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Title: The Gulf War Did Not Take Place by Jean Baudrillard, Paul Patton ISBN: 0-253-21003-8 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: November, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.38 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Great perspective
Comment: Baudrillard does think the Gulf War happened - the title is just a provocation (it was clearly effective, since people who didn't read the book fell for Baudrillard's little joke and gave it one star).
This book is a great European perspective in the changes that war has undergone, which places it in the same tradition as the work of Paul Virilio's STRATEGY OF DECEPTION, which is a vaguely Baudrillardian take on the Kosovo conflict, written in the same style.
What Baudrillard has begun to see is that war isn't what it used to be. It's not about two countries getting in a political argument that breaks out in violence and all-out war. Baudrillard observes that Mutually Assured Destruction has brought war into the realm of virtuality. No longer is war the simple clash of brutes. Instead, it is a programmed operation that is executed according to a pre-defined model. The UN troops were not responding to the actual capabilities of the Iraqi army, Baudrillard says, but simply executing a plan that had already been decided upon. Thus, you didn't have the UN responding to Iraqi fire, but instead to the signatures on their infrared and radar, satellite images, coordinates, etc. The UN was essentially fighting a virtual reality war using real guns, pointing their missiles at dots on a radar and killing people in the process.
Thus, the Gulf War dissociated the image from reality. The Gulf War was a war of images: intelligence images, news images. A media phenomenon for the world and for the military and for the world. For the military, because virtual reality replaced war as we used to know it, and for the world, because the media phenomenon of the Gulf War became a prime-time exposé of America's technological might, and of the threat of Saddam to the New World Order. Beneath the proliferation of images were thousands of dead Iraqis. But all we saw was the images. The real didn't matter.
This is what Baudrillard is talking about when he says 'the real is no longer real.' Reality has become images - the real behind the images is no longer relevant. Did the Gulf War really happen? Eh, who cares. We saw the images.
This isn't necessarily a profound or true statement on the war, but the subtlety of Baudrillard's perspective is very interesting, because I think Americans don't really see the difference between old and new warfare. Americans don't perceive the way in which détente moved deterrence into the realm of virtuality by turning the Cold War into a scary period of hostility to a game of let's-try-and-be-really-scared. As an intelligent foreigner, Baudrillard notices, and this quick book contains a host of very interesting observations such as the ones discussed above.
Too bad it's so brief. Sometimes Baudrillard is too brief. But this book really has a great deal of very novel perspective. Read this, and then read Virilio. I think you'll like them.
Rating: 3
Summary: So what?
Comment: Yeah, so there was a lot of tv coverage of the Gulf War. Yeah, so some people confuse the tv coverage with what actually went on to the point where the real war is irrelevant. Yeah, so there is a level on which there is a war for public opinion, a purely media war. Beaudrillard says all of this in the tortured language of continental philosophy. Since I love continental philosophy, I appreciate the points he makes about images and simulacra. But he offers not the slightest recognition of the fact that the war DID take place, people, animals, and buildings were destroyed, money and years of work erased, longlasting suffering and illness a legacy among all countries involved . And for that reason, this book made me VERY angry.
Rating: 4
Summary: Epistemology 101
Comment: Thelonious Monk said Kennedy was killed because he liked jazz. Try to disprove that. Postmodernism can be infuriating especially when it touches 'serious' topics. The writing style of Baudrillard (and translators) is not as dense as Derrida's but is not to everyone's taste. Still I think this is an important book. We are about to (maybe) have a sequel to the Gulf War. When I first reviewed this book I expected the new war would have minimal actual reporting from the field. It now appears that the press may be invited to the front lines.Apparently they have demonstrated sufficient loyalty or credulity in the last year to be trusted, or maybe the troublemakers have all been replaced.Anyway we will still be in a position of not knowing what to think, as usual. Since 9-11 it seems that many people are too craven to question anything at all in whole or in part. It behooves us as 'free people' to exercise some critical thinking. Personally I only believe the moon landing happened because the production values of the TV show were so poor.
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Title: Simulacra and Simulation by Sheila Glaser, Jean 0 Baudrillard ISBN: 0472065211 Publisher: UMP Pub. Date: 15 February, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.80 |
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Title: The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers by Jean Baudrillard, Chris Turner ISBN: 1859844111 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 1859844219 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Illusion of the End by Jean Baudrillard, Chris Turner ISBN: 0804725012 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: January, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: America by Jean Baudrillard, Chris Turner ISBN: 0860919781 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: October, 1989 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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