Cultural Criticism Passages

Question 1

Weapon of Power

Answer 1

(Jean Baudrillard “Simulacra and Simulation” p. 12)

The only weapon of power, its only strategy against this defection, is to reinject realness and referentiality everywhere, in order to convince us of the reality of the social, of the gravity of the economy and the finalities of production. For that purpose it prefers the discourse of crisis, but also the discourse of desire. “Take your desires for reality!” can be understood as the ultimate slogan of power, for in a nonreferential world even the confusion of the reality principle with the desire principle is less dangerous than contagious hyperreality. One remains among principles, and there power is always right.

Question 2

Scenario of Power

Answer 2

(Jean Baudrillard “Simulacra and Simulation” p. 16)

It is no longer a question of the ideology of work – of the traditional ethic that obscures the “real” labour process and the “objective” process of exploitation – but of the scenario of work. Likewise, it is no longer a question of the ideology of power, but of the scenario of power. Ideology only corresponds to a betrayal of realty by signs; simulation corresponds to a short-circuit of reality and to its reduplication by signs. It is always the aim of ideological analysis to restore the objective process; it is always a false problem to want to restore the truth beneath the simulacrum.