[FRA:] Zizek & Koenigsberg on The Matrix, Human Batteries & the Symbolic Order

[James Rovira]

Neh, my language was vague.  In the past there were originals behind
the copies; in the present, there are no originals behind the copies
-- we just have copies with no originals.  At one point in his
argument he does seem to suggest the existence of copies from lost
originals, but he goes beyond this to suggest the existence of copies
with no originals.  I think that's his point in his discussion of
Disney.  There never was an America like that -- yes, history itself
is a simulacrum.

I'm not sure what his point is beyond an assertion for the need
for/efficacy of nihilism, but I don't think this goes beyond ironic
gestures.  At some point you have to posit something positive.

Jim R

On Jan 15, 2008 7:50 PM, Michael Rogers <m.rogers at cs.ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
> James Rovira wrote:
> > Baudrillard's point in SS is that there is no longer an original.
>
> "No longer" implies, however, that an original existed in the past -
> Baudrillard's precession of the simulacra contrasts an authentic past
> with the inauthentic present.
>
> A more interesting (and hardly radical) position would be that history
> itself is a simulacrum, so there is no simple authentic past against
> which to compare the present.
>
> Cheers,
> Michael