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Review: Reading Baudrillard
Author(s): David Banash
Reviewed work(s):
The Vital Illusion by Jean Baudrillard ;Julia Witwer
Simulacrum America: The USA and the Popular Media by Elisabeth Kraus;Carolin Auer
Reading Simulacra: Fatal Theories for Postmodernity by M. W. Smith
Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Mar., 2003), pp. 123-129
Published by: SF-TH Inc
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241145
Accessed: 07/11/2008 22:51
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IN REVIEW
BOOKS 123
BOOKS IN REVIEW
Jean The Vital Ed.
Reading Baudrillard. Baudrillard. Illusion. Julia Witwer.
New York: Columbia UP, 2000. 102 hc.
pp. $18.95
eds.
and Carolin Simulacrum America: The USA the
Elisabeth Kraus Auer, and
NY: Camden 2000. 271
Popular Media. Rochester, House, pp. $65.00 hc.
Simulacra: Fatal
M.W. Smith. Reading Theories for Postmodermity.
SUNY
New
SERIES IN POSTMODERN CULTURE. York: State U of York
New P, 2001.
151 $16.95
pp. pbk.
The whole is one of critical which is the
problem abandoning thought, very
essence of our theoretical but which to a a
culture, belongs past history, past
life.-Baudrillard, Impossible 17
Exchange (2001)
How we read Jean Baudrillard? This is the real
should at the heart
problem
of two recent books that utilize the work of the French Elizabeth
postmodernist:
Auer's The
Kraus and Carolin Simulacrum America: USA and the
anthology
Popular Media and M.W. Smith's Reading Simulacra: Fatal Theories
for
Both answers to this as
Postmodernity. provide
possible question they mobilize
to
Baudrillard's theories of simulation analyze popular culture,
postmodernism,
sf. It Baudrillard who
and is perhaps the most
himself, however, provides
to the of he In
answer how should be read. one of his most
challenging question
recent works, The Vital Illusion, he abandons the traditional methods and
of his work
vocabularies theory. now seems closer to what best
Indeed, might
be understood as social science fiction. Baudrillard as social sf
Approaching
both it
creates a of for and and is these
number problems theory sf, however,
from a more
that have critics radical re-invention of
problems kept attempting
his
work.
The post-structuralist vogue of the 1980s has largely and it
disappeared,
seems if we in a culture
as are not after all. the
quite more
living panic Indeed,
sober of less Marxists and cultural
voices radical critics have had a deal
great
of success in co-opting the vocabularies of Derrida, Lyotard, and
Deleuze,
into
them number of more
Baudrillard, assimilating any practical
approaches
and of
concrete culture. Of all the
explorations postmodern post-structuralists,
it is
Baudrillard who has been most with
associated the of
closely triangulation
and and is
postmodernism, popular it also Baudrillard who is seen
culture, sf,
as
the most He is often as a
provocative. caricatured little more than sophomoric
his own and
nihilist, celebrating celebrity status, grossly misreading
culture,
to the worst
to live excesses and
generally trying up absurdities associated with
the discourses
of postmodernism. critics still find that
Nonetheless, Baudrillard's
work constructive to the
provides of our and his
approaches problems media,
continue to animate the work of critics from Marxists such as
arguments
Kellner cultural critics as In
Douglas to such Lynn Spigel. many it is
respects,
we in
like this more sober Baudrillard that fimd Simulacrum America:
something
The
USA and the Media.
Popular
124 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 30 (2003)
Kraus and Carolin Simulacrum America consists
Edited by Elisabeth Auer,
as at the annual
of seventeen essays originally presented papers conference of
in 1997.
for American Studies
the Austrian Association these essays
Though
literature to cinema,
cover topics from nineteenth-century contemporary
at the heart of the
fiction and sf nonetheless remain the
postmodern collection,
a of five entitled in
former represented by selection essays "Simulacra
in
and Human and the latter a selection of five
Literature: History Identity"
title in Science Fiction:
essays grouped under the "Simulation Cyberspace,
so tends
and Discourse." With the
Cyborgs, Cybernetic many essays, quality
to as I to even the
be somewhat uneven. Still, hope show, less accomplished
about in which we read The
essays say a great deal the ways Baudrillard.
and Kraus and Auer are
collection an ambitious acutely aware
has introduction,
the
of and associated with work of Baudrillard.
both the problems possibilities
a brief of Baudrillard's of they make
After offering survey theory simulation,
the
following observation:
wide of such as
from a Fredric
Critics and theorists variety disciplines, Jameson,
with science
Donna and Baudrillard that
Haraway, Larry McCaffery, agree
the of the era, since
fiction has become pre-eminent literary genre postmodern
the drastic transformations that
it has long anticipated and fictionally explored
the fields of information/simulation and
technology, including technology
bioengineering, have wrought on Western post-industrial society. Science
themes and of
fiction's wealth of futuristic topoi including powerful icons
border well
Artificial and of all as as
cyberspace, Intelligence, crossings kinds,
of limitless alternative and heterotopian
its simulations utopian, dystopian,
to mainstream fiction and cultural in
realities, gave important impulses analysts
In in "The SF of
as Istvan his
general. fact, Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., argues essay
Baudrillard and science fiction has ceased to be a of
Theory: Haraway," genre
and become a awareness about the
fiction instead mode of world. (5)
per se,
While
In Kraus and Auer more than deliver.
some they
sense, promise they
cite 18.3 1991]: this
Csicsery-Ronay's essay (SFS [Nov. 387-404), introduction,
and unhappily the collection as a whole, do little to develop the new
sf or that the real
of Indeed,
understanding theory Csicsery-Ronay suggests.
of that
flaw this collection is Baudrillard's work is as a critical
simply applied
of the when it is the distance the critical
theory world, precisely implied by
work into
that Baudrillard's calls
operation question.
This not to that there are not some about
is say strong essays post-
in the
modernism and sf book. Kunow's "Simulation as Sub-
Riidiger essay,
Text: Fiction in the Face of Media of American
Writing Representations
History," provides an excellent survey of both canonical and postmodern
that these historical are less
literary texts, demonstrating throughout fictions
the than demonstrations of the of that in
"reconstructions of past power past the
Alen Vitas offers a of in his
present" (34). compelling reading cyberpunk
9 to Information and the of the
contribution, "Warp Hyperreality: Velocity End
" classics and films such as
Space Age. Working through cyberpunk popular Star
Wars, Vitas argues that "Mediaspace now replaces outer space, and
information now the
simulations of kinesis and replace
consequently, velocity
BOOKS
IN
REVIEW 125
earlier
fascination
with
physical
speed"
(125).
Herbert
Shu-Shun
Chan
the explores
metaphor of in
space Neuromancer and
Babylon
5, suggesting
along
Vitas that with
we need
to rethink
the
relationship
of cyberpunk
traditional to the more
themes
of space
opera.
In keeping
with
the
cyberpunk
Elisabeth focus,
Kraus
offers a
detailed
survey
and
analysis
of Pat
Cadigan's
and work,
Louis J. Kern
offers an
exploration
of the
nostalgia for
fully
human
that bodies
animates
much
cyborg
fiction
and film. For sf scholars,
these
constitute essays
the
real
interest
of this
book.
The
rest of the
collection
covers
amazing an
amount of
ground, but the
contributions
vary
widely in
subject
and matter
quality. almost all
Nonetheless, the
essays at least
gesture
towards
theory of Baudrillard's
simulation, and
many more
take his of
theory simulation as
their
critical basic
position. For
a collection
that takes
Baudrillard's of
as of its theory simulation
part very there is little
subject, surprisingly nuanced of
and reading his
work, the collection as a
whole
seems to reflect a
wider in
current problem our
reception of Baudrillard's
work. In the basic
short, move that
most of these is to elucidate animates
essays the of
premise Baudrillard's of
and theory
simulation, then claim that
this or
that text in
functions accord
instance, with it. For
Arno
Heller's
reading
of Don
DeLillo's
White
Noise
(1985)
that claims
"Gladney's confrontation
with Mink
can be
interpreted as his to
terms with coming
an
America that Jean
Baudrillard has
so
persuasively
depicted as
of a
system simulations in the
endless
stream of
meaningless
signs and
(45). The images"
conclusion is that
somehow
DeLillo offers
a kind
Baudrillard. There of proof for
is no sense
that DeLillo
might us
or better help somehow better
understand, yet reinvent, or vice-versa. Far
such Baudrillard, more
problematically, of
applications Baudrillardian treat
it were an objective of theory his work as if
description our an that
problematizes his own world, option Baudrillard
by work in the
putting realm of simulation
itself. In hyperreal
short, the
despite promise of the there is
to introduction, almost no
attempt reinvent
Baudrillard as social sf
here, or and
anything
case with all the that else, this is the
essays use his work. Michael
on DeLillo Furthermore, Stockinger's
essay and
Baudrillard on to claim
goes that
"the of the
in submergence
reader a narrative a more
usually produces effect than
of a mind-baffling the
consumption theoretical The skillful
essay. of
demands more 'suspension disbelief
imaginative, and therefore
creative, illusionary on
behalf potential
of the writer as
well as
the reader" Such a
statement
wonder if this (62). leaves one to
contributor
has read Baudrillard. It is
actually not, as
if however,
less-than-innovative
approaches to
Baudrillard or in
post-structuralism
are hard to find. what this general
Indeed, collection reveals more than is our
dire need to the "critical and anything
stop instead our
to Baudrillard. application" reinvent entire
approach not an
Though precisely to reinvent
attempt M.W.
Simulacra: Fatal Baudrillard, Smith's
Reading Theories
for a far more
and useful Postmodernity provides
In its
to his work. first
interesting approach four
chapters,
offers a broad Reading
Simulacra of an
survey postmodern
theory
of Baudrillard's to through investigation
major these a number of
positions,
using bring
together
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