11/9 – Symbolic Resurrection

For all those readers who were disappointed to find only snippets from a dictionary when looking up my article „define:symbolic“ I actually intended a more elaborate piece. But instead of rehearsing my use of the term with ample reference to Jean Baudrillard or Jacques Lacan, the media and history have offered me a wonderful chance to speak about „The Symbolic“ and personal memories. Twenty years ago, the Berlin wall fell. As a symbol it now emerges from the vaults of collective memory and the archive.

This week, Michael Meyer, communications director of the U.N. secretary general, and a former Newsweek reporter in Berlin, published a review of the events of autumn 1989 in the Herald Tribune. He pointed to the widely held view of Americans that Ronald Reagan‘s words to Mr. Gorbachev somehow magically opened the wall and confirmed a feeling of „We won“ (again). Instead, Meyer points out that the opening of the wall was an achievement of thousands of East Germans pressing against the bars at checkpoints and „sheerest happenstance“. Probably, Philip Zelikow would admit chance as an important historical force as well, while holding up his view of a “great election” between East and West that he saw decided already in the early 80’s.

Thank you, Mr. Gorbachev

My memory of autumn 1989 is focused on a certain Mr. Gorbachev, whom I saw on the West German news show, standing together with the East German politburo, saluting troops and flag wavers at the 40th anniversary of the GDR (7 October). Because this Mr. Gorbachev was regarded as a liberator by my parents and people around us, seeing him side with the GDR government aroused a feeling of dissonance. This person on the screen was not the person I imagined (as a nine-year old). In retrospect, Mr. Gorbachev belonged to a different universe and his appearance in the GDR heralded the latter’s end. Him and the old guards simply did not go together. On 10 November 1989 we walked down Kurfurstendamm.

Down the vortex – symbols never survive

These days, the historic event of the falling wall will have to succumb to its symbolic value. It will have to lend itself to all kinds of interpretations and exhaust its energy in the process of symbolic resurrection. On Monday, it will even fall again. One thousand domino stones, each individually designed by people from all over the world, are in place to reenact a unique event as media spectacle. A project called Twinity will even simulate the wall in a virtual reality environment. The symbolic steps in where the „lived character of things“ (Baudrillard) is transcended in an endless rerun of archival material. In this process of reviewing the same over and over again, a multiplicity of meanings attached to a symbol becomes equal to „no meaning“ at all. That is the precondition of the media‘s fascination with symbolic events.

Unfortunately, 11/9 is going to be a Monday. While German media have excelled at recovering the events of November 1989 in the last weeks – resampling photo stocks, reediting historical material and adding commentary on commentary – the actual memory day will fall prey to publishing schedules. Germany‘s (still) leading news magazine Der Spiegel will open the week with an „in-depth“ report on … The future of German grammar schools.

Against Simulation: The Early Works of Jean Baudrillard

Becoming an author is a really hard job. Publishing a book is even harder. Even today. Not until you can become ignorant of your own text and read it over and over again, the true character of the text will emerge. My thesis on Baudrillard’s early works is now available (in German) featuring in-depth explorations of the Marxist and Semiotic treatises, McLuhans heritage, and Baudrillard in the context of Durkheim’s distinction of profane and sacred practices and Weber’s disenchantment of the modern world.

Chapters feature:

• Baudrillard in Media and Cultural Criticism: Against Simulation
• From Symbolic to Semiotic Cultures: Collective Representations – Rationality of Literacy and Individualization
• Alienation and Symbolic Exchange: Barthes’ Modern Myths – The Objects and Consumer Society – Need for Difference – Symbolic Exchange
• The Test of the Mass Media and Telematic Subjects: Parole sans réponse and Implosion – The Screen and Telematic Subjects
• Symbolic Exchange in (online) social networks

Graphic concept and typo composition by Katharina Berndt (gluecklichebilder.de). Editor: Jakob F. Dittmar. Available from University Press of Technical University Berlin, Kiepert, or Amazon.de or as a free download of the complete pdf from the publisher.

Theory – 学説 – Theory

The cover image was taken on the streets of Ginza, Tokyo. I wish it was a montage but actually it was all there. “Longchamp” of “Paris” next to a Barbra Streisand-looking girl featuring fashion by “Theory”. What struck me most is the combination of such disparate elements as pure signs. Maybe it takes a long way to Japan to discover this self-referentiality of the sign and the image. The cultural difference aside, it teaches a lesson in Baudrillardian thinking. And maybe theory is not so far away from fashion anyway.

define:symbolic

Baudrillard and Symbolic Exchange

This is my Master’s Thesis on the writings of French sociologist Jean Baudrillard with
special emphasis on his concept of “symbolic exchange“. Largely known as a media
philosopher with a unique style of language and thinking, Baudrillard became famous
with the term simulation – a cultural state where media make for a sign-saturated,
hyperreal environment, where reality is lost. This paper argues that simulation has been
misinterpreted on the grounds of a Platonic phallacy in the discourse around Baudrillard
in the postmodernism debate. Instead, this paper traces Baudrillard’s roots in Emile
Durkheim’s investigations of „collective representations“ and religion among primitive
peoples. Durkheim’s writings on the primitive is presented alongside the media theory of
Marshal McLuhan and his followers as an important background for Baudrillard.
The paper traces Baudrillards windy road to simulation from his earlier writings on
consumerism, across his critique of Semiotics and Marxism to the crucial concept of
critical reversal called „symbolic exchange“. In an attempt to circumvent the
epistemological “desert of the real“ this paper argues that “symbolic exchange“can be
employed as a useful concept to analyse networked communication on the basis of
voluntary and reciprocal human relations. The paper includes references to a large body
of secondary literature and in-depth explorations of Baudrillard’s idiosyncratic
vocabulary.

I offer the complete file for download under a by-nc-nd licence here. Comments, remarks and requests for partial translations are welcome. The file is as yet only available in German.

Baudrillard and Symbolic Exchange