richard smith_exploring post-marxist theory - a reading of jean baudrillard

8/22/2019 Richard Smith_Exploring Post-Marxist Theory - A Reading of Jean Baudrillard

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Exploring post-Marxist theory: a reading of Jean Baudrillard

Richard G Smith

Department of Geography

Leicester University

Leicester

LE1 7RH

England

Email: [email protected]

A full version of this paper (with a response from Marcus Doel) is forthcoming as

"Baudrillard unwound: the duplicity of post-Marxism and deconstruction" in

Environment and Planning D: Society & Space (pages 1 - 44)


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Abstract

The polarization of debate between Marxism, postmodernism, andpoststructuralism is ill judged and unproductive. In contrast to this stand-off

the case is made for a transgenic or transversal post-Marxism that opens upnew possibilities and avenues for critical theoretical development. Theargument is developed specifically through a reading of Baudrillard s oeuvre.It is argued that the oft-repeated claims for an epistemological breakbetween an early, Marxian Baudrillard and a later, postmodern Baudrillard isnot bourne out by his texts. Instead, Baudrillard's oeuvre is read to bestructured by a 'double spiral' which involves an antagonism between thesemiotic (or simulacrum) and the symbolic (that which stands to the side ofthe field of value and capitalist exchange). It is argued that Baudrillard's post-Marxism contains many possibilites for the development of critical theorywhen the semiotic logic at the heart of the political economy of the sign is

freed from the mystique of the unachievable utopia of symbolic exchange. Inparticular the paper points towards the contribution of Baudrillard's work forworking out a general theory of the reproduction of space.

Key words: post-Marxism, Baudrillard

Prolegomenon to post-Marxism

The critique slipped to the side by itself, not out of any decided intention.

Baudrillard (1995: 17)

The so-called crisis of Marxism continues and consequently some intellectuals

of the Left have begun to throw away past certainties, and think differently,

through the philosophies of postmodernism and poststructuralism. Through

various critiques of Marxist theory, politics, and practice, the possibility hasemerged of somehow being between Marxism, postmodernism, and

poststructuralism. Despite the apparent mutual exclusivity of epistemes and the

risk of being misunderstood, a number of people are working out their own

combinations of Marxism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism (e.g. Callari and

Ruccio, 1996; Jameson, 1991; Ryan, 1982; Soja, 1996). Indeed, it is increasingly

difficult to justify abandoning either Marxism, postmodernism, or poststructuralism.

Within a non-exclusive logic of both-and that eschews the immutable terms of


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either/or one is free to experiment. For example, while one may argue that some

form of Marxist class theory is central to understanding social inequality in late-

capitalism, that does not prevent one from recognizing that Foucault s historical

analyses have succeeded in casting a far darker shadow of suspicion over

liberal society than Althusser s laborious analyses of Marx s Capital (Lilla,

1994: 13). Indeed, it is clear that many postmodernists and poststructuralists have

extended or reacted to Marxism in a number of useful and interesting ways which

do not necessarily mean the jettisoning of a radical left-wing politics.

Sim (1998) draws a distinction between post-Marxistand post-Marxist positions.On the one hand, post-Marxists graft the critical-theoretical insights of, say,

deconstruction, feminism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism onto classical or

neo-Marxism (e.g. Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). This amalgamation of isms

means Marxism can be made relevant to a new cultural climate that is no longer

responding to classical Marxist doctrine (Sim, 1998: 2). While sympathetic to

these endeavours we can read an allegory by Baudrillard (1990: 206) as a critique

of such an expansive post-Marxist project of nuts-and-bolts reassembly.

The daughter of the famous Winchester ... heard a prediction that she would

die when her house was completed just revenge for the thousands of victims

which the only too famous carbine had created in the West over a century.

Then, like Penelope, she began to build a house without end, interminably

adding bedrooms, staircases, annexes. She died in the end, in the 1930s,

leaving behind a monstrous 150-bedroom house as a memorial to the

holocaust of the nineteenth century.

On the other hand, post-Marxists are those who, while being perceived to have

turned their backs on Marxism, remain haunted by Marx (cf. Derrida, 1994; Lyotard,

1993). This can be said for Baudrillard. For while he is viewed as having broken


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with Marx, Baudrillard has maintained a certain nostalgia for him. There is a

continuityto Baudrillard s oeuvre that demonstrates a ceaseless drive towards a

post-Marxist position.

In my reading of Baudrillard, however, the either/or distinction carved out by

Sim does not hold: Baudrillard is both post-Marxist and post-Marxist. This makes

him an exemplary figure with whom one can explore the space between Marxism,

postmodernism, and poststructuralism. Furthermore, this demonstates the

importance of reading for creating new ideas and understandings. For example,

rather than resorting to a reconstruction of post-Marxism, what happens if oneviews Baudrillard s account of hyperreality as a remarkably elegant description of

an ideology? What happens if one reads Baudrillard s rendition of simulacra and

simulation through the lens of his re-theorisation of Marx s account of the

commodity-form? Reading becomes vital as one cannot see the possibilities if

one breaks Baudrillard s work into separate Marxist and postmodernist chapters.

It is to such a reading that I turn.

Framing Baudrillard

You push and shove the material into the rigid area getting it into the

boundary on one side, and it bulges out on another .... until finally almost

everything sits unstably more or less in there; what doesn t gets heaved far

away so that it won t be noticed. Nozick (1974: xiii)

When re-presenting ideas be honest. There s were I started, here s where I

ended up; the major weakness in my work is that I went from there to here; in

particular, here are the most noticeable distortions, pushings, shovings, maulings,

gougings, stretchings, and chippings that I committed during the trip; not to

mention the things thrown away and ignored, and all those avertings of gaze


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(Nozick, 1974: xiii). Reading Baudrillard is to push and shove until a specified

shape is revealed. To read Baudrillard as a post-Marxist is to press, push, shove,

maul, and stretch, but also to throw away, abandon, clip, chip, and cut his thought

towards a particular end. Beyond the perimeter there is always that which

protrudes and remains, that which fails to be reduced to the over-arching narrative

of a metatheoretical discourse holding to a grand or great referent all the real s

big numbers (capital, democracy, justice, labour, sovereignty, use-value, utility,

etc.). All those metanarratives, depth models , Grand Theories, hermeneutics

of suspicion , specular watchtowers, and ways of reading the world that claim to

be able to dig-out the truth: essence behind appearance; latent (unconsciousdesire) behind manifest (symptom); authentic behind inauthentic; production

beneath superstructure; relations of force or power beneath the ideological or

normative shell; signified behind signifierin short, all realities laid bare by an

interpretative hermeneutichave a certain perimeter. However, this is not to say

that the best way to read Baudrillard is not through a close critical reading that

would reveal the overall structure of his philosophical system, the layers in his

writing, the themes that span his texts, the debts to previous thinkers, his

interventions in the politics of place, etc. After all, a critical , symptomatic or

intensive reading of Baudrillard s oeuvre enables one to pick and choose,

avoiding any limitations or frivolities.

The historical and theoretical question of reading Baudrillard's oeuvre can be

addressed through a denial of an epistemological break in his corpus which

divides it into Marxist and postmodern chapters. Instead of promoting Baudrillard

as a Marxist from a reading of his early writings or as a postmodernist through

a reading of his later writings , I read Baudrillard as a post-Marxist where the

two-camps are not opposed but reconciled. The bar that is read to divide is

removed in an effort to encourage cross-theorization and fertilization between

different epistemes. This cannot be done for all the so-called postmodernists and


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poststructuralists. Unlike Baudrillard, Derrida did not start out from an explicitly

Marxist position. Despite being haunted by Marx, Specters of Marx (1994)

represents Derrida s first major statement on Marx (his earlier publications

investigated the history and nature of writing). Similarly, Deleuze s initial works,

while considerations of key figures in the history of philosophy, such as Hume,

Nietzsche, and Kant, were not on Marx, and his subsequent works were deeply

indebted to Nietzsche, Leibniz, Bergson, and Spinoza. However, Lyotard was an

active Marxist in his early academic career. Between 1956 and 1966, he was on

the editorial committee of the socialist journal Socialisme ou Barbarie and involved

with the socialist newspaper Pouvoir Ouvrierwhich emerged from the schism ofthe earlier group in 1964. Furthermore, he opposed the French government over

the war in Algeria, and participated in the events of 1968. However, he is then said

to have rejected totalitarian thought (a category in which he would include Marxism

because, like Arendt, Marxism for Lyotard is equated as belonging to the same

logic that led to the Stalinist death camps) to become perhaps the key non-Marxist

philosopher of post-modernity in the 1980s. It is proposed that Lyotard started his

epistemological break in his doctoral thesis Discours, figure (1971) and then

broke in Libidinal Economy (1993) where he attempted to escape Marx through

Freud s economy of libidinal energy and the notion of the primary process.

Lechte (1994: 246) argues that [t]his extreme break with Marxism in Economie

libidinale becomes much more nuanced in the philosophy of postmodernism. In

fact, neither Lyotard nor Baudrillard are ex-Marxist ; they are post-Marxist .

Post-Marxism: exploring the spaces between

The word exploration is appropriately chosen. One view about how to write

a philosophy book holds that an author should think through all of the details of

the view he presents, and its problems, polishing and refining his view to

present to the world a finished, complete, and elegant whole. This is not my


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view. At any rate, I believe that there also is a place and a function in our

ongoing intellectual life for a less complete work, containing unfinished

presentations, conjectures, open questions and problems, leads, side

connections, as well as a main line of argument. There is room for words on

subjects other than last words. Nozick (1974: xii)

Jameson (1991: 297) observes that people often find the combination of Marxism

and postmodernism peculiar or paradoxical and somehow intensely unstable, so

that some are led to conclude that, in my own case, having become a

postmodernist I must have ceased to be a Marxist in any meaningful (or in otherwords, stereotypical) sense. Similarly, Gregory (1989: 356) observes that

postmodernism needs to be seen not as a negation of everything that went

before but rather as a critical commentary upon it. In Geographical Imaginations,

Gregory (1994: 317-318) confesses that: I should say at once that I find myself

caught in the middle: still very much interested in the development of historical

materialism; suspicious of claims that it provides the single master key to unlock

human history and geography; yet sceptical of some of the assumptions and

implications of postmodernism . Furthermore, Graham (1988: 63) argues

postmodernism is more than an anti-Marxist critique levelled at Marxism from

outside, it is an emerging tradition within Marxism. Marxism is dead. Long live

Marxisms ; and even Peet (1998: viii) now describes himself as a materialist

poststructuralist who has been largely persuaded by socialist feminism and

partly persuaded by poststructuralism, yet remain[s] unconvinced by most of

postmodernism, except Baudrillard, with whose notions of sign-domination [he]

basically agree[s] .

It is not easy to refuse to think in boxes, to refuse to accept that there is one box

called Marxism and others called postmodernism and poststructuralism .

You cannot win against the compartmentalization of knowledge, the binary


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thinking of those who see things clearly as either/or ( GET LEFT OR GET

RIGHT demands Harvey (1996: 3)), rather than both-and. You are either a

vulgar Marxist (the criticism from postmodernists and poststructuralists) or a

turncoat who has abandoned the project of the Left (the criticism from Marxists).

This is how the Left has caricatured Baudrillard. He was a brilliant Marxist who lost

his way, seduced by postmodernism; From a radical position on the Left, he

gradually moved towards a right-wing poststructuralism and postmodernism

(Sarup, 1993: 163). If only things were that simple!

One of the main myths about Baudrillard is that there are two profound breaks inhis oeuvre. The prevailing view that Baudrillard broke with Marx in The Mirror of

Production (1975), as Kellner (1989: 48) argues, is questionable: In Mirror,

Baudrillard makes a definitive break with Marxism for the first timethough one

can read his earlier works in retrospect as leading up to this breakand presents

his own theory as providing superior perspectives on contemporary society .

Furthermore, the logical corollary of this view is that Baudrillard paved the way for

an epistemological break in his subsequent text, Symbolic Exchange and

Death (1993), which led towards a postmodern position (e.g. Gottdiener, 1995;

Kellner, 1989). This is equally questionable. Just because Baudrillard describes

the end of modernity this does not mean he is proclaiming its end. For example,

Kellner (1994: 7) quotes Baudrillard on his ends from Symbolic Exchange and

Death (1993: 8): The end of labour. The end of production. The end of political

economy. The end of the signifier/signified dialectic the end of the exchange-

value/use-value dialectic The end of the linear dimension of discourse. The end

of the linear dimension of the commodity. The end of the classical era of the sign.

The end of the era of production. For Kellner, the discourse of the end

signifies Baudrillard s announcement of a postmodern break or rupture in

history . However, it is a very strange logic that sees an end as a break .

An end is just an end ! It is not the case of something existing and then no


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longer existing, rather these things have surpassed themselves. Baudrillard is

more Marxist than Marx (who, of course, said he wasn t anyway); post-Marxist.

In 1995, I suggested that one should not undertake a reading which views

Marxism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism as separate epistemes. This has

been argued more recently by Soja (1996), who proposes a Radical

postmodernism, whose non-exclusive logic would eschew the immutable

Aristotelian terms of either/or to explore the space between Marxism and

postmodernism through the logic of both-and. Thus, my reading of Baudrillard will

mind the gap , as Lyotard would say. It will collapse the bar (/) through,across, and in Baudrillard s writings to bridge the gap between two imaginaries in

an epistemology which knows the difference: In the consciousness of our failures,

we risk lapsing into boundless differences and giving up on the confusing task of

making partial, real connection. Some differences are playful. Some are poles of

world historical domination. Epistemology is about knowing the difference

(Haraway, 1985: 79). In this reading the binary separating epistemes is rejected

and the bar collapsed in an effort to encourage cross-theorization and cross-

fertilization between the different epistemes which hitherto have been hastily

polarised and marketed as hermetically-sealed entities. My desire is to inhabit

the tense and creative spaces between different and dissonant theoretical

traditions (Barnes and Gregory, 1997: 3).

Mind the gap

I do not believe in decisive ruptures, in an unequivocal epistemological

break .... Breaks are always, and fatally, reinscribed in an old cloth that must

continually, interminably be undone. ... And this in no way minimizes the

necessity and relative importance of breaks, of the appearance and definition

of new structures. Derrida (1981: 24)


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In For Marx(1979), Althusser noted a clear epistemological break in Marx s

oeuvre. A young Marx (of the 1844 Manuscripts and The Holy Family), a humanist

who wrote within an Hegelian-Feuerbachian problematic, and a mature Marx, who

finally, after a period of theoretical transition (with the Manifesto of the Communist

Party, the Poverty of Philosophy, and Wages, Price and Profit), developed a

science of historical materialism after 1857. For Althusser, the humanist and

utopian imaginary evident in Marx s earlier work could not be traced consistently

in his later work. Althusser argued that the epistemological break in Marx s

oeuvre was 1845, with his Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology, andsome two years after his Critique of Hegel s Philosophy of Right, which, for

Althusser, was more akin to a Feuerbachian critique of Hegel.

The consensus on reading Baudrillard is analogous to Althusser s reading of

Marx. Gottdiener (1994: 24) writes of a critical disjuncture in Baudrillard s

oeuvre. He draws a distinction between Baudrillard s early effort to study therelationship between semiotics and the commodification of everyday life, and the

later effort which abandons that project and replaces it with an impressionistic,

idealized and jargon-laden discourse . Numerous writers have identified this

coupure pistmologique in Baudrillard s oeuvre between a young Baudrillard

(who wrote within a neo-Marxist problematic) and a mature Baudrillard (who writes

with a postmodern imagination). Symbolic Exchange and Death (1993) is regarded

as the site of Baudrillard s postmodern turn where, after criticizing Marx in

The Mirror of Production (1975), he elaborated his emerging position which was to

become compatible with much postmodern thinking. For example, Kellner (in

Baudrillard, 1993: book cover) writes that Symbolic Exchange and Death is

easily Baudrillard s most important work. It is a key intervention in the debates on

modernity and postmodernity and the site of his postmodern turn . Similarly, Best

(1989: 36) argues that [t]he difference between Critique of the Political Economy


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of the Sign and The Mirror of Production was indeed sharp, but the real break in

Baudrillard s work did not occur until Symbolic Exchange and Death (1993), for it

is there that he made the transition (conceived on his own terms) from a modern to

a postmodern theorist . However, one should be suspicious of analytically-

acclaimed ruptures profondes and I would argue that Baudrillard s most

popular ideas can only be understood through his earliest writings. So, one can

both agree and disagree with Vine s (1989: 41) suggestion that fifty consecutive

pages of Baudrillard are essentially the whole of Baudrillard , because although

one cannot understand Baudrillard from reading just fifty pages (that would be an

unprecedented reiteration), it is the case that all of Baudrillard is present in thosepages.

Not reading Baudrillard through an epistemological break leads to the question

of how one can read his works to produce a post-Marxism. The answer lies in two

parts: first, reading symptomatically, which gets at the continuities that weave

together Baudrillard s oeuvre; and, second, by viewing his oeuvre as a double

spiral , rather than through the before and after of an epistemological break .

These led me to the dramatic discovery of the possibilities for new theoretical

development by reading Baudrillard as one, rather than two. Reading Baudrillard

without an epistemological break means that one can begin to produce a

general theory of the reproduction of space. One can see how Baudrillard s

general theory of the political economy of the sign is the basis of his ideas about

simulacra, simulations, reproductions, and hyperreality. A post-Marxist theory

developed from Baudrillard can give us a starting point from which to develop a

general theory of the reproduction of space in late-capitalist societies. However,

that is another story and we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let me explain

symptomatic reading before turning to the double spiral.


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Surface and symptomatic reading

The distinction Althusser (1979) draws between surface reading and

symptomatic reading is useful for reading Baudrillard because it helps us to

see the continuity of his thought . For example, Baudrillard s America (1988a)

has an invisible structure that consists of several theses from earlier works.

This structure has been deliberately overlooked by other commentators who we

can call (without any offence) surface readers . Gane (1991: 182), reads

America not symptomatically ... but as a mirror of Baudrillard s own form ofwriting, that is fatally, or poetically, for the text ofAmerica ... does not aim at depth

or at a dialectical analysis. The problem for the reader is to find, therefore, an

appropriate superficial form of reading. However, in Cool Memories (1990: 219)

Baudrillard writes that [f]orAmerica, only one method: given a certain number of

fragments, notes and stories collected over a given time, there mustbe a solution

which integrates them all, including the most banal, into a necessary whole,

without adding or removing any: the very necessity which, beneath the surface,

presided over their collection . It is therefore necessary to read not only with

breadth (as the text has a wide extent) but also with depth, to undertake a

symptomatic reading of America which looks beneath the surface to

distinguish a word from a concept, to distinguish the existence or non existence

of a concept behind a word, to discern the existence of a concept by a word's

function in the theoretical discourse, to define the nature of a concept by its

function in the problematic, and thus by the location it occupies in the system of

the theory (Althusser, 1979: 39). This combined reading could be termed an

extensive-intensive reading which is alert to Tournier s observation that [i]t

is a strange prejudice which sets a higher value on depth than on breadth, and

which accepts superficial as meaning not of wide extent but of little


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depth whereas deep , on the other hand, signifies of great depth , and not

of small surface (quoted in Deleuze, 1993: 261-262).

An extensive-intensive reading sees links across the so-called break in

Baudrillard s oeuvre. However, a transversal or post-Marxist reading of

Baudrillard is achieved not only by extensive and intensive reading, but also by

seeing the structure of the double spiral which serves to unite Baudrillard s

thinking throughout his writings. In this paper I am pushing away and forgetting

one half of the double spiral for the sake of clarity. Concentrating on the spiral of

the code throughout his work enables us to see the remarkable contribution thatBaudrillard has made to extending Marx s description of the commodity: by noting

that it is structurally homologous with the Saussurian sign and by developing all of

the consequences of this insight.

Double Spiral M b ius

Rather than reading Baudrillard through an epistemological break he could be

read, as he himself says, through a double spiral :

The double spiral moves from Le Systme des Objets to the Fatal Strategies:

a spiral swerving towards a sphere of the sign, the simulacrum and simulation,

a spiral of the reversibility of all signs in the shadow of seduction and death.

The two paradigms are diversified in the course of this spiral without altering

their antagonistic position. On the one hand: political economy, production, the

code, the system, simulation. On the other hand: potlatch, expenditure,

sacrifice, death, the feminine, seduction, and in the end, the fatal (Baudrillard,

1988b: 79).


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If one reads all of Baudrillard, then one can see that the spiral of the semiotic is

described by Baudrillard as the code of social standing in 1968, the code in

1970, the political economy of the sign in 1972, the structural law of value

in 1976, and as hyperreality , simulation , and simulacra from around

1981. Similarly, the spiral of the symbolic can also be seen to have evolved during

this time from the gift and ambivalence to seduction, fatal strategies, evil and

death. The spiral of the symbolic traces the complete history of Baudrillard s

opposition to the code as a Pataphysician at twenty situationist at thirty

utopian at forty transversal at fifty and viral and metaleptic at sixty

(Baudrillard, 1996a: 83).

So, Baudrillard provides the means to divide his oeuvre without resorting to an

Althusserian-style epistemological break between Marxism and

postmodernism/poststructuralism. The double spiral traces the destruction of

the symbolic by the semiotic and the ironic eruption of the former in the latter.

Gane (1993) first highlighted this aspect of Baudrillard s imaginary, and Genosko

(1994: 164) made a book of it, finishing with the opinion that Baudrillard is

primarily concerned with struggling against signification in the name of symbolic

exchange .

The double spiral is a metaphor for the opposition of the semiotic (the code,

etc.) to the symbolic (ambivalence, etc.). Let me explain: 1) symbolic exchange; 2)

the code; and 3) how the code destroys symbolic exchange (although vestiges

survive):

1. Symbolic exchange: Baudrillard mobilizes against the hegemonic system of the

code not class conflict or even consumer resistance but symbolic exchange. He

thinks of the symbolic, not as an analogical variant of the sign in the classic semio-

linguistic sense (like allegory, icon, indication or signal), but as an anti-


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semiological device: signs must burn (Baudrillard, 1981: 163). For Baudrillard,

the symbolic (a form of exchange that is ambivalent, non-equivalent, and non-

reductive) is what opposes the authority of the code, resisting integration into the

capitalist system of exchange and the field of value. Symbolic exchange is for

Baudrillard a revolutionary project that can transgress and deconstruct the

hegemonic discourse of the code because it is external to the collapsing of the

signifier and signified which excludes the possibility of judgement and criticism

(the code is in this respect analogous to Lefebvre s signal ). For me, however,

this is at best quixotic and at worst utopian. Baudrillard s anti-semiology is a

hollow gesture that falls all too easily into a utopia of the peaceful surrender of themeans of (re)production by capitalists. In For a Critique of the Political Economy of

the Sign (1981), before developing a full-blown theory of symbolic exchange in

Symbolic Exchange and Death (1993), Baudrillard notes, in my view correctly, that

the structural relation between commodity-form and sign-form is a system in the

framework of political economy and so is susceptible to a critique in the same

way as classical political economy because their form is the same, not their

content: sign form and commodity form (Baudrillard, 1981: 126). Thus, symbolic

exchange is a utopia, another possible world, and is not adequate as a critical

politics and practice. (For more on the origins of the idea of symbolic exchange as

utopia from Baudrillard s early writings in the journal Utopie, see Smith 1995,

1997.)

2. The code is derived from both the commodity-form described by Marx and the

sign described by Saussure, and is synonymous with hyperreality , simulacra

and simulations , and the structural law of value in Baudrillard s oeuvre. In

this way, Baudrillard s earliest works on the system of objects are related to his

later writings on virtual reality and cyberspace. Baudrillard first described a code

of social standing in The System of Objects (1996b), where he postulated that

consumer society is not defined by the quantity of goods, nor the satisfaction of


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needs although these are obviously preconditionsbut by the organization of

consumption as a signifying substance. He argued that the object or commodity

must become a sign that is never consumed in its materiality, but in its

difference (Baudrillard, 1968: 277). In his next book, Consumer Society(1998),

Baudrillard continued to speak of consumption as a code defined by a structural

and differential logic of signs rather than of human needs and pure commodities.

Here Baudrillard begins the systematic critique of needs (a phenomenology of

pleasure) and use-value (both of which belong to the epistemology of political

economy), enabling him to argue in terms of the domination of the code

(hyperreality) in late-capitalism without relying on a reduction of society to aputative utilitarian base. He continues to argue that consumption can be

historically and structurally defined as the exaltation of signs based on the denial

of the reality of things (Baudrillard, 1970: 148). In a consumer society, where

needs no longer serve as the defining structural axiomatic, the code is

substituted for all other would-be referents. In a telling paragraph for anyone who

has read his later texts, Baudrillard (1970: 195) observes:

An immense process of simulation has taken place throughout all of everyday

life .... One fabricates a model by combining characteristics or elements of

the real; and, by making them act out a future event, structure or situation,

tactical conclusions can be drawn and applied to reality. It can be used as an

analytical tool under controlled scientific conditions. In mass communications,

this procedure assumes the force of reality, abolishing and volatilising the latter

in favour of that neo-reality of a model materialised by the medium itself.

As always, Baudrillard recognizes that the most important change occurs at the

structural level, and not at the quantitative level. This interest in simulation as

encroaching on society is what Baudrillard becomes renowned for in his later texts

which explore hyperreality.


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3. Destruction of symbolic exchange by the code : Harvey (1989: 287) reads

Baudrillard s For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1981) as if it

were arguing that Marx s analysis of commodity production is outdated because

capitalism is now predominantly concerned with the production of signs, images

and sign systems rather than with commodities themselves . This is not the case.

Baudrillard draws our attention to the fact that the logic of the commodity and of

political economy is at the very heart of the sign while the structure of the sign

is at the very heart of the commodity form (Baudrillard, 1981: 146). The key

chapter is For a General Theory , where the logic of the commodity-sign form is

unfolded. It is this which structures Baudrillard s oeuvre as a double spiralling(and not as an epistemological breaking ) of the semiotic (code) and the

symbolic. The chapter opens by proposing four logics:

the functional logic of use-value (UV)

the economic logic of exchange-value (EcEV)

the differential logic of sign-value (SgEV)

the logic of symbolic exchange (SbE)

These have the respective principles of: utility(satisfaction of needs); equivalence;

difference (distinction); and ambivalence. From these Baudrillard proposes a

general anthropology of values based on the permutation and transformation of

these forms. There are 12 moments:

(1) UV - EcEV (4) EcEV - UV (7) SgEV - UV (10) SbE - UV

(2) UV - SgEV (5) EcEV - SgEV (8) SgEV - EcEV (11) SbE - EcEV

(3) UV - SbE (6) EcEV - SbE (9) SgEV - SbE (12) SbE - SgEV

This structural schema is an extension of Marx s logic. Moments (1), where

exchange-value is produced, and (4), where exchange-value is turned into use-


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value during consumption, are two moments in the classical Marxist cycle of

political economy. However, to this Baudrillard adds his theory of the political

economy of the sign. In moments (2) and (5) the commodity gains sign-value, and

we have the ascension of the commodity form into the sign form, the

transfiguration of the economic into sign systems and the transmutation of

economic power into domination and social caste privilege (Baudrillard, 1981:

124). In short, moments (2) and (5) are the transfiguration of use-value and

exchange-value into sign-value (the transformation of the object/commodity-form

into the sign-form), which, as models of social distinction and cultural

capital , may be converted back into use-value, moment (7), and exchange-value,moment (8).

Outlined above are Baudrillard s code(s) of value (use-value, exchange-value,

sign-value) which constitute the political economy of the sign. This is one side of

the double spiral . Moments (3), (6), and (9) mark the transgression of the sign-

form towards symbolic exchange via the destruction of use-value, exchange-value,

and sign-value, respectively. This does not produce a sign-value (as in moments

(2) and (5)) but a transgression of the field of value as such towards symbolic

exchange in the manner of the gift or festival. By contrast, moments (10), (11), and

(12) chart the process of breaking and reducing symbolic exchange, and the

reintroduction of economic and semiotic calculation:

the objects involved in reciprocal exchange, whose uninterrupted circulation

establishes social relationships, i.e., social meaning, annihilate themselves in

this continual exchange without assuming any value of their own (that is any

appropriable value). Once symbolic exchange is broken, this same material is

abstracted into utility value, commercial value, statutory value. The symbolic is

transformed into the instrumental, either commodity or sign. Any one of the

various codes may be specifically involved, but they are all joined in the single


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form of political economy which is opposed, as a whole, to symbolic

exchange (Baudrillard, 1981: 125).

Such is the erosion of the symbolic by the semiotic which defines and structures

all of Baudrillard s oeuvre. It is very important to realize that symbolic value

does not exist. For Baudrillard, symbolic exchange is outside of the field of value,

since value as such belongs to political economy and the code . Only the

radical rupture of the field of value can inaugurate symbolic exchange. To

summarize, consider the following equation:

EcEV = Sr / SbE

UV Sd

where the vertical implication is that exchange-value is to use-value as signifier

(Sr) is to signified (Sd), while the horizontal implication is that exchange-value is to

signifier as use-value is to signified. This is the homologous relation of the

commodity-sign form which describes general political economy. The bar (/) shows

that the ambivalent logic of symbolic exchange is excluded from the whole field of

value. Therein lies its revolutionary potential.

Overall, then, the double spiral is how Baudrillard reconstructs the shape of his

oeuvre in 1987 (Baudrillard, 1988b). Given that this structure appeared back in

1972 (Baudrillard, 1981), long before the so-called epistemological break , you

will understand why my overall reading of Baudrillard is asynchronic.

The other, by another1

If I am not mistaken, you were not disinclined to me and you would have

liked to like some piece of my work. That never happened; but this time you


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turn the pages and read approvingly a verse here and there perhaps

because you have recognized your own voice in it, perhaps because deficient

practice concerns you less than solid theory. Borges (1991: 21)

Reading Baudrillard in the way outlined above is my prolegomenon to future

explorations into the space between Marxism, postmodernism, and

poststructuralism. When one looks at the detail one sees that conceptual blocks

are not separate blocks at all. We must be innovative and flexible if we are to

develop fresh insights and move on from the current impasse in contemporary

geographical thought between Marxists, postmodernists, and poststructuralists.

In my reading a crime was committed for the purpose of clarity: Baudrillard was

framed. I heaved far away and abandoned the spiral of symbolic exchange to

visibly and honestly force a spiral that is always already related to the other spiral

apart. Ignoring symbolic exchange brings into focus the code as an interesting and

truly remarkable post-Marxist description (here base does not determine

superstructure in some teleological dialectic) of both the commodity-form (which

becomes the commodity-sign) and ideology (of which, through this reading,

hyperreality is a remarkable description) in late-capitalism. This paves the way for

other discoveries, such as a general theory of the reproduction of space. Now

read Baudrillard s books from right to left.

FLASH

Quickly, you find an angle from which it looks like an exact fit and take a

snapshot; at a fast shutter speed before something else bulges out too

noticeably. Then, back to the darkroom to touch up the rents, rips, and tears in

the fabric of the perimeter. All that remains is to publish the photograph as a


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representation of exactly how things are, and to note how nothing fits properly

into any other shape (Nozick, 1974: xiii).

Endnote

1 Baudrillard s L Autre par lui-mme (1987), which Semiotext(e) published as

The Ecstasy of Communication (1988b), can be translated as The other, by

himself .

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richard smith_exploring post-marxist theory - a reading of jean baudrillard

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