In Baudrillard’s book Simulacra and Simulation… he talks extensively on this.
About how icons are now the reality… like copies with no original.
He talks about a map which is perfectly drawn to scale… and how reality is rotting around the map, holding on to it.
What do you guys think about his points?
I think he is most definately correct…
We take these things for granted, but religious icons are becoming cause for warfare and such.
religious icons are not causes, they are excuses…
man wants to control, to conquer… what is the easiest way to accomplish that? being a general? no… by being a priest…
-Imp
This is not new. Culture hands us religion and other conventions not because they are true and have reasoning behind them, but to keep us in line.
The Romans had engaged with icons a lot. There are religious icons, and family icons occupying a prominent position in their homes.
Source, from what you say, iI think it points out the importance of re-encountering the original the icons were meant to stand for – we are like the wife waiting for her husband to come home from the war, with only pictures to remind us. We must hope on the letters, as we long for the encounter.
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The source, he also states that the world of european culture is a portrayal of the simulacra. He uses the example of anthropologists, who after having discovered an untouched, and uninfluenced culture of indians in the jungle of the phillipines decided to “put them back” or rather, to leave them as they were… They went against their scientific impulse to “study” these people, because to study would be to destroy. They were the original, the natural, in Buadrillard’s eyes. He also uses the example of egyptology. By seeking out the artifacts of an ancient past one takes them out of the tomb, and destroys their original purpose. So you destroy exactly that portion which is the most interesting, the part you are trying to study, namely the motives, and the reasons the egyptians put them there in the first place. A mummy sitting behind glass in a climate controlled space at your local museum, serves no purpose, and is somewhat a mockery of the solemn respect which caused them to be created in the first place.
In a case of an icon of Christ on the cross, where is the true spirit of Christ? It is intangible, unseen. It can not possibly be represented by the image, for it is a concept or idea without any visible representation. The only value that it has is to remind one of the original, but then it’s up for debate if one can apprehend the original at all.
an excerpt from the book which sets out the 4 types of simulacra:
These would be the successive phases of the image:
1 It is the reflection of a basic reality
2 It masks and perverts a basic reality
3 It masks the absence of a basic reality
4 It bears no relation to any reality whatever: It is it’s own pure simulacrum
Concordant,
But these artifacts serve a different purpose today then they did for the Egyptians 2,000 years ago. The Egyptians represented these objects with certain meanings, ideas, concepts, and today we are representing these artifacts not with the ideas the Egyptians held but with our own ideas about the Egyptians–they are now serving a different purpose, not no purpose as you stated.
So it is not justified that they don’t represent a certain reality–they do, just a different one. After all, all objects–all material–serves as a representation of some idea–all are meaningless unto themselves, wouldn’t you agree?
hey concordant! just a quick edit to what you suggest. I dont thik he is saying that the tasaday were the original., I think he’s making the point that they are the symbol of the original. They represent the natural and ‘authentic’ culture which anthropology now pits itself against: i.e. the idea that there are undiscovered pure natural objects to be discovered and observed. hence why he says:
If you’ll note the caves at lascaux which he then refers too, follows a very similar pattern where the existence of the symbol and the existence of the real collide in such a ways as to no longer herald any distinction between the two.
Mohammad achieved control and power the fastest by combining the two in one… holy man and warlord at the same time.
as did most all the popes from Urban II to Leo X… and maybe a few thereafter…
-Imp
the only non-simulated stuff we can rely on is our body, maybe the “fleshness” of the body is the only real thing that keeps the mind unpuzzled by simulacra, models.
I am puzzled sometimes and wish I lived at least in the Dark Ages,
the masses become more mass-like and individiualism disappears, and human mind won’t bear long to be immersed deeper and deeper into non-reality of the reality. I think our bodily mind will defend itself soon, by way of some mechanism, against having no source of reference to reality, against no culture, no original arts, artifacts.
The Underground Man, you are correct, and I realized the truth of what you have said even in my last post in this thread. What I was trying to point out is shown in the excerpt ippolite provided where it says “science never sacrifices itself: it is always murderous.” Egyptology serves it’s purpose: it destroys the solemnity of the ritual (a ritual that is dead any way), and unearths in the furtherance of a curiousity that is directed towards the apprehension of a knowledge of the ritual, with the hope of rediscovering the lost meaning behind it, and in doing so preserving it which in the sense of Baudrillard’s meaning, is the best that can be hoped for, because it is already dead. (that’s at least my understanding and I am aware that I could be missing something here.)
I made my last post quickly, and was hoping someone would point out the errors I had made in the hope of advancing the topic here. I should choose my words more carefully I guess, and in the absence of knowledge, I should gain it before speaking about the thing.
As for the question at the end of your 2nd paragraph, I do agree. If the artifacts are left in the anonymity of the tomb, unknown to modern science, they are meaningless, because they have been lost historically. They are no longer present anywhere. No representation=no meaning.
Imagine all the literature that was lost through the ages, of writers’ that are only known because 10% of their total life’s work still exist’s. To us, it is as if they did not write those pieces at all.
ippolite, thank you for pointing that out. I was fairly certain I was making a mistake by writing original, but left it in thinking someone might correct me. The clarification is appreciated.