Baudrillard - Sexuality has Disappeared: Transparency of Evil pt. III (Video Exclusive)
Added 2023-05-24 00:17:25 +0000 UTCHey all. So, unlike the usual exclusives, YouTube will not let me upload this video (which would be otherwise a good thing)... I suspect because of the title of Baudrillard's chapter. However, as I'll explain, the title of this chapter does not connote what the term usually connotes, i.e. the now-dated and often offensive term for transgender. Also, some of the images herein are mildly NSFW.
All that said, we are back with Baudrillard on how the whole imaginary is advertising and how all sign exchanges are PR, from chapter 3 of "The Transparency of Evil" (https://amzn.to/3LitJSQ).
Comments
I would love to see a practice of "how to exist" in the era described here to evolve. Along those lines... Would the strategy, or at least *a* strategy for navigating this world be to be an agnostic internally and at heart, but to acknowledge you are literally in a looney bin and so therefore to consciously play with the signs, being careful to never forget them as such or the actions to be other than play of a game. Was this what Bowie was doing? Wouldn't this essentially be agnostic Buddhism? Doesn't sound too bad to me. I feel like that's my mode of operation when I'm attempting to remain concious of my present actions. Like, the can't understand people obsessed with masculinity or trying to produce signs of it conciously, concious attempts at seduction. I just never find myself even thinking about whether or not I am portraying something someone else would consider masculine. I just exist. Why can't people just exist? The metaphor of the mask, on one hand it leads to an aha I can see the world more clearly moment of sorts, but on the another hand, it seems a bit redundant? Unless the differentiator is that *before* with an established convention there was perhaps more societal harmony or networking thru common ritual or something, and it was the harmony that mattered and not necessarily the ultimate truth of the convention. Otherwise, isn't any established convention of say masculinity throughout history just a layer of mask, always some particular outline from some particular perspective. Otherwise you'd have to claim a natural or an original that is either accessible or transcendent. I can to a degree be optimistic of such a future, I can't necessarily know at this point whether this *revolution of masks* when it reaches saturation will lead to somewhere other than annihilation, and if so, would I think it an improvement over my current milieu? I presume it will depend on whether or not people take their masks seriously or with authority, or if they can happily realize and recognize the emptiness are able to play with it, or find stillness or peace in it (i.e. in letting go of all categorization or images of sexuality entirely, letting the concept itself slip away and therefore with it any belief in a particular truth associated with it). Or perhaps this *revolution* if you will has already hit saturation, and now I'm just a fish unaware of the water it swims in.
ageOfBumFires
2023-06-01 22:17:39 +0000 UTCSo our whole world is signs exchanging and images valued. Violence (not advocating) hunger, work, and sex
Khemith
2023-05-31 04:02:31 +0000 UTCI'm really glad you brought up Lacan, cause at some point I was thinking about how this desert of the real and how there's nothing beneath semiotic appearances in the social world reflects the foundational emptiness of the human psyche. "He'd rather jettison identity as something that is a real kernel at the centre of a person and say that what you are is your commutation of signs and what you can seduce by that." I've come to really like this, as it does mean the self can be (or maybe the image of the self [how different are these 2 conceptions, really?] ) to a large degree whatever you want it to be, but I do get how many people (especially conservatives) hate this, because a lot of people need to believe in some sort of solid real built on essential foundations to not feel ideologically lost in relativity. And I would argue there are certain things which are, if not complete universals, are close enough, like the idea that humans are social creatures, for example. But there are very few ideas about humans or the self that are this solid and hard to challenge. Brilliant stuff, ever relevant, and here's to the Baudrillard train never stopping 🍺
anacidcommie
2023-05-29 07:31:13 +0000 UTCI'm intrigued by his take on cloning, sounds like he might have a fun take on transhumanism. If everything is nothing, then any endpoint would just be the real, like not wanting for anything ever would be a traumatic total loss of agency, and that would bury all the infinities promised by advertising/capitalism. I think that's where humanism comes in, it offers those infinities to us, in older folklores (that I'm familiar with) they were external
Alex B
2023-05-25 19:54:01 +0000 UTCI do think there is a bit of a misrepresentation of, as you put it, the “Ben Shapiro‘s.” Just thinking back into my memories of church growing up. These were people who see transgender (or gay given the time) people as demon possessed and any subsequent political movements as, truly, the work of the devil in the world. They are not being flippant, they’re saying what they mean. Keep up the good work love the show.
Timothy Kenner
2023-05-25 13:14:08 +0000 UTCAI: write a romance teen fiction where the protagonist reaches the same conclusions as Baudrillard
Alex B
2023-05-25 05:43:34 +0000 UTCGreat video. Loving this content
ZedA
2023-05-24 20:38:06 +0000 UTCI think this is really cool
Ashley H
2023-05-24 19:08:33 +0000 UTCTruly awesome. Wish the baudrillard series would never end
Matt S
2023-05-24 14:06:36 +0000 UTCI'm so excited! Ive loved this whole reading series
Josh C
2023-05-24 01:00:45 +0000 UTC
