Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND POSTMODERNITY
1
1
1
2
1
1
their own positions presented, and it is easy to understand that the difficulties of
exactly representing politics through media are insuperable. In Baudrillard’s view,
the fact that the media must put together a presentation of politics for the public
means that any alternative presentation can be nothing but just another simulation.
In an era of electronic media we cannot have anything other than simulated
politics.
On the other hand, Baudrillard would assert that, since everyone knows this
to be the case, no one gets much bothered since the signs are ignored. We all
know that they are artificial, so we just enjoy the spectacle and ignore the
messages, knowingly reasoning that ‘it’s just those politicians on the television
again’.
Logically this knowledgeability of the public heralds what one might describe
as the death of meaning. If people realise that signs are but simulations, and that
all that can be conceived are alternative simulations, then it follows that anything
– and nothing – goes. Thus we arrive at Baudrillard’s conclusion that ‘we manufacture
a profusion of images in which there is nothing to see. Most present-day
images – be they video images, paintings, products of the plastic arts, or audiovisual
or synthesising images – are literally images in which there is nothing to
see’ (Baudrillard, [1979] 1990, p. 17). If the ‘masses’ recognise that signs are just
simulations, then we are left with a profusion of signs which just do not signify.
We have signs without meaning, signs that are ‘spectacular’ (Baudrillard, 1983a,
p. 42), things to be looked at, experienced and perhaps enjoyed, but signs without
significance. This, indeed, is a postmodern world.
The examples I have used to illustrate Baudrillard’s conception of postmodern
culture have mostly come from media, the obvious domain of signification
and an area that most readily springs to mind when one thinks of an
information explosion. However, it is important to realise that Baudrillard
contends that the society of spectacle and simulation reaches everywhere, and
much deeper even than an enormously expanded media. To appreciate this
better, let us recall that everything nowadays is a sign: clothing, body shape, pub
décor, architecture, shop displays, motorcars, hobbies – all are heavily informational.
Again, modernist writers tend to examine these things in terms of an
underlying or potential authenticity, for example that there is a natural body
weight for people of a given size and build, or that shop displays can be set out
in such a way that customers can find what they want in a maximally convenient
and unobtrusive way. However, Baudrillard rejects these approaches on the
familiar grounds that the modernist search for the authentic is misconceived since
all these signs are simulations rather than representations.
What he means by this is that, for instance, body shape now is largely a
matter of choices and that people can design, to a large extent, the signs of their
bodies. If one considers the plasticity of body shape today (through diets, exercise,
clothing, or even through surgery), then one gets an idea of the malleability
of the human body. Now, the modernist would respond to this in either of two
ways: either the obsession with body shape is condemned as leading people away
from their ‘true’ shapes (and bringing with it much anxiety, especially for young
women) or people are seen as having an inappropriate body shape to sustain
247