Comments On The World & Self

Below are excerpts from Jean Baudrillard's latest work, titled Impossible Exchange (Verso, 2001). Baudrillard is the author of The Illusion of the End, Forget Foucault, Total Screen, and The Consumer Society: Myths And Structures.

"There is no equivalent of the world. That might even be said to be its definition -- or lack of it. No equivalent, no double, no representation, no mirror. Any mirror whatsoever would still be part of the world. There is not enough room both for the world and for its double. So there can be no verifying of the world. This is, indeed, why 'reality' is an imposture. Being without possible verification, the world is a fundamental illusion. Whatever can be verified locally, the uncertainty of the world, taken overall, is not open to debate. There is no integral calculus of the universe. A differential calculus, perhaps? 'The Universe, made up of multiple sets, is not itself a set' (Denis Guedj)."

"The destiny of the individual soul has lost much of its grandeur. In the past, the human being was not doomed to be merely what he is. God and Satan wrestled over him. In the past, we were important enough to have a battle fought over our souls. Today, salvation is our own affair. Our lives are no longer marked by original sin but by the risk of failing to fulfil their ultimate potential: so we accumulate plans, ideals, and programmes; we constantly pass the buck and seek to outdo each other in a universal effort to perform. And we subside into the condition of those who, as Kierkegaard put it, are no longer capable of facing the Last Judgement in person.

"Since no one fights over our souls any longer, it is up to us to fight over ourselves, to put our own existences on the line, to be endlessly trying things out and competing in a perpetual, infernal contesting of ourselves -- though there is no Last Judgement any more, and there are no longer any real rules."

"When the world, or reality, finds its artificial equivalent in the virtual, it becomes useless. When the only thing needed to reproduce the species is cloning, sex becomes a useless function. When everything can be reduced to the brain and the neuronal network, the body becomes a useless function. When computer technology and the automatism of machines are all that is needed for production, work becomes a useless function. When, in the 'memory of water,' the transference of the electromagnetic wave produces the same effects as the molecule itself, the molecule becomes useless. When time, and all its dimensions, are absorbed by real time, it becomes a useless function. When artificial memories reign supreme, our organic memories become superfluous (they are, in fact, gradually disappearing). When everything takes place between interactive terminals on the communication screen, the Other has become a useless function.

"Now, how do things stand with the Other when it has disappeared? What does the Real become, what does the body become, when they have been supplanted by their operational formulae? What do sex, work, time and all the figures of otherness become when they fall prey to technological synthesis? What becomes of the event and history when they are programmed, broadcast and diluted to infinity in the media? Where the medium becomes highly defined, the substance becomes highly diluted."