2004, "Lectures with Jean Baudrillard," EGS

"Globalization" involves the market and tourism but "universality" is a hope of democracy.

We approach a zero degree of value. Universilization happens at the top and perishes with globalization. The globalization of exchange puts an end to universal values. The market is what is globalized and now the universal is marketed. The mirror of the universal is shattered. In the fragmentation of the universal, the singularities emerge.

If we consider culture as singularity, then cultural identity it is now a global product. Japan was global without having to go through the universal. Japan is optimal globalization. The global exchange involves singular forms and universal values. Globalization is living out every value toward non-culture. Nothing truly disappears but goes underground. The global exchange is singular forms and universal values. Globalization is living out every value toward non-culture

The universal had its moment The first and only world war would be the one that will confront globalization. Singularity has its own rules of the game, its own limits but its limit, but its limitation is based on duality (difference) and symbolic exchange The contract is related to the law with 2 individuals under the sign of the law The pact has a dual relation, not under the law but under the rule Universal order is subject to the law The law is above the rule which is above the norm With the real and virtual there is no rule or law, it is beyond the law. Singularity is related to the rule Universality is related to the law. Globalization is nothing but the elimination of the “other”

Economic laws are dissolved in the freedom of speculation We are already virtually beyond economics Are we still dominated by national ideas? We are trapped in an antagonism between world power that is not economical or political but trans-economical and trans-political. Now we deal with absolute vistual power. The power of a connection, the power of globalization, no one rules it. Global-universal-singular Singularity can de-stabilize world power. Singularity is radically destabilizing, not what it signifies but that it exists.

The important strategy is not in returning but in reversal. Globalization is irreversible in its own logic. But we are not at the infinite dimension, only in a symbolic rule that is reversible and has been added into the world game. Irreversibility is an idea from modernity, a more radical dimension of revolution. (permanent change) Both the imaginary and the real are against the symbolic. There is no place for the imaginary anymore. We are submerged in efficiency and technology. (what about total territory of imagination) Seduction (a dual relation, a restriction in paradoxical logic) is opposed to pornography (universal exchange). Pornography is fascinating not seducing.

Values destruct forms Values are intended to totalize themselves The forms destruct themselves and change each other (think of natural fire earcth water and air) The battle of universals is still within globalization The disintegration of political power results in total power or no power. Now we have total power and no political power Power acts in indifference to all people Objective irony – a system that reverses its own logic Hacking as irony and terrorism Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence is a return of forms but it is not repetition of the same Form and value; is form contaminated by value? All becomes form. But form and value remain exclusive of one another.

Art degrades in commercial value and aesthetic value All becomes aesthetic but art is inexchangeable as a form, an object of impossible exchange. As soon as art is exchangeable, form is informal. The aestheticization - Contamination between art and real life. Art was a singularity. “Art created another scene exclusive of the real one.” The world becomes aestheticized , art is banalized Art is a fatal process and the process is fatal for reality too Art will no more be designed as art but may play the same role – another world, a littered world, a radical alternative, but it will not be art as we see it conventionally, today the forms are contaminated Behind every system of values, the form has disappeared Dual relation, neither subject nor object. Art will appear in other forms where we don’t seek it

Believing in reality today is now a moral position (Sontag) “We believe in TV” Imperialization of symbolic value Modernity (if it ever happened) emergence/subvergence Parody Violent derision of our model of power abroad There is no Japanese word for universal All relations are based on seduction not production The western world and the 3rd world seduce each other The best way to seduce is to have someone do something in your place, so they keep coming back to occupy the place of you, coming back to you We see the singular exotic of other countries but the Western world is not exotic to anyone, nor singular. It is the absolute referent. We take and exploit other countries. History In the 1st stage – real event In the 2nd stage – farce, parody History ends in parody, repetition Heidegger – banality is the second fall of man Join history / get out of history The end of history is now a historical fact.

The virtual is not an answer. Reality is democratic Illusion is aristocratic Globalization and media have made illusion democratic Western culture has destroyed its own values, it has no orthodoxy any more The system itself, against itself The world is an illusion Singularity as aristocratic, not democratic Aristocracy results not from exclusion but from a rule of the game; not true for democracy All of America has become Disneyland, to the limit of simulation Simulation is a second degree of reality The second level is irony and affection America is the first in over simulation Without irony the world is superior to America but America is trapped in the desperate simulacra of military power Thought in a radical sense is inhuman – it must be fatal, a fatal strategy

Is terrorism a singularity? May 68 was a symbolic acting out of courage If truth does not exist I can play with the signs. If truth exists it is not possible Cannibalization, a sign of love to internalize Disney as auto-canibalization Terrorism as cannibalization Anti-terrorism as control, security Singularity of culture Culture in the deep sense of the word is singularity Now They are a culture It’s not culture as super structure Their symbolic structure is their culture Culture as culturalization, cannibalization Culture as incomparable, non-exchangeable Globalization of culture: The universal The global The singular Borges made a claim at a European conference to be the only true European Europe as universal, not economic, not defensive Culture as sublime projection America is about excess Europe by default Europe as a counter to globalization (American) but America is not the real site of globalization, the world is the site of globalization and the resistance to globalization America is idea America is the primal scene

Modernity is mythological Globalization is an ambiguous concept The enemy no longer comes from the outside but from the inside with absolute success of the model Culture itself is a figure of transcendence, of challenge and distance Culture remains irreducible All ministries of culture – nothing can be done The problem of communication – we never verify identity in culture Culture is a luxury. It aligns itself with needs. It is produced and promoted and then it has lost all meaning. Culture is a form of glory. There is something vain and useless about identity claims. Culture is a symbolic act. Power and culture cannot be stockpiled. Cultural production and material production have led to overproduction.

Growth has given way to outgrowth. The fundamental catastrophe is excessive growth. Globalization is understood as growth. There is never enough with cultural production The cultural economy of the average citizen is supply over demand. Average people cannot even consumer their own cultural production (photos, scrapbooks) Art exhibitions are evidence of a point of saturation We have voluntary servitude in politics Is there a universal language? English culture is singular culture We have now “irresistible progress” Overproduction is supply over demand, with speculation, cut off from the real world Cultural goods meet the same end as material goods, eventual obsolescence Art has bent to trend. Art becomes ethereal with the commercial vitality of the artist for the transient market (not passing life). The market is not invested in the sign level but in travesty. Culture is disseminated as quickly as it is produced. Everyone has a right to it, like health care. Promotion of information is itself an event The medium has swallowed the message. When cultural goods become a market, aesthetic values degrade to market values but when market values… speculation becomes aesthetic values? Art operates as a gigantic readymade The potential for works of art to become marketable goods the worst is reality as art started with Duchamp no ending as banalized cultutalization the violence of culturalization The interest is not biological cloning but cultural cloning Art is conscious of ironic advance Duchamp effected the pure existence of things an aggression, a subversion of the museum and everyday life an annihilation of both Its an event – not as an art work – but the pure event of Duchamp is event, a specific moment, a singularity in time and space Multiplicity of act that is no more an event I cannot escape from the impression even when everyday life is transposed It’s not the power of objective irony, it s duplication, its not profound irony.