Jean baudrillard's ideological pedigree

Jean baudrillard was born in Reims in the northeast of France on 1929. Compared with most French intellectuals, his growth career and spiritual course are quite special. He grew up not in a knowledge environment, but in a traditional French family whose ancestors were farmers and whose parents were civil servants. He broke up with his parents after graduating from high school. This "breaking the pattern" and parallel displacement profoundly influenced his life. As a gifted student, he did not take the traditional education route, but escaped from the college preparatory class. As a direct result, after teaching language courses for many years, he had to work hard to find a job in the university. In the early 1960s, he gained a certain reputation for translating Peter Weiss's plays. At the same time, he was also a French translator of Marx, Engels and Brecht. 1966, he finally got a chair at the University of Paris X (Nanterre College), but a student movement broke out two years later. At this time, he began to contact the radical Utopia magazine, but politically, he adopted a compromise attitude between radical Marxism and environmental determinism, which deviated from the mainstream attitude of intellectuals at that time.

Since the end of 1960s, he has been engaged in research and teaching in the Sociology Department of Nanterre College. However, as Baudrillard himself commented, "I entered the university in the 1960s, but it was a circuitous road. In short, as far as my normal career is concerned, I always miss my goal, including that I have never been promoted to a professor. However, this is what I want. This is my own game. I want to say that what I want is a certain degree of freedom. " From this, it serves to show his revolutionary attitude of "anti-system" within the system. Although he tried his best to squeeze into the academic system, he always lived in it and got basic recognition in this "academic unity"

Gradually, his research began to include the emerging "mass media" and "consumerism". At that time, these problems were still non-academic problems that could not be learned. In this sense, Baudrillard can be said to be a person who always pursues fashion, which is also the initial impression of many people on him. This fashion orientation has always accompanied his academic career. At the same time, although he is also committed to the study of critical Marxism, his ideological routine is quite different from that of the early Frankfurt School, especially from Adorno's aggressive elite cultural stance. In Baudrillard's eyes, Marxism is an empirical analysis of modern consumer society, absorbing the essence of roland barthes and McLuhan's thoughts. In the late 1970s, after working as an editor for a period of time, his life was once in crisis. Since then, Baudrillard's work and writing have stabilized. 1986, after being awarded the doctorate, he resigned from the university and began to concentrate on writing and photography. At the end of 1990s, he won praise for his photography, and held photography exhibitions in France, Britain and Italy, thus showing a different lifestyle and attitude from ordinary social thinkers.

Throughout Baudrillard's career so far, we can see that he is not an enthusiastic participant in social movements like other French intellectuals. However, his academic thought has always maintained the closest connection with social reality. The most obvious example is that when most scholars didn't realize the research value of modern commercial society, he published the famous book Material System as early as 1968 (Le Systéme des objets,1968; The system of things, 1996), in which the problem of "things and their consumption society: ideological system" is discussed. Roland barthes's Model System (1967) was published only one year earlier than him. Another example is that the Gulf War didn't happen recently (La Guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu lieu,1991; The fact that the Gulf War did not happen (1995) is also an obvious evidence.

Baudrillard's revolutionary passion in his life was actually exhausted in academic and non-academic research within the system. He is really a "revolutionary pioneer" in the study. Looking back on his first half of life, Baudrillard concluded: "I have been in a virtual state of break: I can always get involved in politics by keeping my distance from universities and even politics." This consistent "breaking the pattern" not only determines that he always wants to be an avant-garde thinker of an era, but also maintains a subtle relationship with politics. Moreover, more importantly, this "broken pattern" in his life is "virtual", which determines that his ideological exploration is not to practice, but only something that needs to be successful at the ideological level. Baudrillard is a social thinker who has won the world reputation. But interestingly, if he is forced to belong to any traditional discipline system, it seems that some important parts of his ideological pedigree will be lost. So, how should Baudrillard's social thought be positioned?

As we all know, Baudrillard is a "sociologist" first, because his chair in the university is also sociology, and his academic start also started from the sociological research in the 1960s.

In contemporary sociological theory, Baudrillard, together with Lyotard who holds the view of "language game", Rush who puts forward "released culture" and Crook who insists on the concept of "post-culture", is listed as an independent and effective post-modern cultural researcher. It can be seen that he can occupy a place in the boundaries of sociology, not only because his theory of consumer society has formed his own terminology system, but also because he has evolved from a Marxist researcher to an advocate of postmodernism, and because of his research results on modern business society and culture, which is where he is "unique" among sociologists. Because his sociological research often has philosophical significance, he is also considered as an important contemporary philosopher.

Secondly, we can draw the conclusion that Baudrillard is a famous "postmodernist".

He, Foucault, Deleuze and Lyotard fought against "modernity" on the same front, and he was also a "latecomer" on the same heavyweight table. Although it was not until the 1980s that Baudrillard began to adopt postmodern discourse, which seems a little later than other colleagues. "In his works in the 1960s and 1970s, many original postmodern themes have been included ... The central theme of Baudrillard's narrative is that the era of modernity dominated by production, industrial capitalism and symbolic political economy has ended, and correspondingly, it is a modernity dominated by analogy and novelty. In fact, Baudrillard's closest to the spirit of post-modernism is his exposition of the "surreal" situation in modern society, which makes the real opposition or dichotomy of all values disappear, and the increasingly blurred boundary between truth and unreality constitutes the unique landscape of post-modern society.

Thirdly, it can be concluded that Baudrillard is an avant-garde figure in contemporary "cultural studies".

What can be compared horizontally is the cultural studies of Lyotard and Jameson, whose work is considered to have played a "key directional role" in post-modernism cultural studies in social, economic and political aspects. Especially in shortening the distance between reality and theory, "Lyotard aestheticizes knowledge through the argument of language games. Jameson expressed concern about the loss of the critical distance between culture and theory, and Baudrillard was the most extreme. He transformed the theory itself into a theoretical situation adaptively, and began to try to explain the relationship between the following two fixed and clear roles: on the one hand, the role of post-modernity in social and economic life, and on the other hand, the role of post-modernism in cultural life. Undoubtedly, all three are trying to define post-modernity in various States with unclear social and cultural boundaries, but Baudrillard seems to go further and have a deeper sociological vision.

Baudrillard has repeatedly borrowed the "implosion" theory of communication scientist McLuhan to explain the collapse of the boundary between images and the real world. In fact, the boundaries of various disciplines have also "imploded" in Baudrillard's theoretical practice, and sociology, postmodernism and cultural studies have formed an interlocking "multi-dimensional intersection" in him.

In l' e change symbol et la mor,1976; Symbolic Exchange and Death (1993), on the cover of the English edition of this monograph, the designer used the head of the artist andy warhol to repeat the screen printing method, and copied and shaped nine skull portraits in various colors. This cover design is like a symbol, and Baudrillard is like such a ghost, floating and crossing between various ideological fields and disciplines.

Baudrillard is a guerrilla who constantly charged in the ideological jungle. His ideological course has undergone the following stages of evolution:

The first stage: the period of Marxism and semiotics. Material system (1968) and consumer society (1970) are the representative works of this stage. To be exact, at this stage, Baudrillard adopted the methodology of combining structuralist semiotics with Marxism. The semiotic flavor of roland barthes's mass system can also be clearly smelled in the material system, while the consumer society provides people with a set of overall theories of western social transformation. Consumer society is regarded as a social type dominated by "systematic production of symbols".

Transformation stage: "the period of criticizing Marxism". The representative work of this period is Criticism of Political Economy of Symbols (Pourne Critical de l 'Economie du Signe,1972; As a criterion of political economy, 198 1) and the mirror of production (Le Miroir de la production,1973; The mirror of production, 1975). Since 1970s, Baudrillard has liquidated his Marxist elements, abandoned and tried to surpass Marxism from a basic anthropological concept.

The second stage: "the formative period of social thought". On the cornerstone of the transformation stage, Baudrillard's social thought finally matured, and Symbol Exchange and Death became one of the most critical works in his whole academic career. In this monograph, he put forward a new basis for criticizing capitalist culture. In the past, Baudrillard focused on "consumption symbols", but now he focuses on "symbol exchange" to deal with "the logic of images". On this new basis, in the mid-1970s, he began to attack from all directions in a series of fields: Bobr effect and forgetting Foucault (1977; Forget Foucault, 1987), In the Shadow of the Silent Majority, and the implosion of the media have been published one after another, which is really awesome.

The third stage: "From critical theory to fatalism". At this stage, Baudrillard began to seek the development of symbol exchange theory, but basically gave up the passion of criticism. His representative works include Temptation (1979), Fatal Strategy (1990) and Calm Memory (1990).

The fourth stage: "the fourth sequence of elephants". From the end of 1980s to 1990s, it was the latest development period of Baudrillard's thought. At the Montana conference, 1989, he outlined the social and historical state of the fourth simulacra sequence. The development of this concept is reflected in the transparency of evil, 1993) and analogy and simulation (1981; Imitation and simulation, 1994).

At the same time, the latest monographs include L 'Illusion de Lafin (1991) which studies the extinction of truth, and L 'e Change im Possibilities (1996) which studies exchange. The latest concept of the Millennium appeared at this stage, which is an extension of Baudrillard's social thought on "historical time view". Multi-prism image of consumer society

Baudrillard's social thought begins with the criticism of consumer society, which is characterized by the participation of structuralist semiotics.

In the conclusion of "The System of Things", he clearly pointed out that "things must become symbols if they want to be the object of consumption", and this change of identity also makes the relationship between people "become a consumption relationship". Consumer society still takes the analysis of things as the starting point, and then puts forward the logic of consumer society, and defines this social type as "a society that conducts consumption training and social domestication for consumption", while "consumption" is "a powerful factor to realize social control (by distinguishing individual consumers)".

It can be seen that Baudrillard combined Marxist critical theory with structuralist semiotics in his early days, trying to put forward a set of principles of commodity semiotics and consumer social logic. Since he began to reflect on Critique of Political Economy of Symbols, this effort has not been weakened. He even decided to go even further: "treat commodities as symbols, as symbolic values, and as symbols as commodities." Baudrillard in the first stage and the transitional stage looked at the consumer society more from the perspective of "symbolic consumption" or "consumption symbol".

In the second stage, Baudrillard really moved towards a mature theory of "symbol exchange", which has become the essence of his social thought. Before and after the writing of Symbol Exchange and Death, Baudrillard also absorbed Foucault's post-structuralism thought, and the internal framework of his theory is as follows:

Exchange-value-signifier (signifier)

—————————————————— Symbol exchange.

Significance of use value (symbolic exchange)

In Baudrillard's view, on the one hand, in the modern consumer society, the "referred value" has been cancelled, that is to say, the "real" content pointed by symbol forms has disappeared, and symbols only exchange internally and will not interact with reality; On the other hand, the labor force and the production process have also undergone similar variations, all the final production contents have disappeared, and production can only play the role of a symbol code or coding. At the same time, money and symbols, needs and production purposes, and labor itself have also become unresolved. On the one hand, it is the end of "the true reference of symbols", on the other hand, it is the real end of the authenticity of production.

In this sense, Baudrillard finally concluded that this is the end of labor and production, the dialectical relationship between signifier and signified, the dialectical relationship between use value and exchange value, the era of classical symbols and the era of production. Therefore, he darkly suggested that only death can ignore and escape from this world dominated by code logic, and escape from this world where everything is equal and irrelevant to other things. It seems that what "equality of death" can avoid is Zhuangzi's seemingly homogeneous universe.

In a word, Baudrillard seems to hold up a kaleidoscope for his audience, from which people can see all aspects reflected by the consumer society, but everything can not be separated from "consumption symbols" to "symbol exchange". "Iconicity theory" is Baudrillard's most famous theory, and sometimes it even replaces him as "symbolic code". His main idea is to set a coordinate system for post-modern culture from the perspective of historical order.

In the second stage, represented by symbol exchange and death, Baudrillard put forward the theory of "the third order of simulacra". The three sequences of iconicity match the sudden change of the law of value, which has been progressive since the Renaissance:

(1) Imitation was the dominant mode from the Renaissance to the "classical" period of the industrial revolution;

② Production is the dominant mode in the industrial age;

(3) Simulation is the dominant mode in the current code-dominated era.

The first image sequence follows the law of natural value, the second stage follows the law of market value and the third stage follows the law of structural value. We can cite examples of works of art as circumstantial evidence. Before the industrial revolution, the imitation of works of art could only be made by hand, copying from one painting to another, which did not destroy the laws of nature. This kind of imitation can only add "fake" to the original. After the industrial revolution, due to the emergence of mechanized large-scale production methods, works of art can be copied by mechanical manufacturing. For example, classic paintings can be reproduced by printing, which is Benjamin's artistic production mode in the era of mechanical reproduction, and the "invisible hand" of market rules plays a regulatory role in it. Nowadays, with the disappearance of the agricultural society marked by hand polishing and the coming end of the industrial society marked by steam engine, the era of knowledge economy marked by the Internet has arrived, and any plastic arts can be transformed into images and spread on the Internet. These infinitely copied "images" become symbols that can be reduced to 0 and 1.

This belongs to the third stage of "image", which is mainly used to describe a kind of "image culture" that appears in contemporary society and is provided to the public, such as the ubiquitous TV images around and around popular culture. Although this image can first "reflect the basic reality", it will then "cover up and distort the basic reality", then "cover up the absence of the basic reality", and finally it will move towards the field of "pure self-image", which is no longer related to any reality.

It can be seen that the so-called "simulacra" is wandering, alienated from the original, or there is no copy of the original, and it seems that it is no longer an artificial product. It also makes sense to translate "simulacra" into "simulacra". The category of iconicity refers to the reappearance of image group, and iconicity refers to the imitation between images. "Similarity" creates an artificial reality or second nature, and what people indulge in is not reality itself, but a "similar" world divorced from reality.

This is easy to understand. The contemporary urban masses live in such a world. In people's daily life, "clothing", "food", "housing", "transportation" and "image culture" are everywhere-coats and underwear, goblets and wine bottles, tables and chairs and bedding, television and audio-visual equipment, mobile phones and computers, bicycles and cars, and so on. This is because, through the huge filter of "cultural industry", all commercial images have gone through the chain of "mechanical reproduction" and become "quasi-images" that are free from reproduction and tend to be infinitely copied.

It can be seen that "image" is produced by "cultural industry", which produces consumer goods as well as consumers. In 2004, CCTV broadcast the program "China Dream", which caused a ratings boom in China. This program claims to turn "ordinary you" into a dazzling star in a short time. As a result, under the commercial operation of the TV industry, the live broadcast of Dream of China has become a "star manufacturing show", and ordinary players have been "packaged" and given a "visual" spiritual aperture, which has spread to thousands of households through TV reproduction and become a "quasi-image". At the same time, millions of TV viewers in Qian Qian are also participating in this extravagant "show" in a collusive way through the voting interaction of SMS, which is also shaped by the TV industry. It is said that the SMS support rate of the final winner is as high as 3867 15, which shows the cultural power of "similarity" and "mass".

Andy warhol's famous pop art work "25 Colored Marilyn Monroe Statues" (1962) can be mutually confirmed with the theory of iconicity. In the picture, there are five screen-printed photos of Marilyn Monroe in horizontal and vertical rows, all with yellow hair, red lips and attractive skin color. Except for the shadow difference caused by printing, these many Monroe images are almost the same. This implies that, on the one hand, the "cultural industry" is constantly producing this image and making it multiply and spread, but on the other hand, the public's feelings about this image are only "one thousand people".

In a word, in Baudrillard's vision, the core feature of postmodern culture is that the boundary between similarity and reality is "imploded", and today's cultural reality is "surreal", not only the truth itself has fallen in surrealism, but also the contradiction between reality and imagination has been solved.

At the same time, the distance between "quasi-image" and the public has also been eroded, and "quasi-image" has been internalized as a part of the audience's self-experience, and illusion and reality are confused. It is no exaggeration to say that living in a world surrounded by this image, "our world is at least culturally unrealistic, because we can't be sure where reality begins or ends." In the highly "concrete" situation of culture, the public can only experience the sense of discontinuity and deep lack in time, and realize the virtualization of daily life in the current experience.

Baudrillard's The Gulf War Didn't Happen clearly shows that the Gulf War of 199 1 is actually a virtual "media war" that didn't happen. By the same token, the "9. 1 1 incident", "Afghan invasion" and "Iraqi war" in the United States are actually untrue "media events" or "TV wars" for most people in China. When the public watched the exchange of fire between American troops and Iraqi resistance forces day and night, his view of the war was actually the same as that of American Vietnam War movies. Because the TV images they see are only the result of being captured, edited and deformed by photographers with certain political tendencies, what the public sees is far from the real Iraq, but a documentary narrative work with real-time playback function that is "virtualized" by the media. What's more, for photographers and warring parties, they are in a real war scene, but for people who rely on sofas to eat snacks and watch TV, this war seems more like a video game.

Stepping into the 1990s, Baudrillard's ideological process entered the so-called "fourth sequence image period". As a new development of iconicity in this period, he began to pay attention to the "code-matrix" decomposition of the third sequence, thus showing the openness of his thoughts. However, whether it is the theory of "three-order similarity" or "four-order similarity", the idea of similarity has undoubtedly become one of the most important symbols of post-modernism culture and one of the standards to measure cultural post-modernity.