an uninterrupted interface.

It is easy to see that from this point speed and displacement no longer matter. Neither does unconscious projection, nor an individual or social type of competition, nor prestige. Besides, tbe car began to be de-sacralized io Ihis sense sorne time ago: it's all over with speed-I drive more and consume less. Now, however, it is 'an ecological ideal tbat iostalls itself at every leve!. No more expenditure, consumption. performance, but instead regulation, well-tempered functionality, solidarity among all tbe elemenls of the same system, control and global management of an eosemble. Each

128 The Anti-Aesthetic

system, including no doubt the domestic universe, forms a 80ft of ecological niche where the essential thing is to maintain a relationaJ decor, where all the terms must continually cornmunicate among themselves and stay in COntact , informed of the respective condition of the others and of the system as a whole . where opacity, resistance or the secrecy of a single term can lead to catastrophe.)'

Private "telematics": each person sees himself at the control s of a hypo­thetical rnachine, isolated in a position of perfeet and remote sovereignty, at an infinite distance from his universe of origino Which is to' say, in the exact position of an astronaut in his capsule, in a state of weightlessness that necessitates a perpetual orbital flight and a speed sufficient to keep him from crashing back to his planet of origino

This realizatian of a living satellite, in vivo in a quotidian space, corre­sponds to the satellitization of the real, or what I caU the "hyperrealism of simulation" 5: the elevatían of the domestic universe to a spatial power, to a spatial metaphor, with the sateUitization of the two-room-kitchen-and-bath put into orbit in the last lunar module. The very quotidian nature of the terrestrial habitat hypostasized in space means the end of metaphysics. The era of hyperreality now begins . What I mean is this: what was projected psychologically and mentally, what used to be lived out on earth as metaphor, as mental or metaphorical scene, is henceforth projected into reality, without any metaphor at all, into an absolute space which is also that of simulation.

This is only an example, but it signifies as a whole the passage into orbit, as orbital and environmental model, of our private sphere itself. It is no longer a scene where the dramatic interiority of the subject, engaged with its objects as with its image, is played out. We are here at the control s of a micro-satellite, in orbit, living no longer as an actor or dramaturge but as a terminal of multiple networks. Television is stiU the most direct prefigura­tion of this . But today it is the very space of habitation that is coneeived as both receiver and distributor, as the space of both reception and operations, the control screen and terminal whieh as such may be endowed with tele­matic power-that is, with the capability of regulating everything from a distance, including work in the home and, of course, consumption, play, social relations and leisure. Simulators of leisure or of vacations in the home-like flight simulators for airplane pilots-beeome eonceivable.

Here we are far from the living-room and close to science fiction. But once more it must be seen that all these changes-the decisive mutations of objects and of the environment in the modern era-have come from an irreversible tendency towards three things: an ever greater formal and oper­ational abstraetion of elements and funetions and their homogenization in a single virtual proeess of funetionalization; the displacement of bodily movements and efforts into eleetrie or electronie eommands, and the min-

The Ecstasy of Communication 129

iaturization, in time and space, of processes whose real scene (though it is no longer a scene) is that of infinitesimal memory and the sereen with which they are equipped.

There is a problem here, however, to the extent that this electronic "en­cephalization" and miniaturization of circuits and energy, this transistoriza­lion of the environment, relegates to total uselessness, desuetude and almost obscenity all that used to fill the scene of our lives. It is well known how the simple presence of the television changes the rest ofthe habitat into a kind of archaic envelope, a vestige of human relations whose very survival remains perplexing. As soon as this scene is no longer haunted by its actors and their fantasies, as soon as behavior is crystallized on certain screens and oper­ational terminals, what's left appears only as a large useless body, deserted and condemned. The real itself appears as a large useless body.

This is the time ofminiaturization, telecommand and the microprocession of time, bodies, pleasures . There is no longer any ideal principie for these things at a higher level , on a human scale. What remains are only concen­trated effects, miniaturized and immediately available. This change from human scale to a system of nuclear matrices is visible everywhere: this body, our body, often appears simply superfluous, basically useless in its exten­sion, in the multiplicity and complexity of its organs, its tissues and func­lions, since today everything is concentrated in the brain and in genetic codes, which alone sum up the operational definition ofbeing. Tbe country­side, the immense geographic countryside, seems to be a deserted body whose expanse and dimensions appear arbitrary (and whieh is boring to cross even if one leaves the main highways), as soon as all events are epitomized in the towns, themselves undergoing reduction to a few minia­turized highlights. And time: what can be said about this immense free time we are left with, a dimension henceforth useless in its unfolding, as soon as Ihe instantaneity of communication has miniaturized our exchanges into a succession of instants?

Thus the body, landscape, time all progressively disappear as scenes. And the same for public space: the theater of the social and theater of politics are both reduced more and more to a large soft body with many heads. Adver­lising in its new version-which is no longer a more or less baroque, utopian or ecstatic seenario of objects and consumption, but!he effeel of an omnipresent visibility of enterprises, brands, social interlocuters and !he social virtues of communication-advertising in its new dimension invades everything, as public spaee (the street, monument, market, scene) dis­appears. It realizes, or, if one prefers, it materializes in a1l its obseenity; il monopolizes public life in its exhibition. No longer limited to its traditionaI language, advertising organizes the arehitecture and realization of super-

130 The Anli-Aesthelic

objecls lik~ Beaubourg and Ihe Forum des Halles, and of fUlure projeels (e.g .. Pare de la Villette) which are monuments (or anti-monuments) to advertising, nOI because they will be geared lo consumption but because they are immediately proposed as an anticipated demonstration of the operation of culture, cOJnmodities, mass movement and soc ial flux. It is OUT

only architecture today: great screen s on whi ch are reftected atoms, particJes, molecules in motian . Not a public scene or tfue public space but gigantic spaces of circulatían, ventilatian and ephemeral connections.

lt is Ihe same for privale space. In a sublle way, Ihis los s of public spaee occurs contemporaneously with the 1055 of prívate space. The ane is no ¡onger a spectacle, the other no longer a secreto Their disti nctive opposition, the clcar difference of an exterior and an interior exactly described the domestie scelle of objeels, with its rules of play and limits, and Ihe sovereignty of a symbolic space which was also that of the subject. Now this opposition is effaced in a sort of obscenity where the most intimate processes of our life become Ihe virtual feeding ground of the media (Ihe Loud family in Ihe Uniled States, the innumerable si ices of peasanl or patriarchallife on French television). lnversely, the entire universe comes to unfold arbitrarily on your domeslic sereen (all the useless information Ihal comes to you from the enlire world, like a microseopie pornography of Ihe universe , useless, excessive, just like ttle sexual c1ose-up in a pomo film): a11 this explodes the seene formerly preserved by the mini mal separation of public and private, the scene that was played out in a restricted space, according to a secret ritual known only by the actors.

Certainly, this private universe was alienating to the extent that it sepa­rated you from others-or from the world, where it was invested as a protective enclosure, an imaginary protector, a defense system. But it also reaped the symbolic benefits of alienation, which is that the Other exisls, and that otherness can fool you for the better or the worse . Thus consumer soeiety lived also under the sign of alienation, as a soeiety of the spectacle' Butjust so: as long as there is alienation, there is spectacle, action, scene. It is not obscenity-the spectacle is never obscene. Obscenity begins precisely when there is no more spectacle, no more scene, when a1l becomes transparence and irnmediate visibility, when everything is exposed to the harsh and inexorable light of information and communication.

We are no longer a part ofthe drama of alienation; we live in the ecstasy of communication. And this ecstasy is obscene. The obscene is what does away with every mirror, every look, every image. The obscene puts an end to every representation. But it is not only the sexual that becomes obscene In

pornography; today there is a whole pornography of information and com­munication, that is to say, of circuits and networks, a pornography of aIl

The Ecstasy of Communication 131

funetion s and objects in their readability, their ftuidity, their availability, their regulation , in their forced signification , in their performativity, in their branching, in their polyvalence , in their free express ion ....

lt is no longer then the traditional obscenity of what is hidden, repressed , forbidden or obscure; on the contrary, it is the obseenity of the visible, of the all-too-visible, of the more-visible-than-the-visible . lt is the obscenity of what no looger has any secret , of what dissolves completely in inforrnation and cornmunication.

Marx set forth and denounced Ihe obscenily of the eommodity, and this obscenity was linked to its equivalence, to the abject principie of free circu­lation , beyond all use value of Ihe object. The obscenity of the commodity slems from the fact that it is abstraet, formal and light in opposition to the weight , opaeity and substance of Ihe object. The eommodity is readable: in opposition to the object, which never completely gives up its secret, the comrnodity always manifests its visible essence, which is its price. It is the formal place of transeription of all possible objects; through it, objects eommunicate. Hence, the eommodity form is the first great medium of the modern world. But the message that the objects deliver through it is already extremely simplified, and it is always the same: their exchange value. Thus al bottom the message already no longer exists; it is the medium that imposes itself in its pure cireulation. This is what 1 eall (potentia11y) ecstasy.

One has only to prolong this Marxist analysis, or push it to the second or Ihird power, to grasp the transparence and obscenity of the universe of eommunication, which lea ves far behind it those relative analyses of the universe of the commodity. AlI functions abolished in a single dimension, that of communication. That's the ecst,asy of comrnunication. AH secrets, spaces and scenes abolished in a single dimension of information . That's obscenity.

The hot, sexual obseenity of former times is sueceeded by the cold and cornmunicational, contactual and rnotivational obscenity of today. The former clearly implied a type of promiscuity, but it was organic, like the body's viseera, or again like objects piled up and accumulated in a private universe, or like all that is not spoken, teeming in the silence of repression. Unlike this organic, visceral, carnal promiscuity, the promiscuity that reigns Over the communication networks is one of superficial saturation, of an incessant solicitation, of an extermination of interstitial and protective spaces_ 1 pick up my telephone receiver and it's all there; the whole marginal network catches and harasses me with the insupportable good faith of évery­thing that wants and clairns to cornmunicate. Free radio: it speaks, it sirigs. it expresses itself. Very well, it is the sympathetic obscenity of its content. In lerms a little different for each medium, this is the resulto a space, that ofthe FM band, is found to be saturated, the stations overlap and mix together (to Ihe point that sometimes it no longer communicates at all)_ Something that

132 The Anli-Aeslhelie

was free by virlue of spaee is no longer. Speeeh is free perhaps, but I am less free (han befare: I no longer succeed in knowing what I want, (he space isso saturated, lhe pressure so great from all who want to make Ihemselves heard .

I fal! ioto lhe negative ecstasy of lhe radio . There is in effecl a state of fa scination and verligo linked to this obscene

delirium of communication . A si ngular form of pleasure perhaps, but alea­lory and dizzying. If we follow Roger Cai Ilois 7 in his c1assifieation of games (ies as good as any other) -games of express ion (mimicry), games of eompelilion (agoll), games of ehanee (alea) , games of verligo (ilyllx )- Ihe whole tendency of OUT contemporary "culture" would Icad us from a relative disappearance of forms of expression and competitian (as we have remarked al the level of objeels) lo Ihe advanlages of forms of risk and vertigo. The ¡atter no ¡ooger involve games of scene, mirror, challenge and duality; they are, rather. ecstatic, sol itary and narcissistic . The pleasure is no longer one of manifestat ion . scenic and aesthetic, but rather one of pure fascinarion, aleatory and psychotropic. This is nol necessarily a negative value judgment: here surely there is an original and profound mutation of the very forms of perception and pleasure. We are still measuring the conse­quenees poorly. Wanling 10 apply our old eriteria and the reftexes of a "scenic" sensibility, we no doubt misapprehend what may be the occur­rence, in this sensory sphere, of something new, ecstatic and obscene.

One thing is sure: the scene excites us, the obscene fascinates uso With fascination and ecstasy, passion disappears. Investment, desire, passion, seduction or again. according to Caillois, express ion and competition-the hot universe . Ecstasy, obscenity, fascination, communication or again, aceording 10 Caillois, hazard, ehanee and vertigo- the eold universe (even vertigo is eold, Ihe psyehedelie one of drugs in particular).

In any case , we will have to suffer this new stale of things, Ihis forced extroversion of all interiority, this forced injection of all exteriority that the categorical imperative of communication literally signifies. There also, one can perhaps make use of the old melaphors of pathology. If hysteria was Ihe palhology of the exaeerbaled staging of the subjeet, a pathology of expres­sion, of the body's theatrieal and operatie eonversion; and if paranoia was Ihe pathology of organization, of Ihe strueturation of a rigid and jealous world; then with communication and information, with the immanent prom­iscuity of all these networks, with their continual connections, we are noW in a new form of schizophrenia. No more hysteria, no more projective para­noia, properly speaking, but this state of terror proper to the sehizophrenic: loo great a proximity of everything, the unclean promiseuity of everything which touches, invests and penetrates without resistance, with no halo of private proteetion, nol even his own body, to proteet him anymore.

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The Eeslasy of Communieation 133

The sehizo is berefl of every seene, open to everything in spite of himself, li ving in the greatest confusion. He is himself obscene, the obscene prey of Ihe world's obseenity. What eharaeterizes him is less Ihe loss of the real , the light years of estrangement from the real, Ihe palhos of distanee and radical separalion , as is eommonly said: but, very mueh lo the eontrary, the absolute proximily, the tOlal instantaneily of Ihings, the feeling of no defense, no relreat. It is the end of interiority and intimacy, the overexposure and transparence of the world which traverses him without obstacle. He can no longer produce the Iimils of his own being, can no longer play nor stage himself, can no longer produce himself as mirror. He is now only apure screen, a switching center for all the networks of influence .

Translated by John Johnston

References

l . Le Systeme des objets (Paris: Gallimard. 1968). [Tr.J 2. Baudrillard is alluding here lo Marcel Mauss's theory of gift exchange and Georges

Bataille 's notion of dépense . The "accursed portion" in the latter's theory refers 10 what­ever remains oulside of soc iety 's rational ized economy of exchanges. See Bataille, La Part Maudile (Paris: Editions de Minuit , 1949). BaudriUard's own conceplion of symbolic exchange, as a form of inleraclion Ihal hes outside of modero Western society and thal therefore "haunts illike ils own death ," is developed in his L' échange symbolique tI la morl (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) . {Tr.J

3. See Roland Barthes, "The New Citroen," Mylhologies , transo Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), pp. 88-90. [Tr.J

4. Two observations. Firsl, Ihis is nOI due alone lO Ihe passage, as one wants lo call it. from a sociely of abundance and surplus to a society of crisi s and penury (economic reasons have never been worlh very much) . JusI as Ihe effecl of consumption was not Iinked to me use value of Ihings nor to their abundance. but precisely lo the passage from use value to sign value . so here there is somelhing new mat is not linked to the end ofabundance.

Secondly, all this does nOI mean mat the domestic universe-the home. its objects, elc. - is nOI sl illlived largely in a Iradilional way-social, psychological, differential, etc . It means rather Ihat Ihe stakes are no longer there, Ihal ano!her arrangement or life-style is virlually in place, even if il is indicaled only through a technologistical discourse which is often simply a political gadgel . But it is crucial 10 see that!he analysis that one could malee of objects and their system in the '60s and '70s essentially began with the language of adver­lising and the pseudo-conceptual discourse of the experto "Consumption," the "strategy of desire ," etc . were first only a meladiscourse. the analysis of a projective myth wbose actual effect was never really known. How people actually live with tbeirobjects-at bottom. one knows no more about this than abouI the truth of primitive societies . That's wby it is ofien problematic and useless to want lo verify (statistically. objectively) these bypotheses. as one ought to be able to do as a good sociologisl. As we know, the language of advertising is first for the use of Ihe advertisers themselves . Nothing says lbat contemparary discourse on computer science and communication is nO{ for the use alone of professionals in these fields. (As for Ihe discourse of inlellectuals and sociologists themselves ... )

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134 The Anti-Aesthetic

5. For an expanded explanation of this idea, see Baudrillard's essay "La précession des simulacres ," SimufaCTes et Simulafion (Paris: Galilée, 1981). An English translation appears in Simulalions (New York: Foreign Agent Series, Semiolexl(e) PUblications , 1983). [T<.l

6. A reference 10 Guy Debord 's La société du specrac/e (Paris: Buchet-Chaslel, 1968), [Tr.] 7. Roger CaiJlois . Les jelLr el les hommes (Paris: Gallimard, 1958). [Tr.J

Opponents, Audiences,

Constituencies and Community

EDWARD W. SAID

Who writes? For whom is the writing being done? In what circumstances? These, it seems to me, are the questions whose answers provide us with the ingredients making foc a politics of interpretation. But if one does not wish te ask and answer the questions in a dishonest and abstraet way, sorne attempt must be made to show why they are questions of sorne relevanee to the present time. What needs to be said at the beginning is that the single most impressive aspect of the present time-at least for the "humanist," a description for which 1 have contradictory feelings of affection and revul­sion - is that it is manifestly the Age ofRonald Reagan. And it is in this age as a context and setting that the politics of interpretation and lbe politics of culture are enacted.

1 do not want to be misunderstood as saying that the cultural situation 1 describe here caused Reagan, or that it typities Reaganism, or that every­thing about it can be ascribed or referred back to the personality of Ronald Reagan . What 1 argue is that a particular situation within the tield we call "criticism" is not merely related to but is an integral part of the currents of thought and practice that playa role within the Reagan era. Moreover, 1 think, "criticism" and the traditional aeaaernic humanities have gane through a series of developments over time whose beneticiary and culmina­tion is Reaganism. Those are the gross elaims that 1 make for my argumento

A number of miscellaneous points need to be made here. 1 am fully aware that any effort to characterize the present cultural moment is very likely to seem quixotic at best, unprofessional at worst. But that, 1 submit, is an aspect of the present cultural moment, in which lbe social and historical setting of critical activity is a totality felt to be benign (free, apolitical,

This essay was originally published in Criticallnquiry 9 (Seplember. 1982) and is reprinted here by permission of Ihe aulhor and Universily of Chicago Press.

135