The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena

by Jean Baudrillard, James Benedict (Translator)

Sex, technology, politics, and disease in Western culture after the ‘orgy’ of the 1960s.

Postmodern sociologist-prophet Jean Baudrillard examines the legacy of the 1960's, the “orgy” that, he argues, gave birth to our age of dizzying simulation, reproduction, eclecticism, and prosthesis. Explaining how sexual liberation confused the categories of man and woman, artistic innovation conjured a “transaesthetic realm of indifference,” and political revolution perpetuated a diorama world of political forms, Baudrillard uncovers a culture of empty rights that forces us to come to terms with a dramatic new perspective on Evil and conduct a fundamental reassessment of otherness. Working through these contemporary riddles, The Transparency of Evil transforms the way we understand the jumble of our daily lives — from the gyrations of the stock market to those of Michael Jackson.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Sociology, Essays, Psychology, Politics

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet, with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as hyperreality. Baudrillard wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, critique of economy, social history, aesthetics, Western foreign policy, and popular culture. Among his most well-known works are Seduction (1978), Simulacra and Simulation (1981), America (1986), and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991). His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism. Nevertheless, Baudrillard had also opposed post-structuralism, and had distanced himself from postmodernism.

Reviews

[Petre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very pessimistic view of our transfuture, written with fear and anxiety, nothing new to say; but, all that wrapped in great style.

[Bookfreak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Επανέκδοση του -εξαντλημένου- δοκιμίου του Γάλλου στοχαστή από τις πολύτιμες εκδόσεις Πλέθρον. Οι κυριότερες ιδέες του Μποντριγιάρ αναπτύσσονται στο παρόν κείμενο και αν και η χρονική απόσταση με τα γεγονότα που περιγράφει όλο και μεγαλώνει οι βασικές προκείμενες του μεταμοντέρνου κόσμου μας παρουσιάζονται με διαλεκτική αρτιότητα.

[مجید اسطیری · Rating 4 out of 5]

بعضی کتاب ها را فقط برای یک بخش خاص می خوانیم. حسرت آنجایی است که وقتی آن بخش را می خوانی میفهمی با چه گوهری طرفی ولی وقت نداری کل کتاب را بخوانی
من سه چهار تا از یادداشت‌های این کتاب را خواندم و واقعا عالی بودند
اما اصلش به خاطر یادداشت بودریار بر فتوای امام خمینی درباره سلمان رشدی خواندم و واقعا جالب بود به نظرم
جدا از نمایش قدرت جهان اسلام که بر اثر آن غرب مجبور شد خود سلمان رشدی را به گروگان بگیرد و رشدی نیز مجبور شد به نوعی خود را به گروگان بگیرد، آیت الله خمینی نیز ثابت کرد که چگونه بر هم زدن روابط قدرت موجود از طریق نیروی نمادین یک کلام امکان پذیر است.
آیت الله در مواجهه با کل جهان تنها یک اسلحه در اختیار داشت، اسلحه‌ای که هرچند از واقعیت مادی برخوردار نبود، اما اسلحه‌ای مطلق به شمار می‌آمد: نفی.
از سوی دیگر، نمی توان برتری موضع او را در برابر غرب نادیده گرفت، چه کسی برنده شده است؟ بی تردید، آیت الله خمینی. به لحاظ نمادین، او پیروز این میدان است و باید به یاد داشت که قدرت نمادین همواره برتر از قدرت اسلحه و پول است. این به نوعی انتقام جهان دیگر است. جهان سوم هرگز نتوانسته است چالشی واقعی برای غرب ایجاد کند.
صرف نظر از هرگونه تصوری که افراد دارند، استراتژی آیت الله، به گونه‌ای توجه بر انگیز مدرن است. در واقع، این استراتژی از استراتژی ما بسیار مدرن تر است زیرا به شکل ظریفی عناصر کهن را وارد بافت مدرن می‌سازد: فتوا.
در این جا شاهد انتقام جهان دیگریم: ما بقیه جهان را به میکروب ها و بیماری ها و اپیدمی ها و ایدئولوژی های زیادی مبتلا ساخته ایم، عواملی که جهان مزبور در برابر آن کاملا بی دفاع بوده است، اما اینک شاهد بی دفاع بودن خودمان در برابر نیرویی کهنیم که به نظر می‌رسد به راستی در حال تغییر دادن سرنوشت ماست.

[Dat-Dangk Vemucci · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhausting but rewarding read. Baudrillard here officially breaks with his famous formulation of hyperreality and theorizes a new stage in his genealogy of simulation, the fractal stage. To memory the order of simulacra outlined by Baudrillard, the one you see in memes, runs as follows: in the first order simulations reflect a perceived reality, in the second stage simulation reflects simulations (simulacra), in the third stage simulacra reflect a code or model (hyperreality). The fourth stage outline in this book is the fractal or viral, where the simulacra no longer reflects any initial referent, and, existing at the level of pure signs, tends to radiate in all directions and proliferate beyond any definitional limit.
If this sounds like wafty metaphysics Baudrillard conveniently ties it all back to that staple of Marxist theory, value. The first order can be defined by 'Use Value', where our objects are based on an actual relationship to the external world as a real referent, ie. a farmer's plough. In the second order, we move to exchange value represented by the early capitalist fetish commodity which is purchased based on an image opposed to function ie. a jade ashtray. The third order is defined by sign value, the mass-produced commodity produced according to a code or model-logic ie. Barbie dolls, baseball cards. The fourth order is defined by a total dispersal or epidemic of value, where even the sign value of the object is secondary to its endless proliferation, its virality, ie. internet memes. The key concept Baudrillard keeps returning to in analyzing our existence at this stage is "Hysteresis", the phenomena where processes continue long after the initial cause has disappeared; "[T]hings continue to function long after their ideas have disappeared, and they do so in total indifference to their own content."

From this Baudrillard draws a canny and prophetic rumination on various subjects. The economy, he claims, has become totally virtual, abstractly in orbit of real life without seeming to make contact with it, which seems truer than ever in the age of Wall Street Bets and cryptocurrency grifts. Information that goes beyond knowledge, which is purely reproducible by its own lack of referent "with no purchase on reality" - just think how many fan wiki's there are for the minutiae of any nebulous cultural product, however obscure.

Some of Baudrillards sharpest analysis here is on the idea of "difference" moreover its enforced absence in the superficially benign humanist liberalism of late capitalism. The power of cultures is their true and irreconcilable differences between one another, Baudrillard says, and the colonial process of disenfranchisement is only fractally replicated in the modern universalising pressure towards a "decolonization" which is really a more total assimilation into the western hegemony of rights and capital. Any culture which truly could not be assimilated under the capitalist motto of a universal human, like the Aztec with their vastly "wasteful" economy centred around human sacrifice, or the Fuegians who refused to speak to or acknowledge the white colonists, would be destroyed either directly by extermination or dissolved through forceful coercion into the dominant logic of rational capitalism, selling their difference as sign value in the global market (like the traditional Hawaiin dancers watched by indifferent wealthy Americans at a resort in season one of The White Lotus). Everywhere, at the cultural and individual level, Baudrillard argues that the fractal power of communication pressures us to reveal all our secrets so that it can turn these into engines of profit. The result is a populace whose only available recourse in light of their total transparency is a profound indifference, an indifference to all the values and processes of society which are really the nihilism of total absorption. I find this a really good insight. People often try to rationalize aberrant facets of our life today in a way which doesn't consider the power of indifference in a world supposedly fully rationalised by the free market. Why did so many Americans, even those who would be worst affected, vote against their best interests for Bush Jr. and Trump? Could their votes really be meaningful expressions of a "silent majority" or are they the expression of a more total doubt, or even contempt, for the nihilism of the system itself? Here we would again be talking of hysteresis; Trump exemplifies a lack of faith in politics while continuing to proliferate the political sphere, without any of the parties involved seeming to believe in it. Here Baudrillard's position clearly borders on a proto-accelerationism. His idea of "fatal strategies" definitely sounds similar to what accelerationists are talking about when they propose pushing the contradictions of capitalism actively to the point of total collapse.

For Baudrillard the danger is not that we are heading for a terrible catastrophe, it is that the catastrophe will be permanently postponed, will never occur.

[Banu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eskiden yolculuk yapmak, bir yerde olmanın ya da hiçbir yerde olmamanın yoluydu. Bugün, bir yerde olma duygusunu hissetmenin tek yoludur. Kendi evimde, her türlü enformasyonla bir yığın ekranla çevrelenmiş olarak, hiçbir yerde değilim artık.

KÖTÜLÜĞÜN ŞEFFAFLIĞI

-La Transparance du Mal-

Jean BAUDRILLARD

[Viki · Rating 2 out of 5]

God, this was so hard to finish. The only reason I finished reading this was because clearly I still lack the self-respect to stop reading a book once I know I hate it.
Usually I really enjoy philosophy, but honestly these were some of the most pretentious utterances I have ever seen. The only reason I am not giving this 1 star (and was in fact considering giving 3) was because, admittedly, every now and then there were some interesting passages that I enjoyed. For the most part though I found his ramblings nonsensical, if not ridiculous, and had a lot to disagree with. Disagreeing with his views isn’t even what particularly bothered me (as that usually, at the very least, opens up the potential for a lot of exiting debate or thought), but rather the fact that so many of his postulations were wrapped in, I dare say, hideous metaphors and wildly cynical and arrogant conjectures. Agghhhh

A part of me feels bad for writing a review so scornful but I really couldn’t leave this frustration bottled up inside me

[John David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jean Baudrillard was probably one of the contemporary French postmodern philosophers and sociologists whose ideas were most accessible (relatively speaking) and well-received in the United States. This was my first time reading Baudrillard first-hand, and some of the ideas were surprising. This book is from the Verso Radical Thinkers imprint, which always has me expecting politically revolutionary ideas, or overt Marxism, neither of which Baudrillard embraces. In fact, he explicitly identifies himself as a post-Marxist.

I sometimes have a problem with shorter pieces (not just in philosophy), and this book can at times seem to be a mile wide and only an inch deep. In only two-hundred pages, there are twenty-two chapters, although there are a few general ideas that he keeps hammering home: he is infatuated with scientific and especially medical metaphors, and continually uses them in trying to diagnose the postmodern society; AIDS, cancer, and computer viruses pop up over and over again throughout the essays. He argues that instead of destroying organisms, these things just change the way they function – AIDS inhibits sexual behavior, cancer is rooted in regular cellular division except that it has gone radically metastatic, et cetera. He also sees all areas of discourse which have previously been separated from one another as bleeding into one another indiscriminately: the aesthetic is now trans-aesthetic, the economic is now trans-economic, any formerly balkanized category can apply to anything else.

I mentioned Baudrillard’s post-Marxism earlier. In fact, he might even describe himself as post-political, since he seems to think that even politics itself has come to an end. Applying his idea of simulacra and simulation to the political sphere, he says “But what can we do? This is the state of simulation, a state in which we are obliged to replay all scenarios precisely because they have taken place already, whether actually or potentially. The state of utopia realized, of all utopias realized, wherein paradoxically we must continue to live as though they had not been. But since they have, and since we can no longer, therefore, nourish the hope of realizing them, we can only ‘hyper-realize’ them through interminable simulation” (p. 4). This almost reads like a conservative kind of cynicism or nihilism, which sort of caught me off guard.

Some of the observations struck me as bizarre and wrong-headed, like what he has to say about AIDS. “AIDS is not the reflection not so much of an excess of sex or sexual pleasure as of sex’s decompensation through its general spread into all areas of life, its venting through all the trivial variants of sexual incantation. The real loss of immunity concerns sex as a whole, with the disappearance of sexual difference and hence of sexuality per se. It is in this diffraction of the sexual reality principle, at the fractal, micrological and non-human level, that the essential confusion of the epidemic takes hold” (p. 9). I’m sorry, but this is simply false. The virus responsible for causing AIDS knows nothing about the “sexuality reality principle,” and even saying something like this sounds silly.

Sweeping statements like the one on AIDS occasionally stud and inevitably mar the power of any critical philosophy Baudrillard has to offer, if he wants to offer one at all. It makes for wonderfully audacious and exciting theory, but shoddy philosophy. Maybe Baudrillard wouldn’t draw such a definitive line between the two, but I think with the former, metaphorical or analogical thought can help push theory along into unknown realms and aid in understanding things in different ways. Philosophy, being more closely related to logic, has to be more careful. And Baudrillard is working analogically here: saying that X resembles A in some sense and Y resembles A in another sense, therefore X is Y. This opens up new vistas of understanding, but when presented as philosophy can do just as much to obscure as it can to clarify.

These quibbles aside, this is probably one of the better introductions to Baudrillard’s large output. You don’t have to be overly familiar with all of his work to walk away from the essays feeling that you’ve learned something about him. And for those just getting their feet wet, this isn’t full of the obfuscatory prose we’re familiar with from other continental philosophy “Of Grammatology” or “Difference and Repetition,” and for that we can all be grateful.

[Michael A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The parts of this book that stood out to me are Baudrillard's attempts to think through and develop further the Bataillean notions of the accursed share and heterogeneity. The prose is dense and difficult but also stylistic and flashy, which makes for a thought-provoking if exhausting read, but here is my attempt to make some sense of what he's doing here.

He is concerned with reversibility and alterity. Reversibility seems to be a fatal relation of subject and object, of Good and Evil. He gives an example of a stalker: the stalker stalks the prey without the latter's knowledge. There is a following of the other without the other's knowing that there is a following. But the relationship between stalker/victim always has a structural possibility of the victim turning around and confronting the stalker, of the victim turning around to exclaim "What do you want from me?" and then chase the stalker: the roles are in some important way swappable or reversible. Exactly what this relational hinge is doing or how it is situated with regards to alterity and Evil are less clear to me, but here is my conjecture. This reversible or swappable relation between subject/object is still something ultimately conceptualizable and thus intelligible, and the intelligibility that is given to this difference, this swapping roles that leads to a destabilization of the subject, is in some sense Evil. But Baudrillard is also concerned with the seduction of the Object that is radically other, that cannot be sublated into a dialectic of identity/difference (in some sense exterior to this dialectic) but only appears as a kind of virus or microbe that reverses systemic relationships immanently - perhaps radical alterity is this reversibility. It is a nonbiological Object (thus not the death drive) that is unassimilable, a heterogeneous Thing that attempts to seduce, undermine, and destroy.

"Even at the outer frontiers of science the Object appears ever more ungraspable: it remains internally indivisible and hence unanalyzable, infinitely versatile, reversible, ironic, and contemptuous of all attempts to manipulate it. The subject tries desperately to follow it, even at the cost of abandoning scientific principles, but the Object transcends even the sacrifice of scientific rationality. The Object is an insoluble enigma, because it is not itself and does not know itself. It resembles Chesterton's savage, whom one could not understand for the same reason that he could not understand himself. It thus constitutes an obstacle to all understanding. The object's power and sovereignty derive from the fact that it is estranged from itself, whereas for us the exact opposite is true. Civilization's first gesture is to hold up a mirror to the Object, but the Object is only seemingly reflected therein; in fact it is the Object itself which is the mirror, and it is here that the subject is taken in by the illusion of himself.... The duality of otherness implies an unchallengeable metamorphosis, an unchallengeable supremacy of appearances and metamorphoses. I am not alienated. Rather, I am definitively other. No longer subjected to the law of desire, but subject now to the total artifice of rules. I have lost any trace of desire of my own. I answer only to something non-human - something inscribed not within me but solely in the objective and arbitrary vicissitudes of the world's signs. Just as what we deem fatal in catastrophes is the world's sovereign indifference to us, so what we deem fatal in seduction is the Other's sovereign otherness with respect to us. That otherness which erupts into our life, with stunning clarity, in the shape of a gesture, a face, a form, a word, a prophetic dream, a witticism, an object, a woman, or a desert. " (pgs. 196-198, in the 2009 Radical Thinkers by Verso edition translated by James Benedict.)

[James F · Rating 1 out of 5]

A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. These essays are bizarre almost to the point of incomprehensibility, tricked out with absurd metaphors and alliterative phrases. He begins by postulating that "all the goals of liberation are behind us", "the revolution has well and truly happened." I don't think he lives in the same world as the rest of us. The anonymous blurb from the NY Times on the back cover describes him as a "lone ranger of the post-Marxist left" but these essays are not leftist in any sense, they're totally reactionary; he attacks every form of liberation from feminism, gays, anti-racists etc. and suggests that real liberation would be for people to be told what to do and think. I gather from Wikipedia and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that he has gone through many phases, mostly connected with postmodernism, and his later books were perhaps intended as science fiction. Not a philosopher I will spend much time on.

[Penguin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Baudrillard is wildly insightful at times, but it seems like he doesn't want to be, because after a while he kills any shred of insightfulness with endless and unnecessary grumbling.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 2 out of 5]

A somewhat dated collection of routines from Baudrillard, from 1990. As usual he has the occasional interesting or insightful comment, buried in the deluge of overstatement and sloppy argument, or outright absence of argument. But there's a real zest and inventiveness in his appropriation of terminology, even though the result is worthless as philosophy. He should have dropped any pretence at offering academic analysis of anything and just been a novelist, since he never needed Ballard, he was better than him already.

[Rüya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trans-ekonomi, cinsellik ve politikayla başladığında bıdamtss diye vurdu beni, dedim sen ne diyon amca? Sinirlenip salmayınca ve anlamaya çalışınca çok fazla şey bulabildim. Özellikle egzotizme girdiği kısımlar çok güzel. Yine de bu tarz modern düşünürleri anlayamıyorum, kafalarına çok uzağım, bambaşka bir kavganın içindeyim ben burada. Gelişmek lazım işte, demokrasi ve refah seviyesi yükseldikçe insan emek ekmek felsefesini bırakıp trans politika vs düşünebiliyor demek.

[BanuKose]

'Eskiden yolculuk yapmak, bir yerde olmanın ya da hiçbir yerde olmamanın yoluydu. Bugün, bir yerde olma duygusunu hissetmenin tek yoludur. Kendi evimde, her türlü enformasyonla bir yığın ekranla çevrelenmiş olarak, hiçbir yerde değilim artık.'

[Alberony Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A través de un viaje reflexivo sobre la naturaleza del mal en la sociedad moderna, el libro "La transparencia del mal. Ensayo sobre los fenómenos extremos" del escritor francés Jean Baudrillard, el cual fue publicado por primera vez en 1990 explora la idea de que la sociedad contemporánea ha pedido la capacidad de percibir y comprender el mal, producto por la opacidad de la tecnología y la información. Según él, el mal se ha vuelto "transparente" y se ha convertido en un simple fenómeno tecnológico, sin una verdadera presencia o significado. En "La transparencia del mal. Ensayo sobre los fenómenos extremos", Baudrillard argumenta que esta situación ha creado una sociedad que está desconectada de la realidad y que se ha convertido en una sociedad simulada, en la que los valores y la moralidad están determinados por la tecnología.

Con su estilo provocativo, este libro cuestiona nuestra percepción y comprensión del mal a través de la tecnología. Argumentando que la sociedad moderna es perjudicial, ya que reduce la complejidad y la ambigüedad del mundo a una representación simplista y superficial. Es de recordar, que Jean Baudrillar es un teórico de la "simulación" y la "hiperrealidad", lo cual con este libro ha sido objeto de duras criticas por su falta de claridad y coherencia en su argumentos, por el gran exceso de escepticismo, muy cínico en el análisis de la sociedad y el mal, por su carencia en dar soluciones prácticas a sus planteamientos, por su gran concentración en la tecnología y la sociedad, obviando otros aspectos que afectan la percepción y compresión del mal.

Abordar este libro fue trillar por un texto denso y cruel, pero que a su vez salpicado por una brillantez premonitoria en sus argumentos con una profundidad pesimista sobre el futuro de las sociedades, cargado de un cinismo, enrostrando la transparencia del mal como control y manipulación por aquellos en posiciones de poder, así como reduciendo la capacidad critica de la gente para pensar y actuar de manera autónoma. Separando un poco las comparaciones, leerlo fue recordarme en ciertos aspectos al libro "La sociedad del espectáculo" del escritor Guy Debord, al libro "La sociedad del cansancio" del escritor Byung-Chul Han y al libro "La sociedad líquida" de Zygmunt Bauman. En cierto modo, las criticas realizadas el texto son subjetivas y puede varias según la perspectiva individual, pero es de aclarar que el libro "La transparencia del mal. Ensayo sobre los fenómenos extremos" es un libro importante e influyente en la discusión sobre la naturaleza del mal en la sociedad moderna.

[Elena Davidson · Rating 4 out of 5]

El libro está lleno de pasajes que merecería la pena citar. Analiza todos los dilemas de la época contemporánea, con un estilo muy elegante, literario y profuso en metáforas. Gusta leerlo, y perturba a la vez, por su contenido. Estimula y desespera a la vez, porque genera muchas preguntas y ninguna respuesta (comprendido lo que dice, ¿qué debe hacer uno para conducirse?).
No le doy las cinco estrellas por los últimos capítulos: desde que empieza a hablar de la alteridad radical, el análisis se vuelve menos claro. En mi opinión, la reflexión se centra demasiado en palabras (exotismo, seducción, alteridad...) y su definición como conceptos, como si buscase explicar nuestra relación con los demás a través de esas palabras, que en el fondo no son más que convenios.

[Sam Farnsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just when they thought i was out, they pull me back in‼️ some parts where hit or miss but the highs of baudrillard r oh so sweet. Nevertheless, a tolerance break is still probably in order….

[Javier Rouco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Autenticas barras, pero la verdad que sólo saqué cosas pal tfm de las primeras 30 páginas. (A partir de ahora la mayoría de reviews irán determinadas por lo mucho o poco que me ayuden en el tfm)

[Kozmosevren · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Artık büyümüyor, ur halini alıyoruz. Hızlı çoğalma toplumundayız; hiçbir belirgin hedefe göre kendini düzenlemeden büyümeyi sürdüren bir toplumdayız. Urlaşan bir toplum, kendi tanımına aldırmadan, kontrolsüz biçimde gelişen ve nedenlerin yitimiyle sonuçların yığıldığı bir toplumdur. "

[Betül · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Her kişi kendi görünümünü arıyor. Kendi varoluşunu ileri sürmek artık olanaklı olmadığından, ne var olmayı ne de bakılıyor olmayı dert etmeksizin boy göstermekten başka yapılacak bir şey kalmıyor geriye Varım, buradayım değil; görülüyorum, bir imajım; bak bana, bak! Narsisizm bile değil bu; sığ bir dışadönüklük, herkesin kendi görünüşünün menajeri haline geldiği bir tür reklamcı saflığı."


Baudrillard’ın karamsarlığını seviyorum. İlk cümleden etkisi altına alıveriyor insanı. “Artık bütün biçimleriyle “hamurişi” ölmüştür!” gibi baudrillard-vari kaytarma cümleleri bile kurdurabiliyor. (daha etkili oluyor) Ama bu baudrillard-vari karamsarlığı olumsuz bir duygu olarak görmüyorum.Aksine, bu düşünceleri, "bütün biçimleriyle" bir şeylerin sona ermekte olduğunu batılı bir ağızdan dinlemeli insanlar. Eğlencenin yüceltildiği, bütün iletişim ağlarına sirayet eden bir kayıtsızlığın baş gösterdiği, kavramların ciddiyetini kaybettİği şu zamanda, mutsuzlukları, çöküşü örtbas etmek için eğlencenin uyuşturan dünyasına sığınan insanlar olarak rahatsız edilmeliyiz biz. Hiçbir zaman bir değişim olmayacağı düşünüldüğü halde bir şekilde dürtülmeli dünya. Tanrı ve tanrının öğretileri artık kimsenin umrunda olmadığına ve imaj her şey olduğuna göre bu dürtmeyi Baudrillard gibi bir modernden başka (en azından terörist olmakla suçlanmıyor)yapacak bir kimse mevcut gibi gözükmüyor, şimdilik. Her ne kadar yazdıklarının bir çözüm sunmadığı düşünülse de, verdiği "rahatsızlık hissi", Baudrillard ve yazdıklarını değerli kılmaya devam ediyor.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am going to have to make an admission - I got through 80% of this before finally cracking and skim-reading the rest just so that I could go get a life. This is not to say that Baudrillard does not make some very interesting and fertile points but only that this is a dreadful presentation of them.

I suspect a certain type of continental philosophy groupie will have been slavering over this back in 1990 but it is mostly no more than an exercise in quasi-nihilist ranting by a grumpy old man whose gods had failed and who now wants to take this fact out on the world.

Where he scores is in being prescient about 'hyperreality' - the whizzy world of signs taking off into an unhinged world of their own. He would not have been surprised in the least, I suspect, by the emergence eventually of that artistic abortion, the mickey mouse NFT.

But there is more going on here than seeing what few saw then and what most of us see now - the imagined world of humanity detaching itself from humanity itself and even from material reality to spin completely out of control and create increasing levels of absurdity.

My view on this is relaxed and sanguine. This is what our species is. Some of it is only a democratisation of what once went on in aristocratic courts. It is absurd and wasteful but then that is what we humans and society are. There is no point in getting too gloomy about it.

Baudrillard, however, is a French intellectual. He takes everything dreadfully seriously. He has to explain it in abstract terms because if he does not do so what is his point. He has done structuralism, situationism and Marxism and been post-structuralist so where next?

As all his gods failed, he ages and humanity refuses to fit into any model he may come up with (he is clearly very cross that we are as we are) so he ends up with a sort of sub-Heideggerian mish-mash of personal near-nihilism and Lacanian reflections.

And the style? This is a rant in obscure tongue with the most strained and almost anthropomorphic uses of scientific theory to make his point as sets of extended metaphor. This is not philosophy - it needs to be filed under 'Experimental French Literature' instead.

The frustration is that there are some good ideas here that, if they were clearly expressed and less 'emotional' (the emotion masked by the claim to be a 'philosophe'), would help us understand better not only what we are but where we were going to go in the following thirty years.

As a description of the world and of our human nature it constantly just misses, not because he is 'wrong' but because he has let style and performance overwhelm the content and become, in fact, part of the problem he is describing rather than part of any possible solution.

He is, of course, a fatalist. He thinks there is no 'solution'. He may be right. If he is right, then perhaps acceptance is the best strategy. His raging against the dying of the light unfortunately suggests that tendency to moralism that is the most unattractive aspect of French thought.

He does not really like us and, because he cannot avoid being one of us by dint of being human, he logically does not like himself very much. Yet he is no Olympian in reality, able to look down upon us and himself from on high even if that is the pretension of the modern intellectual.

Nevertheless, Baudrillard has been influential and it is right that he has been. When you can get through the rant and obscurity and general guff, there is an analysis hidden here that escapes the nonsense about objects and subjects and mirrors and the repressed rage. It strikes home.

His cold rage expresses something lost which goes further than the loss of status and importance of the intellectual class (we suspect that this is a real driver here) but is a loss of the bounded-ness of being repressed and constrained by a world lost to us forever by technological innovation.

Humanity fears freedom because it does not know what to do with it. Baudrillard at least thinks about what we may become when abundance and freedom are general, a prospect that now looks theoretically possible with the emergence of artificial intelligence.

It is going to take nerves of steel for us to survive the arrival of true freedom. A lot of people are going to be broken during the transition. It is why so many older people find the miserable 1970s a matter for nostalgia - there was something to fight for and now we have it, it tastes ashen.

Baudrillard is also suggestive of something we have been seeing more of over the last decade - the revolt against reason, technocracy and the happiness-merchants as our impotence becomes increasingly demonstrable. Social bonds had created the illusion of potential agency.

Reason in society requires that everything be connected like Newton's clockwork universe. When reasoning heads for uncertainty as the norm and social bonds are unravelled, the belief that levers can be pulled by autonomous agents begins to die to be replaced by atoms in motion.

And that is what we and our environment have become - bodies and signs in constant motion, with an increasingly problematic relationship to trust because trusted connections have been broken. This is not going to get better in the coming age of deep fakery.

Some of Baudrillard's psychology is quite acute in this context - especially about our invention of -isms like racism that allows the scientific oppression of 'others' and the loss to us created by sexual freedoms that are illusory and have lost us the seductions enabled by difference.

There is social truth too. The sheer proliferation of forms and signs is noted although what we really need is an analysis of what this means in practice to the conduct of our lives rather than what we get ... an implicitly outraged 'horreur' at the facts of the matter.

We can safely say that we are now in the middle of what Tooze has called a 'polycrisis' whose nature lies (in part) in the fact that rampant proliferation has made it impossible for elites to control the Frankensteinian monsters they created out of neo-liberalism and liberal imperialism.

Baudrillard (rather typically) calls this proliferation cancerous and these are his best passages fairly early in the book. But, sadly, some very real insights are buried in 'style', obscurantist posturing, ranting and dubious analogy.

[Naz Basaran · Rating 2 out of 5]

İlgi çekici olabilecek kısımları bile kör ve sığ bi bakış açısıyla ele alıp farklı şekillerde tekrar eden ifadelerle yazılmış, aslında öncesinde söylediği şeylerden çok farklı bir noktaya da değindiği söylenemez ama Kötülüğün Şeffaflığı'nda fazlasıyla kendi perspektifine hapsolmuş ve temelde o kadar karmaşık ya da yenilikçi olmayan, çok daha basit açıklanabilecek düşüncelerini süsleyerek ve karmaşıklaştırarak anlatmış. Sürekli aynı bakış açısında debelenmesine rağmen aslında konunun çok etraflıca düşünüldüğünü de hissedemedim, modernizm ve postmodernizm konuları bir yana kitapta sıkça değindiği trans başlıkların bu kadar pesimist ele alınması günün sonunda herhangi bir anlam ifade ediyor mu emin değilim, ya da bahsedilen şekilde fazla iç içe geçme ve özgürleşmenin "korkunçluğu", ki bu noktada biraz uzaktan bakıldığında anlatım çok çelişkili bir hale geliyor.
Daha farklı şekilde ifade edilmeye ihtiyaç duyduğunu düşündüğüm cümlelerden oluşan bir çeşit yakınma manifestosu, farklı bir bakış açısı kazandırdığını düşünmüyorum.

[Levi · Rating 1 out of 5]

one of the worsts reads of the year.

[Funda Guzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muhteşem . Okuduğum en iyi kitap diyebilirim. Çevirmen e özel teşekkürler.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FRENCH POSTMODERNIST PHILOSOPHER COMMENTS ON CURRENT EVENTS

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer most associated with the “Postmodern” movement.

He begins this 1990 book with the statement, “If I were asked to characterize the present state of affairs, I would describe it as ‘after the orgy.’ The orgy in question was the moment when modernity exploded upon us, the moment of liberation in every sphere. Political liberation, sexual liberation, liberation of the forces of production, liberation of the forces of destruction, women’s liberation, children’s liberation, liberation of unconscious drives, liberation of art…

"This was total orgy---an orgy of the real, the rational, the sexual, of criticism as of anti-criticism, of development as of the crisis of development. We have pursued every avenue in the production and effective overproduction of objects, signs, messages, ideologies and satisfactions. Now everything has been liberated, the chips are down, and we find ourselves faced collectively with the big question: ‘What do we do now that the orgy is over?’” (Pg. 3)

He states, ”When [Andy] Warhol says: all works are beautiful---I don’t have to choose between them because all contemporary works are equivalent; when he says: art is everywhere, therefore it no longer exists, everyone is a genius, the world as it is, in its very banality, is inhibited by genius---nobody is ready to believe him. Yet his is in fact an accurate description of the shape of the modern aesthetic, an aesthetic of radical agnosticism. We are all agnostics, transvestites of art or of sex. None of us has either aesthetic of sexual convictions any longer---yet we all profess to have them.” (Pg. 22)

He says, “Yet it is precisely now that the rights of man are acquiring a worldwide resonance. They constitute the only ideology that is currently available---which is as much as to say that human rights are the zero point of ideology, the sole outstanding balance of history. Human rights and ecology are the two teats of the consensus. The current world charter is that of the New Political Ecology. Ought we to view this apotheosis of human rights as the irresistible rise of stupidity, as a masterpiece which, though imperiled, is liable to light up the coming fin de siècle in the full glare of the consensus?” (Pg. 87-88)

He observes, “This indifference of memory, this indifference to history, is proportional to our efforts to achieve historical objectivity. One day we shall be asking ourselves whether Heidegger himself ever existed. The paradox of Robert Faurisson’s thesis may seem repugnant---and indeed, it is repugnant in its HISTORICAL claim that the gas chambers never existed---but at the same time it is a perfect reflection of a whole culture: here is the dead end of a fin de siècle so mesmerized by the horror of the century’s origins that forgetting is an impossibility for it, and the only way out is denial. So proof is useless, since there is no longer any historical discourse in which to frame the case for the prosecution, but punishment too is in any case an impossibility.” (Pg. 92)

He suggests, “The utopia of the end of alienation has likewise disappeared. The subject has not succeeded in negating himself as subject, within the framework or a totalization of the world. A determinate negation of the subject no longer exists: all that remains is a lack of determinacy as to the position of the subject and the position of the other. Abandoned by this indeterminacy, the subject is neither the one nor the other---he is merely the Same. Division has been replaced by mere propagation. And whereas the other may always conceal a second other, the Same never conceals anything but itself. This is our clone-ideal today: a subject purged of the other, deprived of its divided character and doomed to self-metastasis, to pure repetition. No longer the hell of other people, but the hell of the Same.” (Pg. 122)

He notes, “If it is true that seduction is founded upon my intuition of something in the other that remains forever secret for him, something that I can never know directly about him but which nevertheless exercises a fascination upon me from behind its veil of secrecy, then today there can be very little leeway left for seduction, for the other retains very little mystery for himself. The fact is that everyone is devilishly self-aware these days, devilishly conscious of the nature of their own desire. Everything is now so clear that the very fact of presenting oneself behind a mask is liable to elicit nothing but mockery. In such a contest, what becomes of the poker game of seduction? Where, for that matter, is the illusion of desire---except, perhaps, in the theoretical illusion of psychoanalysis or the political illusion of revolution?” (Pg. 166)

This book contains Baudrillard’s characteristically acerbic and perceptive comments on a very wide variety of issues; it will be of great interest to anyone who enjoys his other writings.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never cease being amazed at how many other philosophers steal from this guy. The book this one made me think most of was Byung-Chul Han’s The Transparency Society – and not just because of the similar titles. And this guy is like Han in other ways too. Both pack more ideas to the page than seems completely reasonable. In fact, this book is so overflowing with ideas it is quite breathtaking. I’m saying that as a way of also saying that this review does not pretend to cover everything that is discussed here. Baudrillard is a controversialist in many ways. He says things designed to shock and this, I feel, is quite intentional. A way to get us to rise above our normal torpor and to see anew what is always already right in front of us.

I’ve a dear friend who does something similar. Once, when we were waiting for management to begin a meeting, he said that since we were all sitting around doing nothing perhaps we could sharpen our debating skills. He suggested the topic of rape. He was prepared to head up the negative team – since he fundamentally objected to the whole concept of rape. He asked who would like to lead the affirmative. Unsurprisingly, there were no takers.

I guess one of the ideas being played with here is that sameness is a very modern condition and one that makes the world strangely bland, even though we think we have so much more now than we ever did in the past. He distinguishes between three types of value – use value, exchange value and symbolic value. And says that capitalism defeated Marxism, which he still believed was the most thorough critique of capitalism, by transforming itself into something without classes other than the capitalist class. This is a strange kind of victory, one that is almost also self-negating. He says we have entered an age after an orgy, where all things – commodities, sex, good and evil – are now bland and without the sort of liberational power we had once hoped they would have. And it is how they have all become the same that has cost them their power. He says we have all become essentially transexual - using people like Micheal Jackson as a case in point. I didn’t quite understand his point here – although it matches his belief in the overall sameness of everyone now.

He also discusses the death drive and I had to keep reminding myself that he wrote this before the internet and social media. He talks of a woman following a man through Venice, stalking him, I guess, but not out of lust, but more to be his shadow. To learn more of him than he knew of himself. He says at one point that the only real photographs are those we take of primitive peoples – people who do not know how to pose for a photograph and so are therefore themselves, despite them not really having a self in the sense we mean it today. The death he speaks of that we desire as we shadow people, watching their every move, is a curious kind of death. One that we may not even wish upon them, but one that is the ultimate end of our following of them. Ideas are smashed together here – but the underlying theme is that of a loss of the real within the symbolic and the now unreality of our world. We think that we want authenticity, but we have lost the ability to know what is authentic and what is pose.

Like I said, so many ideas. I feel I would need to read this multiple times to follow all of the fractals to their end – but that might take me many lifetimes.

[Sameth K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fransız kültür teorisyeni, kuramsal terörist ve sosyolog Baudrillard'ın toplumların dinamiklerini değiştiren birtakım sosyal fenomenleri incelediği ve kavramsal kötülüğe yeni bir boyut getirdiği kitabıdır.

Metinden edinilen çıkarımları şöyle bir açacak olursak:

- Orji bir aşırılıklar halidir. Modernizmin sayıp döktüğü karşıtlıkların bir patlamayla kristalize olup etrafa saçılmasıdır. Bu saçılım toplumsal olarak politika, estetik ve cinsellikte kendini bulur.

Politikanın ideali olan kurtuluş ütopyası, orji sonrası artık bir gösteri simülasyonuna evrilmiştir. Her yerde politik orjinin saçılmış argümanlarını (küçümen, birbirinin aynısı politikacılar, laf ebesi siyasi cambazlar vs.) görürüz.

Orji sonrası estetik, bizim hayal ettiğimiz güzellik anlayışını (Mona Lisa ya da Boticelli tabloları gibi) tabiri caizse atom altı parçacıklara indirerek ya da başka bir deyişle doğallık görüntüsü altında bayağılaştırarak edilgen duruma getirir. Artık o derece primitif hale gelmiştir ki estetik, bir muz objesinde ya da terörist eylemin en aşırı renklerinde kendi hiper gerçekliğini bize imajlar yoluyla dayatır.

Cinselliğin paramparça oluşu orjinin zaferidir. Orji öncesi seksüalite kategorize edilebilir, görece burjuva ahlakına uygun bir yapıdadır. Orji sonrası patlayan toplumsal histeri durumundan cinsellik de payını almıştır. Modernizmin cinsiyet rolleriyle yarattığı cinsel hapishane, toplumsalda (en azından kültür ihraç eden bölgeler için) bir bunalım halini alır. Bunalımın sonucu histeridir. Histeri de aşkın bir biçimde cinselliğin klonlaşmasına yardım eder. İmajların dünyasında her türlü cinsel manifesto kendine hareket alanı bulur. Her türden imaj patlaması tüm dünyayı kasıp kavurur ve cinselliğin en aşırı uçları simülatif biçimde gösteriye başlarlar.


- İnsan aklı bir süper makine düşlemindedir. Tarihsel süreçten gelen düşünsel devrim artık yerini makinelerin egemenliğine bırakmıştır. Günümüzün makineleri o kadar sanal ve kimlikseldir ki ilk üretilen makinelere karşı hissedilen yabancılaşma yok edilmiş; şimdi yeni düzen makinelerinin güncellenmiş, özelleştirilmiş avatarlarında insan, kimlik geçişini otomatize etmiştir.

Orji sonrası maruz kaldığımız geçirgenlik, tüm hayatın akışına yansıdığı gibi sanallığa ve onun dinamiklerine de sirayet etti. Hem de bile isteye olan bu geçişte ilksel makine köleliğinden bahsedilemez. Aksine kamuoyu rızasıyla çabucak kabul edilen, sanal bir eylemdir bu. Böyle bir makine - insan etkileşiminin sonu kestirilemese bile bu süreçte hakikatin çok uzağında olduğumuz kesindir.


- Tarih, medyatik araçlarla yeniden işlendiğinde bozuntuya uğrar. Söz konusu tarihsel olaylar (Auschwitz, Hiroşima, Kennedy'nin ölümü vs.) imajların ve türlü simgesel çesitlemelerin ritüelimsi ayarlamalarıyla ceset panayırlarına dönüşür. Böylelikle tarihin hakkını ya da suçunu ilk yargı düzeyinde yargılayamama sorunu oluşur. Çünkü çıplak geçmişin üzeri sosa ve renkli çamura bulanmıştır. Bu görsel şamata içinde birinci elden yakarı boşunadır. O şansın üzerine sağlam bir beton dökmüşüzdür. Bize kalan, o betonun üzerinde şımarıkça nöbet tutmaktır.

[Cantekin Celikhasi]

The Transparency of Evil:Jean Baudrillard
(French names are so difficult to pronounce to me)
I was confused before read this book but it made me worse than it. Thus I started to research others' ideas about book after that. I looked at some social media platforms, and forums such as eksi, goodreaders etc.
Actually, this book is not easy to understand, but I don’t agree with all the ideas in the book as understood as :) The ideas of Baudrillan, , have a bias with trans words like that (transsexual, transeconomy, trans esthetic). Shortly he say that there is no one source of evil, it spreads everywhere, everything. This means; Media, technology, art, and music are intended to the part of evil nowadays, and we are living in a simulation. For this reason, we have to change our perspective about evil.
Especially, I don’t agree with his idea of technology, he always had saw the bad side of using technology, also he escaped eyes that human beings are improved thanks to the same development in technology.
He sometimes said the civilization of Europe got rid of evil for that they didn’t know what happened to evil, in this case, they didn’t have a defense against evil that came from the Eastern or Islamic region. It is an absolutely silly argument about terrorism.
In my opinion, his ideas about transsexualization or gender are so dangerous too. He try to connect AIDS and evil to LGBT. He supports they are threading the civilication balance and they make to rot society.


Kotulugun seffafligi,

Bu kitabi okumak, çok fazla zamaninimi almakla kalmayıp, zaman zaman yazarla kavga etmeme sebep oldu, bazı fikirleri yerinde olsada savunduğu bazı argümanlar beni çileden cikardi. Boyle davranmak ne kadar doğru bilemesemde, en azından yazarı anlamaya calistim, argumanlarinin bazen sig kaldigini bazen de gerçekliğin farkında olmadigini gordum. Ornegin avrupa toplumunun kötülükten arindirilmasi ile kötülükten arinmamis toplumlardan gelen kötülüklere karşı bir savunma gerceklestirmediklerine dair bir cümle okuyunca nasıl bir kafa yaşıyor bu adam dedim (kotulugun ne oldugunu bilmemelerin den dolayı ??) . Bakiniz bu cümleler ona ait, “Humeyninin saldirisi karsisinda acınacak bicimde dayanıksız hale geldik” sebep neymiş, ”iyilik soylemi ile uğrasmak isteyen bir toplumda, kötülükten soz etme olanaginin kalmadigi bir toplumda, kotuluk yakamızı bırakmayan bir viral ve terorist bicimlere burunur, boylece bundan soz etme gücünü yitirdik, ancak bu güç baska yerlerde yeniden doğarak bizi tehdit…”
Cinsellik ve transseksuelligin toplumu çürüten, sanatın günbegün gun yozlastiginin tek düzen haline geldigini ve teknolojinin tembelliğe sebep oldugunu gelecekte ozgurluk ve zihinsel becerileri kisitliyacagini savunmakta, ancak bunları dereken söylemlerini ve fikirlerini teknolojinin nimetleri sayesinde insanlara ulastiginin farkında degil sanırım, gunumuz yobaz hocalarin söylemlerinden pek farklı degil gibi geldi bana.
Tabi bunların yanında orijinal ve saglam fikirleri de yok degil, artık kotulugun kaynagini tek bir yerde aramamak gerek, kotuluk heryerde vurgununu yaparak başlıyor zaten..
Kisacasi ben bunu cikardim, yanlis anlaşılmalar tamamen benden ve cahilliğimden kaynaklıdır..

[Uğur · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I conclude this work, I wish Baudrillard had lived a little longer and destroyed the phenomenon called social media.

I can say that he is attacking the west through the concepts that bring the western civilization to its originality, that he is competing with Nietzsche in destroying it. In this work, he criticizes both humanity and the West through the concepts of the West (liberalism), such as trans-politics, trans-aesthetics, trans-sexualism, and trans-economics. Our author tells us that these concepts, whose validity he questions, are illusions and that instead of making a breakthrough, they multiply and disappear in a cycle and repeat themselves constantly.

It's a pretty intense book. Although the language is fluent, it requires serious concentration.

In this work, which is the manifesto of the collapse of the West, Baudrillard criticizes many subjects, from diseases to terrorism, from holganism to artificial intelligence, from some scientific discoveries to photography.

Yes, we had a revolution and it happened quietly. What about the result?

Everything without consequences is cyclical. It constantly repeats itself. and this is an accumulation. Because in its proliferating state, it gives rise to blockage, and in this way man is imprisoned in his own hell. Baudrillard says that these people have nothing left to discover in the other.

The orgy is over, you see.
So what do we do now?

[Fernando · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este libro fue escrito en los noventa, así que leerse en esos años pudo ser muy interesante, hoy muchas de las críticas y temores ya resultan trillados aunque no dejan de estar presentes. Por ejemplo, el temor a que la tecnología nos embrutezca o nos subordine, en ese tema ya existe una basta literatura al respecto sin caer en el terrible pesimismo del autor; el temor a la pandemia del VIH, pareciera que ha quedado en el olvido aunque no de la misma forma en todas partes del mundo; la incapacidad de los gobiernos de hacerse cargo de sus ciudadanos también es otro tema muy presente, etc. Lo que más me ha gustado es esa crítica que a ratos suena una tanto conservadora respecto a la caída o pérdida de los criterios o cánones para valorar el arte, la literatura o un modo de vida. SI todo es arte, nada es arte, si todo es político, nada es político; si todo es estético, nada es estético, y así sucesivamente. Existe una "orgia de creaciones" humanas en todo orden de cosas susceptibles de recibir la misma consideración y valoración, pues ya no queda nada que nos permite jerarquizarlos. Fuera de eso, todo lo demás suena muy trillado, extremadamente temeroso , pesimista y crítico respecto de lo que hoy llamamos posmodernidad.

[Gulliver's Bad Trip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book of the kind that deserved to be translated more often into more languages. To be translated in English is enough to be accessible, though. Such essays, like Paz's ones, that could range anywhere from fiction to the news or events of the time, philosophy to political economy, quantum physics and poetry aren't as usual as it were back in the 20th century. At the very least, not as relevant as before. Yet, this which was published a year before my birth keep resonanting after the turned century with what's happening even more worldwide. This secret whose secrecy is directly proportional to its widespread knowledge. A communication of what already happened and can't be prevented, avoided nor reversed. Or a non-communication of what was already made aware for the parts involved that shouldn't be ignored or actually pretending even more to ignore what everybody had no reason at all to take part of in the first place. I really wished I could have read this back in the day just after exiting school and losing all my romantic hopes. As the saying goes better late than never. It's later then.