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Escape from the Technical Implosion of Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

John Murphy
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Extract

Many contemporary writers are claiming that society is becoming rapidly deanimated. However, this idea is not entirely new. During the past century, the same observation has been made by critics as disparate as Durkheim and Marx. In general, they pointed out that as an outgrowth of industrialization, social relationships were beginning to deteriorate. In point of fact, complaints about social fragmentation and the emergence of bureaucracies were commonplace. Simply put, citizens were beginning to feel powerless and overwhelmed by their institutions. Recently, Baudrillard referred to this sentiment as indicative of the “Golden Age of Alienation.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 41 , Issue 162 , June 1993 , pp. 25 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. Jean Baudrillard, "The Vanishing Point of Communication." Lecture given at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, 19 March 1991, p. 12.

2. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society. New York: Random House, 1964, p. 127.

3. Jean Baudrillard, "The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Medial." In Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988, p. 210.

4. Baudrillard, Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.

5. Baudrillard, "The Vanishing Point of Technology."

6. Margaret Boden, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man. New York: Basic Books, 1977, pp. 15-17.

7. J. David Bolter, Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984, pp. 83-90.

8. Baudrillard, "Symbolic Exchange and Death." In Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, p. 143.

9. Ibid., p. 142.

10. Baudrillard, "The Vanishing Point of Communication," p. 13.

11. Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication. New York: Semiotext(e), 1988, p. 17.

12. Ibid., p. 12.

13. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction and Education. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977.

14. Baudrillard, Simulations, pp. 56-57.

15. Baudrillard, "Symbolic Exchange and Death," p. 122.

16. Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1981, pp. 172-177.

17. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Differend. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988, p. 51.

18. Ibid., pp. 150-157.

19. Ibid., pp. 145-148.

20. Theodor Adorno, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

21. Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, pp. 176-177.

22. Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication, pp. 18-19.

23. Frederick J. Newmeyer, The Politics of Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

24. Ibid., pp. 31-62.

25. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968, pp. 153-155.

26. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. 9-11.

27. Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, p. 67.

28. Terry Winograd, "Computer Software for Working with Language," Scientific American 251(3), 1984, pp. 131-145.

29. Walter Benjamin, Reflections. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978, p. 320.

30. Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology." In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper and Row, 1977, p. 4.

31. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge, 1989, pp. 31-39.

32. Bell Hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990, pp. 145-153.

33. Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution. London: Penguin Books, 1984, p. 168.

34. Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History." In Illuminations. New York: Schocken, 1969, p. 262.

35. Douglas Kellner, Jean Baudrillard. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989, pp. 153-185.

36. Ibid., p. 156.

37. Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication, p. 101.

38. Claude Lefort, The Political Forms of Modern Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986, pp. 181-236.

39. Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," p. 28.