Hello and welcome to today's session of the
NPTEL course postmodernism in literature.
We have been taking a look at the various
aspects of postmodernism, particularly the
ways in which post modernism is defined as
a philosophical and cultural theory, that
rejects totalizing narratives in favour of
partial fragmented and incomplete ones.
I mean, today's session, we shall also be
focusing on how the idea of the postmodern
challenges and questions the ah the very idea
of the aspect of reality behind and beyond
representations . And in the various facets
in which postmodernism is being represented,
we should also be ah and further analysing
how the general idea the general condition
of postmodernism is suspicious of truth and
focuses on the production of truth in language
and narrative.
And this is again something that we will be
taken a look at in our previous discussions,
ranging from paths identity order .
And we also noticed a very strong poststructuralist
and specially in the early stages of defining
and of framing postmodernism.
And this is particularly evident in the works
of Lyotard Deleuze and Baudrillard.
And others also ah general distrust of finalize
able meaning that we can find and their approaches
towards postmodernism . And something that
we could identify as being common to all of
these theorists is a fact that they have all
extended the concerns of post structuralism
about science meaning and context of meaning
production in order to make sense of what
postmodernism is, and in order to make sense
of the various postmodern representations
regardless of genre media and at the context
.
The objective of today's lecture is particularly
take a look at Baudrillard, and has work on
hyper reality , and how that has come to define
the various aspects of contemporary postmodern
representations.
If we need try to approach Baudrillard in
a rather simplified manner, it would not be
wrong to say that Baudrillard had our compiled
a theory of representation arguing that nothing
exists outside representation . And according
to him hyperrealism world of simulations and
excessive science, and it is also the only
real world according to him that we will ever
know, because the postmodern condition the
postmodern ah representations , make it rather
impossible for us to know the real for real
we only have certain simulations, which are
accessible to us in the form of not reality,
but hyper reality . In a Baudrillard own words
there is an escalation of the truth of the
lived experience a resurrection of the figurative
where the object, and substance have disappeared.
When we begin to talk about jean Baudrillard,
one of the first and foremost things that
comes to our mind is that he is a French post
structuralist, think a and interestingly he
is also classified as a postmodern theorists
by a Raman Selden . And ah a here is someone
who questioned the tenets of both Marxism
and structuralism in that sense we can find
a number of common traits across, these poststructuralist
thinkers who are also being identified as
postmodern thinkers.
We saw a similar characteristic being ah reflected
in the ah writings and in the ideologies are
put forward by ah Leytard as well.
And we find that Baudrillard at let us street
ah ah turning to a critique of technology
in the era of media reproduction , and again
ah we also realize that just like Lyotard
talks about the postmodern societies as advanced
ah computerized societies, we find Baudrillard
talking about the advanced society as a contemporary
postmodern society.
As a society dominated by the technology of
media reproduction . A number of ah Baudrillard
writings have been identified as provocative
and apocalyptic.
And that since he has also enjoyed ah ah an
intellectual cult state as in the postmodern
theory.
At the same time when we analyse the writings
of Baudrillard.
It is also important to note that he is he
does not provide solutions through his discussions.
Rather he remains as a critical observer of
the contemporary of the postmodern condition,
and also analysed and critiques how the technology
and the media of the postmodern period has
affected human lives a culture and the notion
of reality and history in general .
Perhaps some most significant work of Baudrillard
is simulacra and simulation published in 1981,
this is also considered as the first influential
work written by him.
And in this work, he ah talks about the deathless
world of unreflecting images , and also about
the image creating postmodern communication
technologies, particularly he talks about
ah tel television, and the various self-generating
images across the pro postmodern surface . And
according to Baudrillard at the television
is a strategic site ah gigantic simulator.
And much of a Baudrillard work concerns, the
ways in which technology and particularly
media and television , how they act as an
interface to ah to ah present reality to the
ah contemporary audience, and also how they
mediate the reality in such a way that it
becomes almost impossible to know the difference
between the media projected reality.
And reality as it has experienced ah every
day.
And ah what Baudrillard finds interesting
and rather alarming is also the fact that,
after a point it becomes almost impossible
to experience reality without this mediation
by these technology dominated sites .
The other important works of Baudrillard were
published in the late 1980s and 1990s.
And ah in the title the consumer society myths
and structures America in the illusion of
the end, and the conspiracy of art there are
a number of other works also that Baudrillard
ah composed and there are also a number of
critical commentaries available from the 1990s
onward.
And interestingly, all of these works were
originally written in French and they were
translated into English at a later point .
And ah across these works, we find that Baudrillard
is postmodernity repeatedly in terms of the
disappearance of meaning of inertia of exhaustion
and endings whether of history or subjectivity.
And this is how Raman selden talks about the
contributions of Baudrillard to the ah ah
to the ideas of postmodernity.
And according to Baudrillard, in the contemporary,
in the postmodern period everything is obscenely
on display.
So, much of his work in that sense continues
to engage with the various aspects of reality
as it is being represented, as it is being
made available to the ah to the public.
Quite interestingly many of Baudrillard's
observations were also considered are quite
controversial in the contemporary, especially,
this article titled the gulf war did not take
place had also drawn a lot of flak from a
number of critics.
Nevertheless, this this work needs to be located
as a significant of work in analysing, the
gulf war situation against the postmodern
condition . And this work in this essay is.
In fact, a part of a series of 3 articles
that he published ah ah between Jan and ah
between January and march 1991, the original
it was published both in French and English,
in a French newspaper titled liberation and
in the British ah guardian.
Ah the first the first in this series was
titled in the gulf war will not take place,
the second one the gulf war is not really
taking place, and the third one the gulf war
did not take place . And here we find Baudrillard
not limiting himself to certain abstract critical
of theoretical figurations, but he moves on
to a different level altogether critiquing
the contemporary media culture and notions
of history and reality . And he also engages
in a rather political discourse by using the
theoretical and intellectual frameworks of
post modernity; particularly, the aspects
of simulation simulacra and hyper reality
that key point.
About the gulf war, Baudrillard made this
a rather provocative statement it is an unreal
war without the symptoms of war .
And in his own analysis the war was conducted
as a media spectacle , and he also argued
that the real violence was thoroughly overwritten
by the electronic and narrative by simulation.
And ah he also argued in the context of the
gulf war that the media has said the agenda
of the narrative of the war, and which was
also made possible through a number of propaganda
imagery.
And this is not to say that Baudrillard denied,
the happenings of the war or contested whether
the war actually happened or not.
On the other hand, what he was trying to critique
was he aspect that , the entire scenario was
an atrocity which was masqueraded as war,
and this was being made possible only because
of the media intervention, because according
to him this was a carefully scripted media.
In reality it was a virtual war, because the
details of the war where always appropriated
we are always ah ah we are we are always ah
given to the public, through the eyes of the
west through the v point of the west.
There was no way and through which one could
know what really happened on the know why
and the waterfront.
Except through these mediated narratives which
were presented to us through the electronic
media . And this; obviously, had invited a
number of fair critiques from ah various at
the political theorists and also from other
ah critical theorists.
Nevertheless, this continues to be seen as
a very prominent example, that ah ah in Baudrillard
talks about the various interventions being
made in the aspect of reality through the
various postmodern devices .
And here it becomes important to talk about
these 2 notions that ah Baudrillard introduces
and has a work, simulacra and simulation . And
I need some level it would be ah possible
to say that ah Baudrillard actually provides
us with both a theory of how we construct
and simulate reality, and also offers the
social ah social and cultural critique of
the contemporary . And this is evident in
the way he talks about the gulf war situation
, and when he talks about reality , and it
was not at a ah metaphysical level.
On the other hand, he draws from sociology
media studies semiotics history, and philosophy
in that since it is an interdisciplinary rather
a multidisciplinary approach that he takes
in his critique of a reality we talked.
About the pragmatic political aspects of their
work related to simulacra and simulation that
we can also say that Baudrillard uses this
a framework to criticize a various aspects
of American culture , the consumer culture
the intervention of ah television into the
contemporary about capital about science and
about politics in general.
So, this I the idea of a simulacra simulation
and hyper reality could be seen at 2 levels,
as a mural as merely as a theory as an intellectual
framework, and also as a framework to critique
contemporary ah social cultural ah scenario.
And if we try to differentiate between these
2 terms simulacra and simulation, simulation
is a process in motion, it is a process in
which a representation of something comes
to replace the thing which is actually being
represented.
To such an extent that, the thing which is
being represented becomes more real than the
real thing.
So, here we also enter into a confusion as
to which object is the real one whether they
represented object, or the object which is
being represented through various medium . And
only are they hanging simulacra or ah ah plural
being simulacra, refers to a more static image
in in in ah comparison with simulation which
is a process , and here we find that the sign
loses it is relation to reality.
And the simulacra becomes a copy of reality
which has already lost it is presence eminence
and meaning.
And this there is also the possibility of
the existence of a copy without an original
the most popular example being one of ah Disneyland.
Here you also note that this term simulacra
was originally ah used by plato to talk about
a false copy of an art form.
And ah when we talk about simulacra, and when
we give the example of Disneyland there is
also , a challenge which is being posed to
various notions of reality . Because earlier
there was this notion art being something
that reflected reality, but here in the postmodern
period with the intervention of technology
with the intervention of media, we have reached
a condition where it becomes impossible to
differentiate the real from the copy.
And we also reach the next stage which is
being projected in the example of Disneyland;
where we also have a copy without an original.
The copy itself becomes a meaning rather than
a representation of something else which originally
had a meaning .
And this leads us to the term hyper reality
, which ah Baudrillard used it truth to talk
about the division between the viewer and
the simulated object.
And hyper reality becomes a reality when the
distinction or the division between the real
and the simulation has collapsed.
Because an illusion of an object is no longer
possible, and the real object is no longer
there as we have already noted in this in
the case of Disneyland.
And ah also he gives the example television
and photography to talk about how there is
no way to access to any reality beyond the
image itself, because we are caught up in
the world of image and it is of copies and
that is no longer possible to distinguish
the real from the copy . And this crisis and
this confusion of the contemporary is designated
as a hyper real situation.
We can see this ah ah process getting manifested
in a number of contemporary events including
a number of movies such as metrics and inception,
but also in various other contexts which are
being dominated by the electronic digital
media.
This interestingly though is the reality of
the contemporary there is a way in which we
can until we can trace it is intellectual
tradition.
And it is quite fascinating to know that Baudrillard
himself of coates in his work ah from borges
ah work 1935 short story which is in fact,
just a paragraph a story that has that borges
had written about on a in exactitude in science.
So, let us read out this a short story all
together.
In that empire the art of cartography attains
such perfection that the map of a single province
occupied the entirety of a city, and the map
of the empire the entirety of a province.
In time those unconscionable maps no longer
satisfied, and the cartographers guilds struck
a map of the empire , whose size was that
of the empire.
And which coincided point of a point with
it the following generations who were not
so fond of the study of cartography as their
forebears had been.
So, that the vast map was useless . And not
without some pitilessness was it that.
They delivered it up to the inclemencies of
sun and winters , in the deserts of the west
still today.
There are tattered ruins of that map inhabited
by animals and beggars in all the land there
is no other relic of the disciplines of geography.
Here borges tells a story about an empire
for which a map was built which also occupied
the province in an entirety.
And as and when the empire decayed, we also
lose that the map was also found in ruins
and in tactus, and here involve a story it
becomes rather impossible to see whether the
map is a copy on an original of the empire.
Because there is away in which the the map
and the empire collapses into one and it becomes
almost indistinguishable from one another.
Baudrillard I uses this idea from bore has
talked about the various aspect of simulacra
and simulation, and interestingly this is
something that we continue to see in the contemporary.
Ah for instance we see a number of ah ah images
in which the copy becomes the original , whether
it is a painting by raja ravi varma which
adorns a calendar ah, or ah it is the image
of che guevara which is ah ah which is portrayed
in the t shirt , or even a nike swoosh which
is reproduced in a locally manufactured ah
product.
We find that it becomes difficult to see say
whether these images are being cloned or copied
from an earlier copy, or whether these images
by themselves are originals .
And ah the postmodern factor becomes a characterized
by this endless circulation of the copies
as pramod nayar puts it.
And we also find that it is a rather ah difficult
task to delineate the copy from the original
, and eventually the copy itself becomes a
original.
Because it becomes a rather futile task to
go on a pursuit to identify the the original
from these endless circulation of the copies,
and it really does not make any difference
in the meaning making process either .
And ah if we extend the analogy of bar has
a maps in the postmodern age , we find that
the maps of reality ah television and film
becoming ah becoming more real than our real
lives itself.
And we also have seen a number of occasions
where the television characters emergence
being more alive in the real, ah person who
is playing the character . And this all eventually
leads to the death of the real, and the condition
of hyper reality which ah Baudrillard began
begins to lament illness works, but we also
see that there is no escape from this condition
of hyper reality from this death of reality
as we have been seeing in the postmodern age.
In connection to the it is also useful to
recall a work by Walter Benjamin published
in 1935 , an article in titled the work of
art in the age of mechanical reproduction,
and here Benjamin engages with a series of
changes that had come about in the age of
mechanical reproduction; particularly, in
the aspects related to art and the way in
which art is being engaged with and the art
is being analysed and judged.
And ah to quote his own words , for the first
time in world history mechanical reproduction
emancipates the work of art from it is parasitical
dependence on ritual.
To an ever-greater degree the work of art
reproduced become the work of art designed
for reproducibility . From a photographic
negative for example, one can make any number
of prints.
To ask for the authentic print makes no sense
. But instant the criterion of authenticity
ceases to be applicable to artistic production,
the total function of art is reversed instead
of being based on ritual it begins to be based
on another practice politics.
So, it will be a useful exercise to read ah
ah all of these text together in order to
see how there is an inherent connection and
the intellectual traditions which are emerging,
and how the contemporary society the changing
nature of technology effects the ways in which
art is being conceived and also how the ideas
of authenticity.
And as we saw in the previous ah lecture how
the ideas of legitimation also undergoes a
radical change with this innovative ah technological
practices.
The example that Walter Benjamin gives ah
about ah photograph about the inability to
identify the authentic print.
And how it is a futile and a useless exercise
is also related to the various things about
reality hyper reality simulation simulacra
that ah that that Baudrillard programs .
And subsequently we are also left with an
impossibility to know the reality, apart from
this image the copy or the photograph which
is being made available to us.
The endless circulation of copies eventually
become not just one of the big ways, but the
only way through which we can access a reality.
Because we are also at a loss to figure out
what constitutes our knowledge of reality.
And also, it leads us to this question whether
we know anything other than the image or the
copy which is being made available to us.
And this process of image making, which Baudrillard
also terms as simulation , becomes more important
than the real because how do we know the real
or is there no real to we have only copies
of what we deem as the real.
Maybe an inevitable banality of this are processes
that we cannot any longer distinguish between
the real , and the copy that becomes rather
impossible or futile task because the real
has already been overwritten by the hyper
real through the interventions through the
mediations of the ah technology and the various
forms of new advancements.
In perhaps use a number of examples from the
contemporary to show how the aspect of a hyper
reality gets manifested in our everyday life
. Ah for example, a number of ah ah commentators
a number of journalists have referred have
ah refer to the 9 11 attack, like a movie
to ah quote from a news report . It was the
television commentators as well as those on
the ground who resorted to a phrase book culled
from cinema.
It was like a movie, it was like Independence
Day the Hollywood movie , it was like die
hard no die hard 2, Armageddon .
So, here we find that the one of the most
horrifying events of the twentieth century
is being compared to a movie like situation;
because the knowledge of horror, the knowledge
of certain horrifying and terrifying ah offense
is also based on our knowledge of particular
movies, and the images that have been in circulation.
Because even in the reportage of this horrifying
event the 9 11 attack, the image making the
superior technology the embittered journalist,
all of this takes the appearance of a cinema.
And this is something that are we need to
engage with because there is no is there is
no way in which one could escape from these
ways through which reality is being overwritten
by hyper real images .
And similarly, ah at the home front ah we
also saw how the 26 11 Mumbai attacks, we
are also being framed in a similar way, because
our knowledge of commando action of 26 11
is based on a simulation of it, that we have
seen in films or in televised images.
And here the reality that we grasp is also
circulated through the media images which
are being made accessible to us, it could
be real images or even the images which were
in circulation through various other ah ah
recorded televised means . And mainly these
instances could be used to talk about the
excessive influence of the media and screen
cultures, and the ways in which they have
begun to mediate our access to reality and
also our knowledge of reality.
To a very great to to very large extent I
coming back to our discussion on Baudrillard
and his notions of ah ah and his notion of
hyper reality Ah he also identifies a capitalist
link an urban capitalist link to this entire
act of mediation.
Because urban capitalism has Baudrillard puts.
It has been ah successful in concealing the
inequalities of society behind images of production
ah prosperity and efficiency .
And in that sense, we are left with such a
situation that we know only the finished product.
We do not know what is behind it . We do not
know what is real behind the finished product
. For example, in the ah ah in the modern
capitalist sense if we talk about a mango
drink or the advertisements the various aspects
of it is production which are being foregrounded
.
We know that our knowledge of the mango the
mango drink or even the mango plantation is
through the sign or the representation of
the mango on the bottle.
It has got nothing to do with the real as
we know is behind the representation.
Because we we do not and cannot attach our
history or culture or a specific practice
to that product which is being mediated through
various technology, various representations,
and various forms of technological enhancements
.
And in that sense, we could also I talk about
the example of a christmas tree, a decorated
christmas tree in a living room, in which
we are taking something real with an original
and a natural quality , and then exaggerating
it into a perfection.
Because one does not aspire to have a real
pine tree . In place of this decorated christmas
tree; which is only a copy of the real pine
tree from the forest weathre over the years
. And this aspiration for the exaggerated
perfect image is also something which the
postmodern mediation of technology thus to
our ideas of reality, and our ideas of engaging
with the real which is out in the world.
Having said that it is again important to
reiterate the fact that the idea of hyper
reality the notion of similar simulation and
simulacra , they do not exist merely as a
theoretical and as intellectual framework
but they do have a bearing on the way this
society is being mediated in the contemporary
in the postmodern period . So, in the next
session, we shall be taking a look at the
various other aspects in which hyper reality
is being talked about.
The other critics and the other artists who
also found this as a useful term to engage
with to talk about contemporary reality so
on that note which will also be ah winding
up todays ah lecture.
Thank you for listening, and we look forward
to seeing you in the next session .
