Function Addendum: Jean Baudrillard
While putting away the books I used from my library as reference for the pervious posts on Function, I stumbled upon Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard. I bought this book about 20 years ago as part of my obsession (at the time) with the film The Matrix. It is featured briefly in a shot in that movie and that caused me to want to read it.
The book is a loose collection of essays, most of which are interesting social critiques of postmodernity, but I was surprised at several sections which seem to apply to Function. For example, what Baudrillard calls the “hypermarket” is obviously functional in the nature and directly affects human experience, specifically with regard to urbanization.
“It is the hypermarket that establishes an orbit along which suburbanization moves. It functions as an implant for the new aggregates, as the university or even the factory sometimes does – no longer the nineteenth-century factory nor the decentralized factory that, without breaking the orbit of the city, is installed in the suburbs, but the montage factory, automated by electronic controls, that is to say corresponding to a totally deterritorialized function and mode of work. With this factory, as with the hypermarket or the new university, one is no longer dealing with functions (commerce, work, knowledge, leisure) that are autonomized and displaced (which still characterizes the ‘modern’ unfolding of the city), but with a model of the disintegration of functions, and of the disintegration of the city itself, which is transplanted outside the city and treated as a hyperreal model, as the nucleus of a metropolitan area based on synthesis that no longer has anything to do with the city.” (pp. 77 – 78)
Obviously, I disagree with Baudrillard that the hypermarket transcends Function and displaces it with pure simulacrum. “Commerce, work, knowledge, leisure” are all still valid forces in the world. What has happened is that, as these systems colonize the Lifeworld, Function uncouples us from traditional and naturally intimate forms of meaning. It seems to “disintegrate” but the disintegration is actually within ourselves as Function takes over the Lifeworld.
“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” (page 79) This is a little “fortune-cookie” bit of wisdom that seems to fit the role of Function very well.
Recalling Habermas’ “mediaization” as mentioned previously: “Are the mass media on the side of power in the manipulation of the masses, or are they on the side of the masses in the liquidation of meaning? In the violence perpetuated on meaning, and in fascination? The media carry meaning and countermeaning, they manipulate in all directions at once, nothing can control this process, they are the vehicle for the simulation internal to the system and the simulation that destroys the system…” (page 84)
Baudrillard is speaking of pre-functional systems. The important point is that mass media manipulates and does violence to human meaning. This is exactly how Function works. Advertising is a particular culprit of Function in Baudrillard’s eyes.
“Today what we are experiencing is the absorption of all virtual modes of expression into that of advertising. All original cultural forms, all determined languages as absorbed in advertising because it has not depth, it is instantaneous and instantaneously forgotten. Triumph of superficial form, of the smallest common denominator of all signification, degree zero of meaning, triumph of entropy over all possible tropes…All current forms of activity tend toward advertising and most exhaust themselves therein.” (page 87)
“Thus the form of advertising has imposed itself and developed at the expense of all other languages as an increasingly neutral, equivalent rhetoric, without affects…which envelops us from every side…This defines the limits of advertising’s current power and conditions of its disappearance, since today advertising is no longer a stake, it has both ‘entered into our customs’ and at the same time escaped the social and moral dramaturgy that it still represented twenty years ago.
“Today this power is stolen from it by another type of language that is even more simplified and thus more functional: the languages of computer science. The sequence model, the sound track, and the image track that advertising, along with the other big media, offers us – the model of the combinatory, equal distribution of all discourses that it proposes – this still rhetorical continuum of sounds, signs, signals, slogans that it erects as a total environment is largely overtaken, precisely in its function of simulation, by the magnetic tape, by the electronic continuum that is in the process of being silhouetted against the horizon of the end of this century.” (pp. 88 – 89)
He is speaking from the perspective of the 1980’s, the late-twentieth century. But much of what he says still applies. Simulation, for Baudrillard, and its disruptive affect is what I mean by Function. Simulacra are pure Function. It is, more or less, a copy without an original. That is, human experiences emerge out of functional systems rather than out of the original feelings or thoughts of the human person. This, in turn, similarly to Harari, suggests an intimate reality created simply out of the power of the systems themselves, following their own independent and often chaotic, intentions.
“We are simulators, we are simulacra (not in the classical sense of ‘appearance’), we are concave mirrors radiated by the social, a radiation without a light source, power without origin, without distance, and it is in this tactical universe of simulacrum that one will need to fight – without hope, hope is a weak value, but in defiance and fascination.” (page 152)
Baudrillard advocates resistance. He seems to suggest that we can control the affect of simulacra and simulation in our lives, though he fails to discuss the specifics of such possibilities. It is much easier to characterize the problem than it is the solve it. Consider the functional affect of money…
“The challenge capital directs at us in its delirium – liquidating without shame the law of profit, surplus value, productive finalities, structures of power, and finding at the end of its process the profound immorality (but also the seduction) of primitive rituals of destruction, this very challenge must be raised to an insanely higher level…We will live in this world, which for us has all the disquieting strangeness of the desert and of the simulacrum…of wandering and simulating animals that capital – that the death of capital has made us…” (pp. 152 – 153)
“…melancholia is the fundamental tonality of functional systems, of systems of simulation, of programming and information. Melancholia is the inherent quality of the mode of the disappearance of meaning, of the mode of volatilization of meaning in operational systems. And we are all melancholic.” (page 162)
I disagree with Baudrillard here, even though I think his insight is still useful. Melancholia is not just an experience of our functional, simulated world. It has deeper emotional roots which deny Function’s claim to tyranny over it. Proust is melancholic, for example, but it has little to do with Function and more to do with our memories of Lost Time. While “the disappearance of meaning” within “operational systems” is an obvious example of Function, “meaning” can disappear from a purely emotional standpoint, regardless of the status of functional systems like media, marketing, and advertising.
Baudrillard overshoots his mark here. But, nevertheless, he provides the reader with insights into the nature of Function. He speaks of a “fundamental tonality of functional systems.” It is insufficient to deconstruct this “tonality” to melancholia but it still points to the fact that there is a tonality created by functional systems. The systems impact, in my terms, the Lifeworld. Baudrillard may have missed the exact nature of that tonality but he does assist us with seeing that a tonality (of some kind or of multiple kinds) actually exists within postmodern human experience. This is how Function affects our daily lives. So, melancholia is a symptom of Function but it has a wider range of causes than Function alone.
Like much of the “second stage” existentialism I mentioned in my post of Function, Simulacra and Simulation seems a bit dated to read now. The “postmodern” and “hypermarket” project is so last century compared with, say, the perspectives of Homo Deus. Technological and computing power have infiltrated our lives to a degree no one fully considered. The evolution of Function has been more pervasive and insidious than anyone could fully fathom 40-50 years ago when we first became aware of the problem. Still, Baudrillard offers some important insights as to how Function works. I wanted to include his thoughts as an addendum to my two-part word doodle.
The book is a loose collection of essays, most of which are interesting social critiques of postmodernity, but I was surprised at several sections which seem to apply to Function. For example, what Baudrillard calls the “hypermarket” is obviously functional in the nature and directly affects human experience, specifically with regard to urbanization.
“It is the hypermarket that establishes an orbit along which suburbanization moves. It functions as an implant for the new aggregates, as the university or even the factory sometimes does – no longer the nineteenth-century factory nor the decentralized factory that, without breaking the orbit of the city, is installed in the suburbs, but the montage factory, automated by electronic controls, that is to say corresponding to a totally deterritorialized function and mode of work. With this factory, as with the hypermarket or the new university, one is no longer dealing with functions (commerce, work, knowledge, leisure) that are autonomized and displaced (which still characterizes the ‘modern’ unfolding of the city), but with a model of the disintegration of functions, and of the disintegration of the city itself, which is transplanted outside the city and treated as a hyperreal model, as the nucleus of a metropolitan area based on synthesis that no longer has anything to do with the city.” (pp. 77 – 78)
Obviously, I disagree with Baudrillard that the hypermarket transcends Function and displaces it with pure simulacrum. “Commerce, work, knowledge, leisure” are all still valid forces in the world. What has happened is that, as these systems colonize the Lifeworld, Function uncouples us from traditional and naturally intimate forms of meaning. It seems to “disintegrate” but the disintegration is actually within ourselves as Function takes over the Lifeworld.
“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” (page 79) This is a little “fortune-cookie” bit of wisdom that seems to fit the role of Function very well.
Recalling Habermas’ “mediaization” as mentioned previously: “Are the mass media on the side of power in the manipulation of the masses, or are they on the side of the masses in the liquidation of meaning? In the violence perpetuated on meaning, and in fascination? The media carry meaning and countermeaning, they manipulate in all directions at once, nothing can control this process, they are the vehicle for the simulation internal to the system and the simulation that destroys the system…” (page 84)
Baudrillard is speaking of pre-functional systems. The important point is that mass media manipulates and does violence to human meaning. This is exactly how Function works. Advertising is a particular culprit of Function in Baudrillard’s eyes.
“Today what we are experiencing is the absorption of all virtual modes of expression into that of advertising. All original cultural forms, all determined languages as absorbed in advertising because it has not depth, it is instantaneous and instantaneously forgotten. Triumph of superficial form, of the smallest common denominator of all signification, degree zero of meaning, triumph of entropy over all possible tropes…All current forms of activity tend toward advertising and most exhaust themselves therein.” (page 87)
“Thus the form of advertising has imposed itself and developed at the expense of all other languages as an increasingly neutral, equivalent rhetoric, without affects…which envelops us from every side…This defines the limits of advertising’s current power and conditions of its disappearance, since today advertising is no longer a stake, it has both ‘entered into our customs’ and at the same time escaped the social and moral dramaturgy that it still represented twenty years ago.
“Today this power is stolen from it by another type of language that is even more simplified and thus more functional: the languages of computer science. The sequence model, the sound track, and the image track that advertising, along with the other big media, offers us – the model of the combinatory, equal distribution of all discourses that it proposes – this still rhetorical continuum of sounds, signs, signals, slogans that it erects as a total environment is largely overtaken, precisely in its function of simulation, by the magnetic tape, by the electronic continuum that is in the process of being silhouetted against the horizon of the end of this century.” (pp. 88 – 89)
He is speaking from the perspective of the 1980’s, the late-twentieth century. But much of what he says still applies. Simulation, for Baudrillard, and its disruptive affect is what I mean by Function. Simulacra are pure Function. It is, more or less, a copy without an original. That is, human experiences emerge out of functional systems rather than out of the original feelings or thoughts of the human person. This, in turn, similarly to Harari, suggests an intimate reality created simply out of the power of the systems themselves, following their own independent and often chaotic, intentions.
“We are simulators, we are simulacra (not in the classical sense of ‘appearance’), we are concave mirrors radiated by the social, a radiation without a light source, power without origin, without distance, and it is in this tactical universe of simulacrum that one will need to fight – without hope, hope is a weak value, but in defiance and fascination.” (page 152)
Baudrillard advocates resistance. He seems to suggest that we can control the affect of simulacra and simulation in our lives, though he fails to discuss the specifics of such possibilities. It is much easier to characterize the problem than it is the solve it. Consider the functional affect of money…
“The challenge capital directs at us in its delirium – liquidating without shame the law of profit, surplus value, productive finalities, structures of power, and finding at the end of its process the profound immorality (but also the seduction) of primitive rituals of destruction, this very challenge must be raised to an insanely higher level…We will live in this world, which for us has all the disquieting strangeness of the desert and of the simulacrum…of wandering and simulating animals that capital – that the death of capital has made us…” (pp. 152 – 153)
“…melancholia is the fundamental tonality of functional systems, of systems of simulation, of programming and information. Melancholia is the inherent quality of the mode of the disappearance of meaning, of the mode of volatilization of meaning in operational systems. And we are all melancholic.” (page 162)
I disagree with Baudrillard here, even though I think his insight is still useful. Melancholia is not just an experience of our functional, simulated world. It has deeper emotional roots which deny Function’s claim to tyranny over it. Proust is melancholic, for example, but it has little to do with Function and more to do with our memories of Lost Time. While “the disappearance of meaning” within “operational systems” is an obvious example of Function, “meaning” can disappear from a purely emotional standpoint, regardless of the status of functional systems like media, marketing, and advertising.
Baudrillard overshoots his mark here. But, nevertheless, he provides the reader with insights into the nature of Function. He speaks of a “fundamental tonality of functional systems.” It is insufficient to deconstruct this “tonality” to melancholia but it still points to the fact that there is a tonality created by functional systems. The systems impact, in my terms, the Lifeworld. Baudrillard may have missed the exact nature of that tonality but he does assist us with seeing that a tonality (of some kind or of multiple kinds) actually exists within postmodern human experience. This is how Function affects our daily lives. So, melancholia is a symptom of Function but it has a wider range of causes than Function alone.
Like much of the “second stage” existentialism I mentioned in my post of Function, Simulacra and Simulation seems a bit dated to read now. The “postmodern” and “hypermarket” project is so last century compared with, say, the perspectives of Homo Deus. Technological and computing power have infiltrated our lives to a degree no one fully considered. The evolution of Function has been more pervasive and insidious than anyone could fully fathom 40-50 years ago when we first became aware of the problem. Still, Baudrillard offers some important insights as to how Function works. I wanted to include his thoughts as an addendum to my two-part word doodle.
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