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THE EVIL DEMON OF IMAGES

Jean Baudrillard

The First Mari Kuttna Memorial Lecture

1984

THE EVIL DEMON OF IMAGES

Jean Baudrillard

Dedicated to the Memory of

Mari Kuttna

1934- 1983

Power Institute Publications no. 3

Published by

The Power Institute of Fine Arts

Design

Russell Barker

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Maxwell Printing 862 Elizabeth Street Waterloo 2017

ISSN 0818-6812 ISBN 0-909952-07-8

The [naugur·a I.ion of t.hc Mari Kuttna Memorial Lecture on Film 25 .July I 98·t

Biographical Note	l
Prefce by ProfessorVirginia Spate,
Power Institute ofFine Arts,
University of Sydney	3
Dedication by Sir Hermann Black,
Chancellor of the University of Sydney	5
Remembrance by David Stratton,
Former Director of
The Sydney Film Festival	7

THE EVIL DEMON OF IMAGES
Introduction by Alan Cholodenko, Lecturer in
Film Studies, Power Institute of Fine Arts	11
Jean Baudrillard,The Evil Demon of Images	13
Translators: Paul Patton and Paul Foss
An Interview with Jean Baudrillard	35
Interviewers: Ted Colless, David Kelly and
Alan Cholodenko
Translator: Philippe Tanguy
Acknowledgements	53

THE INAUGURATION OF THE MARI KUTTNA MEMORIAL LECTURE ON FILM

25 July 1984

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Mari Kuttna was born near Budapest in 1934 and, after the death of he r father during the war, came to Australia with her mother in 194 7. She was educated at Sydney Gi rls High School and in her final examinations achieved the highest results in New South Wales for Histo ry and Engli sh -- although this was not her native language . In 1956 she graduated from the University of Sydney with First Class Honours in English and a University Medal, as well as a schola rship to the University of Oxford. In 1960 she married Michael Winton in England, where she was to li ve for the rest of her life.

Mari Kuttna turned from academic life to life as a film critic and translator, contributi ng reviews to Sight and So und and to Montage, as well as writing a regular column for The Lady. Much respected for her criticism, she was a member of the exclusi ve London Society of Film Critics. She was appointed juror for several film festivals and was a member of the panel of judges for the Bri ti sh Fi lm Insti tute. Mari was a l so a programme director for the O xfo rd Film Festival and, in 1982, fo r the Melbourne Fi lm Festi val.

In the mi dst of her p reparati ons for the Melbourne Film Fest ival , Mari Kutt na became ill with cancer. Co urageously she continued to work for the Festi val and to write her film

Biographical Note

criticism until her tragically premature death on 27 March 1983.

In 1984 Mari Kuttna's mother, Madame Barbara Gre, made a gift of $30,000 to the University of Sydney in memory of her daughter. The funds were to su pport teaching and research in film studies and thus to continue the work to which Mari K uttna had dedicated herself.

PREFJ\CI•:

On 25 July 1984 Professor Jean Baudrillard, of the University of Paris-Nanterre, gave the first Mari Kuttna Memorial Lecture.

The Memorial Lectures were set up as a result of Madame Barbara Gre's generous gift to the Universi ty of Sydn e y ; t h e y w i l l e n a b l e distinguished fi lmmakers and fi lm critics, theorists and historians, both from Australia and overseas, to contribute to our understanding of the cinema.

Professor Baudrillard's lecture, The Evil Demon of Images, was given to a large and enthusiastic audience which included Madame Gre, the Chancellor, Sir Hermann Black, and the Vice Chancellor, Professor John Ward; as well many friends came to pay their respects to Mari Kuttna and to her work, and, perhaps most significant of all, many young people who share Mari Kuttna's love of film.

The Memorial Lecture was preceded by a tribute given by the Chance llor and by a personal appreciation0) The Sydney Film Festival. Edited versions of by David Stratton, former Director the i r presentations are inc luded i n t h i s publication.

As Director of the Power Institute of Fine Arts - in which the Kuttna Bequest is located -- I acknowledged the far-sighted gene rosi ty of

Prefare

Mada me Gre in encouragi ng stude n ts and scho l a rs to develop an understa nding of this most significant aspect of contemporary cu lture. I pledged the Instit ute to cont i n ue the work of Mari Ku ttna. Death cut short her own work , but h e r mother's generosity will en sure t he continuance of the ideals to which she de voted her life.

Professor Virgi nia Spate Power Insti tute of Fine Arts University of Sydney

DEDICATION

I have to thank a mother for a most generous bequest to this Universi ty i n memory of a brilliant daughter who, alas, will come no more. It is an heroic generosity, made in the midst of her own private sorrow at the loss of a daughter in the bloom of her youth and in all the promise of a brilliant mind.

What is it that Madame Gre has done? In March this year, she made a gift to the University which will be used to develop that in which her daughter was so skilled: the engendering of the love and understanding of film. This happens to I can be the first public occasion on which you and thank Madame Gre for what she has done. She has created a perpe tual rememb rance by encouraging students of this University to develop their understanding of that art to which her daughter was dedicated, the art of film. As a result, students who, in the passage of time, will come to the Power Institute, will have their lives enriched and their skills and contributions in the area of film criticism enhanced and improved.

This gift has come as a consequence of a mother thinking of how an irreparable loss could be turned into some kind of human gain. That is what Madame Gre has done. She has given immortality to her daughter whose remembrance will be in all the generations of students who benefit from her bequest.

Dedication

It is fitting that I, as Chancellor. should say that the UnivNsity is immensely grateful to Madame Gre. It is appropriate that I shou Id speak on behalf of those future generations who will be benefieiaries of that gift. The University is grateful; the onco m ing generations will be grateful; and -- if I may spea k to Madame Gre personally -- may your mind be at ease. The University will ensure that your daughter will al ways be remembered.

Sir Hermann Black Chancellor of the University of Sydney

REMEMBHJ\NCE

I have been asked to say a few words about Mari Kuttna because she was a friend of mine. I first knew her when she was already established in London as a film critic and as a popular and much - admired member of what is a very closed circle the London Society of Film Critics.

Mari loved the cinema passionately. That love for cinema was manifested in the generosity of her criticism -- she would find warm things to say about gravely faulted films if she knew that they were sincere and well-meant. In diligent pursuit of her passion for film, Mari engaged in what was for a critic unusually extensive travel to festivals and film events in order to refine her knowledge of her art. Probably her favourite annual film event was the week of Hungarian films in Budapest, the city of Mari's birth. There she found that special pleasure of hearing films in her own first language and in meeting and speaking with Hungarian filmmakers. I fancy that she took a certain mischievous delight in disclosing to other foreign guests at the event what was really going on behind the scenes -- all the things that the officials did not tell us but to which Mari had access through personal contacts.

Around 1980 Mari's enthusiasm for film led her to the role of film programmer for the Oxford Film Festival, a job which she performed in the exemplary manner so characteristic of her. Then, late in 1982, Mari was appointed Programme

Remembrance

Director of the Melbourne Fi Im Festival , an appointment which delighted me as it meant that, sinee I was still then Director of the Sydney Film Festival, we would be collaborating closely. Mari and I met in Budapest in February 1983 to begin the process, but I could see that she was not well. I did not realise at the time how ill she was (Mari did not reveal this to peop le), hut one day I was sitting next to her on the bus while she pointed out all the places she had been to as a child. I think she probably knew she was not going to see Budapest again. Later, another meeting was arranged in London, but Mari was too ill to travel so we discussed the programmin g by telephone. This was the last time I spoke with her.

In 1983 the Melbourne Film Festival dedicated its programme to Mari . I n Buda pest this February, the leading Hun ga rian documentary director Pal Schiffer delivered an intensely moving tribute to Mari at the General Press Conference during the film event. He called Mari ''a friend of Hungarian film." I would say more: Mari was a friend of film and of filmmaking. She was also a friend of Sydney University -- she loved the years she spent here. Madame Gre, I am sure that if Mari could know what is happening here this evening, she would be overjoyed. That her memory will be preserved and fostered through this bequest is, I believe, a most appropriate and wonderful legacy for her.

David Stratton

Former Director of The Sydney Film Festival

THE EVIL DEMON OF IMAGES

INTRO I >l JCTION

The Mari Kuttna Lecture on Film will present to the Australian publ i c those filmmak e rs and theoreticians of film whose work is the most exciting, innovative and challenging in the world today. Thus, it was most appropriate that Professor Jean Baudri llard be selected as the Inaugural Mari Kuttna Lecturer. In numerous works, including For a Critique of the Political Econo my of the Sign, Si mu lations and In the Shadow of the Sile n t Majori ties, Professo r Baudrillard has established himself as one of the world's pre-eminent theorists of the media. His writings on the image , on film specifically and the media in general, have raised the most profound and provocative questions for all those who speculate upon contemporary culture . Baudrillard theorizes the catastrophization of the modern -- the extinction of all referentiality, whether political, sexual, religious, philosophical or other, and the implosion of the discur sive p o l arities ( s u bj e c t/o bj ect, p r i v a te/p u b l i c , imaginary/rea l , etc . ) here tofore s u staining -- meaning in the advent of the mass media, which h ave insta lled a new re a l i ty : the hyperreal. For Baudrillard reality has been swallowed up in a 'black hole'. Simulation is the modus oper andi of the hyperreal with models preceding and anticipating the 'real', volatilizing it and turning it into a 'special effect'. The media, television especial l y, have short-circuited m e a ni n g , the re by ge n e rati n g a state of

Introduction

indeterminacy. Baudrillard argut•s that ours is a world of p u re operationality, one for which the genetic and computer codes offer a perfect model. These and other of his ideas, to say nothing of his seductive writing style and nihilist st:i nee, have found strong reception here in Australia, where such leading journals as Art and Text. On the Beach. Tension and Local Consumptwn have published major works by him and where, at FUTUR*FALL: Excursions into Post-Modernity (Sydney, 26-29 July 1984 ) , it was clear ly evidenced that his ideas have entered into the common currency of cultural debate about the post-modern.

Alan Cholodenko Lecturer in Film Studies Power Institute of Fine Arts

THE EVIL DEMON OF IMAGES

Jean Baudrillard

A propos the cinema and images in general (media images, technologi cal images), I would like to conjure up the perversity of the relation between the image and its referent, the supposed real; the virtual and irreversible confusion of the sphere of images and the sphere of a reality whose nature we are less and less able to grasp. There are many modalities of this absorption, thi s confusion, this diabolical seduction of images. Above all, it is the reference principle of images which must be doubted, this strategy by means of which they always appear to refer to a real world, to real objects, and to reproduce something which is logically and chronologically anterior to themselves. None of this is true . As simulacra, images precede the real to the extent that they invert the causal and logical order of the real and its reproduction . Benj amin , in his essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', already pointed out strongly this modern revolution in the order of production (of reality, of meaning) by the precessi o n, the anticipation of its reproduction.

It is precisely when it appears most truthful, most faithful and most in conformity to reality that the image is most diabolical -- and our technical images, whether they be from photography, cinema or television, are in the overwhelmi ng majority much more 'figurative', 'realist', than all the images from past cultures.

The l v1/ /)l'mon of Images

It is in i ts resemblance, not only :111:1logical but technological, that the image is most immoral and most perverse.

The appearance of the mirror already introduced into the world of perception an ironical effect of trompe-I 'oeil. and we know what rn:ilefice was attached to the appearance of doubles. But this is also true of all the images which surround us: in general, they are analysed according· to their value as representations, as media of presence and meaning. The immense majori ty of present day photographic, cinematic and television images are thought to bear witness to the world with a naive resemblance and a touching fidelity. We have spontaneous confidence in thei r realism. We are wrong. They only seem to resemble things, to resemble reality, events, faces. Or rather, they re ally do con fo r m , b u t the i r conformity itself is diabolical.

We can find a sociological, historical and political equivalent to this diabolical conformity, to this evil demon of con formity , i n the modern behaviour of the masses who are also very good at complying with the models offered to them, who are very good at reflecting the objectives imposed on them, thereby absorbing and annihilating them. There is in this conformity a force of seduction in the literal sense of the word, a force of diversion, distortion, capture and ironic fascination. There is a kind of fatal strategy of conformity.

A recent example may be found in Woody Allen's film, Zelig: in trying to be oneself, to cultivate diffe rence and ori g i n ali ty , o n e e n d s u p resembling everyone and no longer seducing anyone . This is the logic of present day psychological conformity. Zelig, on the other

The Evil Demon of Images

hand, is launched on an adv(•nture of total seduction, in an involuntary strategy of gl o b al seduction: he be gin s to n·s('mble everything which approaches him. t'VPrythin g which surrounds him. Nor is this tlw mimetic violence of defiance or parody, it is the mimetic non violence of seduction. To h('g-i n to resemble the other, to take on their appt•arance, is to seduce them, since it is to make them enter the realm of metamorphosis despite tht·rnselvcs.

This seductive force , this fatal strate gy, is a kind of animal genie or talent - not simply that of the chameleon, which is on ly its anecdotal form. It is not the conformism of anima ls which delights us; on the contrary, animals are never conformist, they are seductive, they al ways appear to result from a metamorphosis. Preeisely because they are not individuals, they pose the enigma of their resemblance . If an a n i ma I knows how to conform, it is not to its o wn being, its own i n d i v i d u al ity (ba nal st rategy), b u t to appearances in the world. This is what Ze lig does too with his animal genie -- he is polymorphous (but not perverse); he is incapable of functional adaptation to conte xts, which is true conformism, our conformism, but able to seduce by the play of resemblance. Savages do no less when they put on the successive masks of their gods, when they 'become' their successive divinities -- this is also to seduce them. It is of co urse against this strategy of seduction that psychiatry struggles, and i t i s what gives rise to the magi c a l infatuation of the �rowds for Zelig (in German, Selig means 'blessed').

The remarkable thing about this film is that it leads astray all possible interpretations. There is thus also a seduction of interpretation, with the complicity of certain intellectuals, as well as a

The f vii Demon of Images

polymo r phous montage techniqtw which allows it to iro n i cally adapt to all possibilili (•s .

More generally, the image is interesting not only in its role as reflection, mirror, representation of, or counterpart to, the real, but also when it begins to contaminate reality and to model it, when it only conforms to reality the better to distort it, or better still: when it appropriates reality for its own ends, when it anticipates it to the point that the real no longer has ti me to be produced as such.

It is not only dai ly life w h i c h ha s become cinematographic and televisual, but war as well. It has been said that war is the conti n uation of politics by other means; we can also say that images, media images, are the continuation of war by other means. Take Apocalypse Now. Coppola made his fi lm the same way the Americans conducted the war -- in this sense , it is the best possible testimony -- with the same exaggeration, the same excessive means, the same monstrous candour ... and the same success. War as a trip , a technological and psychedelic fantasy; war as a succession of special effects, the war become film well before it was shot; war replaced by technological testing . For the Americans, it was above all the latter: a test site, an enormous field on which to test their weapons, their methods, their power.

Coppola does the same thing: he tests the power of intervention of cinema, tests the impact of cinema become a vast machine of special effects. In thi s sense h i s film i s very much the prolongation of war by other means, the completion of that incomplete war, its apotheosis. War becomes film, film becomes war, the two united by their mutual overflow of technology.

The Evil Demon of Images

The real war was cond ud( 'd hy C oppola in the manner of Westmoreland. Leaving aside the clever irony of napa lmi n g Philippino forests and villages to recreate the hl·ll of South Vietnam, everything is replayed, begun again th rough cinema: the Mol ochian joy of th e shoot, the sacrificial joy of so many mi II ions spent, of such a holocaust of means, of so many difficulties, and the dazzling paranoia in the m ind of the creator who, from the beginnin g , conceived this film as a world historical event for which the Vietnam war would have been no more than a pretext, would ultimately not have existed -- and we cannot deny it: 'in itself the Vietnam war never happened , perhaps it was only a dream, a baroque dream of napalm and the tropics , a psycho-tropic dream in which the issue was not politics or victory but the sacrificial, excessive deployment of a power already filming itself as it unfolds, perhaps expecting nothing more than consecration by a superfilm, which perfects the war's function as a mass spectacle.

No real distance, no critical direction, no desire for any 'raised consciousness' in relation to the war: in a sense this is the brutal quality of the film, not to be undermined by any anti-war moral psychology . Coppola may very well dress up his helicopter captain in a cavalry hat and have him wipe out a Vietnamese village to the sound of Wagner -- these are not critical, distant signs; they are immersed in the machinery , part of the special effect. Coppola makes films in the same manner, with the same nostalgic megalomania, with the same non -signifying fury, the same magnified Punch and Judy effect. One can ask, how is such a horror possible (not the war, properly speaking, but that of the fi lm)? But there is no response, no possible judgement. The

The Evil Demon of Images

Vietnam war and the film arc <'lit f'rnm the same cloth, nothing separates them: this film is part of the war. If the Americans (apparently) lost the othe r , they have ce rtainly won this one . Apocalypse Now is a gl obal victory. It has a cinematographic power equal and superior to that of the mi litary and industrial complexes, of the Pentagon and governmen ts. Nothing is understood in relation to war or cinema (at least the latte r ) u n l ess o n e has grasped th i s i n d i sti n gu i shabi li ty -- which is n o t t h e ideological or moral indistinguishability o f good and evi l , but that of the re ve rsib i l i ty of destruction and production, of the immanence of something in its very revolution, of the organic metabolism of every techn o l o gy , from carpet bombing to film stock ...

As for the anticipation of reality by i mages, the precession of images and media i n relation to events, such that the connection between cause and effect becomes scrambled and it becomes impossible to tell which is the effect of the other - what better example than the nuclear accident at Harrisburg, a 'real' incident which happened just after the release of The China Syndrome? This film is a fine example of the supremacy of the televised event over the nuclear event which �tsel� remains improbable and in some sense imaginary.

Moreover, the film unintentionally shows this: it is the intrusion of TV into the reactor which as it were triggers the nuclear incident -- because it is the anticipation and model of it in the day to day world: telefission of the real and of the real world -- because TV[a] nd information in general are a kind of catastrophe in Rene Thom's formal, topological sense: a radical, qualitative change in an entire system. Or rather, TV and nuclear

The Evil Demon of Images

power are of the same kind: hd1 ind the 'hot' and negentropic concepts of erwq�y :1 nd information, they have the same dissuasi vt· force as cold systems. TV is also a nudear, chain-reactive process, but implosive: it cools and neutral i ses the meaning and energy of 1·vpnts. Thus, behind the presumed risk of explosion, that is, of hot catastrophe, the nuclear cont·P:ds a long, cold catastrophe -- the univers:disation of a system of dissuasion, of deterrence.

The homology between n udear power and television can be read di redly in the images. Nothing resembles the command and control centre of the reactor more than the TV studios, and the nuclear con soles share th e same imaginary as the recording and broadcasting studios. Everything happens between these two poles: the other core, that of the re actor, in principal the real core of the affair, rem ains concealed from us, like the real; buried and indecipherable, ultimately of no importance. The drama is acted out on the screens and nowhere else.

Harrisburg, Watergate and Network form the trilogy of The China Syndrome -- an inextricable trilogy in which we cannot tell which is the effect or the symptom of the others: is the ideological argument (the Watergate effect) o n ly the symptom of the nuclear (the Harrisburg effect) or the informational model (the Network effect)? - - is the real (Harrisburg) only the symptom ·Of the imaginary (Network, The China Syndrome) or vice versa? Marvellous indistinguishability, ideal constellation of simulation.

The conjunction of The China Syndrome and Harrisburg haunts us. But is it so involuntary? Without examining any magical links between

The I vii D1•rnon of Images

simulacrum and reali ty, it is c·l«':tr that The China Svndrome is not unrelat1·cl to the 'real' accident["] at Harrisburg, not by a causal logic but by those relations of contagion and unspoken analogy which link the rea I. models and simulacra: the induction of the nu .. It�ar incident at Har ri sburg by the film corresponds, with disquieting obviousness, to the induction of the incident by TV in the film. A strange precession of a film before the real, the most a stoni shi ng we have seen: reality corresponding point by point to the simulacra, even down to the suspensive, incomplete character of the ca ta strophe, which is essential from the point of view of dissuasion: the real so arranged itself, in the image of the film, as to produce a simulation of catastro phe .

It is only a further step, which we should briskly take, to reverse our logi ca l order and see The China Syndrome as the re a l event a n d Harrisburg its simulacrum . For it i s by the same logic that the nuclear reality in the film follows from the television effect and Harrisburg in 'reality' follows from the cinema effect of The China Syndrome.

But the latter is not the original prototype of Harrisburg; one is not the simulacrum and the other the reality: there are only simulacra, and Harrisburg is a kind of simulation in the second degree. There is indeed a chain reaction; but it is not the nuclear chain reaction but that of the simulacra and of the simulation in which all the energy of the real is effectively engulfed, not in a spectacular nuclear explosion but in a secret and continuous implosion, which is perhaps taking a more deadly turn than all the explosions which presently lull us.

2 7

The Evil Demon of Images

For an exp losion is always a promise, it is our hope: see how much, in llw film as well as at Harrisburg, everyone cxp(•ds it to go up, that destruction speak its nanw and deliver us from this unnameable panil', from thi s invisible nuclear panic of dissuasion. Let the 'core' of the reactor expose at last its glowing power of destruction, let it re assure us as to the admittedly catastrophic presence of energy and gratify us with its spectacle. For the problem is that there is no nuclear spectacle, no spectacle of nuclear energy in itself (Hiroshima is past): it is for this reason that it is rejected -- it would be perfectly accepted if it lent itself to spectacle like earlier forms of energy. Parousia of catastrophe: substantial boost to our messianic libido.

But that will never recur. What wi ll happen will never be explosion but implosion. Never again will we see energy in its spectac ular and pathetic form -- all the romanticism of explosion which had so much charm, since it was also that of revolution -- but only the cold e n ergy o f simulacra and its distillation i n homeopathic doses into the cold systems of information.

What else does the media dream of if not raising up events by its very presence? Everyone deplores it, but everyone is secretly fascinated by this eventuality. Such is the logic of simulacra: no longer divine predesti n ati o n , but the precession of models, which is no less inexorable. And it is for this reason that events no longer have any me aning: n o t because they are insignificant in themselves, but because they have been preceded by models with which their own process can only coincide.

For some time now, in the dialectical relation between reality and images (that is, the relation

f 111· I vii Demon of Images

that we wish to believe dial1•1'1.ic·:d. rea dable from the real to the image and vin· v1·rsa), the image has taken over and imposed ils own immanent, ep he m e ra l logic; an immoral lo i' without de pth, beyond g-ood and evil, beyond truth and fa lsity ; a logic of' the extermination of its own referent, a logic of' the implosion of meaning- in which the message disappe ars on the horizon of the medium. In this regard, we all remai n incredibly naive : we always look for a good usage of the image , that is to say a moral , meani ngfu l , pedagogic o r informational usage, without seeing that the image in a sense revolts aga inst this good usage, that it is the condudor n either of meaning nor good intentions, but on the contrary of an implosion, a dene gati on of meaning (of events, history, memory, etc.). I am re minded of Ho loca u s t, t he te l e v i s i o n ser i e s o n th e concentration camps ...

Forgetting the extermination is part of the extermination itself. That forgetting, however, is still too dangerous and m ust be replaced by an artificial memory ( eve rywhe re , today, i t i s artificial memories which obliterate people's memories, which obliterate people from memory). This artificial memory replays the extermination -- but too late for it to profoundly unsettle anything, and above all it does so via a medium which is itself cold, radiating oblivion, dissuasion and extermination in an even more systematic manner, if this is possible, than the camps themselves. TV, the veritable final solution to the historicity of every event. The Jews are recycled not through the crematory ovens or the gas chambers but through the sound track and images, through the cathode tube and the micro chip. Forgetting, annihilation thereby achieves at last an aesthetic dimension -- nostalgia gives them their final finish.

The Evil Demon of Images

)]

Henceforth, ueveryonc knows". everyone has trembled before the exkrmi nation -- a sure sign that uit" will never happt•n again. But in effect what is thus exorcised so cheaply, at the cost of a few tears, will never recur because it is presently happening in the very form through which it is denounced, through the very medium of this supposed exorcism: television. The same process of forgetting, of liquidation, of extermination, the same annihilation of memories and of history, the same inverse, implo siv e radi ation, the same absorption without trace, the same black hole as Auschwitz. They want us to believe that TV will remove the mortgage of Auschwitz by raising collective conscio usness, whereas it is the perpetuation of it in a different guise, under the auspices not of a site of annihilation but a medium of dissuasion.

What everyone fails to understand is that Holocaust is above all (and exclusive ly) a televised event or rather object (McLuhan's fundamental rule which must not be forgotten). That is to say, it is an attempt to reheat a co[l] d historical event -- tragic but cold, the first great event of cold systems, those cooling systems of dissuasion and extermi nati on which were subsequently deployed in other forms (including the Cold War, etc.) and in relation to the cold masses (the Jews no longer even concerned by their own death, eventually self-managing it, no longer even masses in revolt: dissuaded unto death, dissuaded even of their own death). To reheat this cold eve nt via a cold medium, television, for masses who are themselves cold, who will only find in it the occasion for a tactile chill and a posthumous emotion, a dissuasive shiver, which sends them into oblivion with a kind of aesthetic good faith.

The I vtl Demon of Images

The cold light of television is i noffensive to the imagina t ion (even that of childn•n) since it no longer carries any imaginary . for the simple reason that it is no longer an ima�'"

In this sense the TV image has to he placed in opposition to the cinema, which sti II carries an intense imaginary. Although it is con taminated more and more by TV, the cinema is still an image -- that means not only a screen and a visual form but a myth, something- that belongs to the sphere of the double, the phantasm , the mirror, the dream, etc... Nothing- of that in the TV image, which doesn't suggest anything and has a magnetic effect. The TV ima ge is only a screen. More than that: a miniaturized terminal located in your head and you are the screen and the TV looks at you, goes through you like a magnetic tape -- a tape, not an image.

Thus, properly speaking it is Holocaust the television film which constitutes the definitive holocaust event. Likewise, with The Day After it is not the atomic conflict depicted in the film but the film itself which is the catastrophic event.

This film should inspire a salutary terror, it should dissuade by the spectacle of terror. However, I don't see anything as a result of this film. The slides at the New York Museum of N at u r a l H i story m o v e m e m u c h m o r e profoundly : you can shiver at the ice age and f l the charm of the prehistoric, but here I f l neither the shiver nor the charm of nuclear power, nor even suspense nor the final blinding flash.

Is it a bad film? Certainly. But isn't it rather that all this is unimaginable? Isn't it rather that,

The Evil Demon of Images

in our imaginary, nuclear r ni<'t is a total event, without appeal and with no tomorrow, wherea::; here it simply brings ahout a n·gTcssion of the human race accordi ngto llH· worst n a i ve stereotypes of savagery'? But w<· already know that state, indeed we hav1• han·ly left it. Our desire is rather for somdhing· which no longer takes place on a human sc:d1-. for some anterior or ulterior mystery: wha t wi II the earth be like when we are no longer on it? In a word, we dream of our disappearance, and of se1�ing the world in its inhuman purity (which is precisely not the state of nature).

But these limits, these extreme:; that we imagine, this catastrophe - - can it be metaphorised in images? It is not certain that its mythical evocation is possible, any more than that of our bio-molecular destiny or that of the genetic code, which is the other dimension, the corollary of the - nuclear. We can no longer be affected by it proof that we have already been irradiated! Already to our minds the catastrophe is no more than a comic strip . Its filmic projection is only a diversion from the real nuclearisation of our lives. The real nuclear catastrophe has already happened, it happens every day, and this film is part of it. It is it which is our catastrophe. It does not represent it, it does not evoke it, on the contrary it shows that it has already happened, �hat �t is already here, since it is impossible to imagine.

For all these reasons I do not believe in a pedagogy of images, nor of cinema, nor a fortiori in one of television. I do not believe in a dialectic between image and reality, nor therefore, in respect of images, in a pedagogy of message and meaning. The secret of the image (we are still speaking of contemporary, technical images)

The Evil Demon of Images

must not be sought in its rlifferentiati on from reality, and hence in its repn�sen tative value (aesth e tic, critical or dial e et i c : i l), but on the contrary in its 'telescoping' into reali ty, its short circuit wi th re ality, and finally, in the implosion of im age and re ality . For us there is an increasingly definitive lac k of d i fferentiation between image and reality wh ich no longer leaves room for representation as such.

This collusion between images and life, between the screen and daily life, ca n be experienced e v e ryday in th e most o rdina ry m a n n e r . Especially i n America, not the least charm of which is that even outside the cinemas the whole country is cinematographic. You cross the desert as if in a western; the metropolis is a continual screen of signs and formulae. Life is a travelling shot, a kinetic, ci nematic, cinematographic sweep. There is as much pleasure in this as in those Dutch or Italian towns where, upon leaving the museum, you rediscover a town in the very image of the paintings, as if it had stepped out of them. It is a kind of miracle which, even in a banal American way, gives rise to a sort of aesthetic form, to an ideal confusion which transfigures life, as in a dream. Here, cinema does not take on the exceptional form of a work of art, even a brilliant one, but invests the whole of life with a mythical ambience. Here it becomes truly exciting. This is why the idolatry of stars, the cult of Hollywood idols, is not a media pathology but a glorious form of the cinema, its mythical transfiguration, perhaps the last great myth of our modernity. Precisely to the extent that the idol no longer represents anything but reveals itself as a pure, impassioned, contagious image which effaces the difference between the real being and its assumption into the imaginary.

The Evil Demon of Images

All these considerations an· a hit wild, but that is because they correspond lo the· unrestrained film buff that I am and have always w i shed to remai n -- that is in a sense uncultured and fascinated. There is a k i nd of primal pleasure, o f anthropological joy in imag·t>s, a kind of brute fascination unencum bered by aesthetic, moral, social or political judgements. It is because of this that I suggest they are immoral, and that their fundamental power lies in this immorality.

This brute fascination for images, above and beyond all moral or social determination, is also not th at of dreami n g or the imagi n ary, understood in the traditional sense. Other images, such as those in painting, drawing, theatre or architecture, have been better able to make us dream or imagine; other modes of expression as well (undoubtedly language makes us dream better than the image). So there is something more than that which is peculiar to our modern media images: if they fascinate us so much it is not because they are sites of the production of meaning and representation -- this would not be new -- it is on the contrary because they are sites of the disappearance of meaning and representation, sites in which we are caught quite apart from any judgement of reality, thus sites of a fatal strategy of denegation of the real and of the reality principle.

We have arrived at a paradox regarding the image, our images, those which unfurl upon and i n v ad e o u r d a i l y l i fe - - i m a g e s w h o s e proliferation, it should be noted, is potentially infinite, whereas the extension of meaning is always limited precisely by its end, by its finality: from the fact that images ultimately have no finality and proceed by total contiguity, infinitely multiplyi n g themse l v e s acco rdi n g to an

The t vii Demon of Images

irresistihle epidemic process which no one today can conLrnl, our world has become Lruly infinite, or rather exponential by means of images. It is caught up in a mad pursuit of images, in an ever greater fa scin ation which is only accentuated by video and digital images. We have thus come to the paradox that these images describe the equal impossibility of the real and of the imaginary.

For us the medium, the image medium, has i mposed i tse l f between the real and the imaginary, upsetting the bal an ce between the two, with a kind of fatality which has its own logic. I call this a fatal process in the sense that there is a definitive imm ane nce of the image, without any possible transcendent meaning, without any possible dialectic of history -- fatal also in the sense not merely of an exponential, linear unfolding of i mages and messages but of an exponential enfolding of the medium around i tself. The fata li t y l i e s i n th i s end l e ss enwrapping of images (literally: without end, without destination) which leaves images no other destiny than images. The same thing happens everywhere today, when production has n o destiny a p art fro m p r o d u c t i o n overdetermination of production by itself -- when sex has no destiny other than sex -- sexual overdetermination of sexuality. This process may be found everywhere today, for better and for worse. In the absence of rules of the game, things become caught up in their own game: images become more real than the real; cinema itself becomes more cinema than cinema, in a kind of vertigo in which (to return to our initial problem, that of resemblance) it does no more than resemble itself and escape in its own logic, in the very perfection of its own model.

The Evil Demon of Images

I am thinking of thmw 1· x a ct, serupulous set pieces such as Chinatown . ' 1 1· I Jay of the Condor. Barry Lyndon, 1 900 . A ll th1· l'n·sulent 's Men, t.lw very perfection of which is d i stu rbing. It is as if we were dealing w i th p 1· r fl' d remakes, wi th extraordinary montage::; w h i c h be long more to a combinato ry pro c e s s ( o r m o s a i c i n t h <' McLuhanesque sense) , w i th large photo, kino or historic-synthetic mach i n Ps, rathe r than with real films. Let us be c l e a r: th e i r q uali ty is not i n question. The problem i s rather that they leave us somehow totally ind i ffe re nt.

Take The Last Picture Sh ow. You need only hl• sufficiently distracted, a s I was, to see it as a 1 950s original p rod u c ti o n : a good fi lm o f manners and the ambie nce o f small tow n America, etc. A slight suspicion: i t was a littll' too good, better adjusted, better than the others, without the sentimental, moral and psychologica I tics of the films of that period. Astonishment a t. the discovery that it is a 1970s film, perfectly nostalgic, brand new, retouched, a hyperrea l i st. restitution of a 50s fi lm. There is talk of remaking silent fi lms, doubtless better th a 11 those of the period. A whole generation of fi l rm1 is appearin g which will be to those we h a vc• known what the android is to man: marvel l1111:1, flawless artifacts, dazzling simulacra which lad\ only an i m a g in a ry a n d t h a t p a rtic u I 1 1 r hallucination which makes cinema what i t i :1 . Most of those that we see today (the best) 1 1 rc• already of this order. Ba rry Lyndon is the lll'nl example: n o better has been made, no better w i 1 1 be made, but what exactly? Evocation? N o , 1 1 1 1 1 even evocation but simulation. All the tmdc· radi ation has been fi l tered o u t, a l l l. h c• ingredients are present in precise doses , not. 11 single mistake.

The t v1/ Demon of Images

Cool, l'l>lrl pleasure which is not even aesthetic p r o pe r l y s p e ak i n g : fu n c t i o n a l p l e a s u r e , equation a l pleasure, p leas u r e o f m achination. We I'('d only think of Visco n t i ( '/'he Leopard, Senso, etc., which recall Barry /,_vn don in certain respects) in order to grasp the di fference, not only in styl e but in the cinematogra phic act. With Visconti, there is meaning, histo ry, a sens ua l rhetoric, dead moments, a passiona te game, not only in the historical content but i n the di rection . None of that with Kubrick, who controls his film like a chessboard, and mak e s h i s to ry an operational scenario. Nor does this refer back to the old opposition between finesse a nd geometry: there meaning was still in play , meaning was at stake. Whereas we are enteri ng i nto an era of films which no longer have meaning p roperly speaking, large synthetic machines with variable geometry .

Is there already something of this in Sergio Leone's westerns? Perhaps. All registers tend in this direction. Chinatown is the detective story redesigned by laser. It is not really a question of perfection. Technical perfection can belong to the meaning, and in this case it is neither nostalgic nor hyperrealist; it is an effect of art. Here, it is an effect of model: it is one of the tactical reference values. In the absence of any real syntax of meaning there are only tactical values in a complex whole in which, for example, the CIA as an all-purpose mythological machine, Robert Redford as a polyvalent star, social relations as necessary references to history, and technical virtuosity as a necessary reference to cinema are all admirably combined.

Cinema and its trajectory: from the most fantastic or mythical to the reali sti c and hyperrealistic.

The Evil Demon of Images

3 1

In its present endeavours ci n < ' m a i ncreasingly approaches, with ev e r i n c rc· a s i n g perfecti o n , absolute reality: in its ba n a l i ty , in i ts veracity, in its starkness, in its tedi u m . a n d a l the same time in its pretentiousness, i n i ts pn•tP n tion to be the real, the i mmediate, the u n s i g·n i fi ed, which is the maddest of enterprises ( i n the sa me way that the pretention of functiona l i st desi g-n to designate, as the highest degree of the object, the form in which it coincides with its function , its use-value, is properly an insane enterprise). No culture has ever had thi s na ive a n d paranoi ac, th i s puritanical a n d te r ro r i s t v i sion o f signs. Terrorism is always of the real. Simultaneous with this attempt at absolute coincidence with the real, cinema also approaches an absolute coincidence with itself. This is not contradictory : it is the very definition of the hype rreal. Hypotyposis and specularity. Cinema plagi a r ises a n d cop i e s i ts e l f, r e m a k e s i ts c l a s s i c s , retroactivates its original myths, remakes ::;i lent films more perfect than the origin a ls , de. All this is logical. Cinema is fascinated hy 1 /:·wlf as a lost object just as it (and we) are fasci '"' It'd by the real as a referential in perdition. Pn•vi1 111sly there was a living, dialectical, fu l l a n d d ramatic relationship between cinema and Ui.· i maginary (that is, novelistic, mythica l u n n· a l ity, even down to the delirious use of i ts o w n lPchnique). Today, there is an inverse 1w 1�a t. i ve relation between the cinema and rea l i ty : i t. n�sults from the loss of specificity wh i c h ho t.Ii h a ve suffered. Cold c o l l age , c o o l p ro m i s C' l 1 i t.y , a se x u a l engagement of two cold nwd i 1 1 w h i eh evolve in asymptotic line towards 0 111• 11 not.her : cinema attempting to abolish i lsl' l f i n t. IH· absolute of reality, the real a l re a d y 1 1 1 11 1: a bsorbed in cinematographic (or tc ll' v i :·wcl l l1 y p1·rreality.

Translated by Pau l /1<1 /11 111 ' " ' " l 'aul Foss

AN INTERVIEW WITH JEAN BAUD RILLARD

Interview conducted by Ted Colless, David Ke lly and Alan Cholodenko

Translated by Philippe Tanguy

A.C.: In your Kuttn a L1•1·t.u n • . '/ 'lt 1· Evil Demon of' Images, you invoke the not.i n n o f the immorality of images, at one poi n t d l·l' l a ri r q� t h a t "the image has taken over and i m pos1·d its own immanent, ephemeral logic; a n i m mo r: r l logic without depth, beyond good and evi l , lwyo nd tru th and falsity ... " My question is this: if th i s l og·ic l i es beyond good and evil, why is i t not a n a mo ra l rather than an immoral logic?

J.B.: From the v e ry m o m e n t t h a t one goes beyond good and evi l one ca n :1 l so play a sort of game with this 'amora l i ty' i tse l f - - somewhat perversely perhaps. So there is a two-fold development here: there is at the same time both a transmutation of values (a denial of good and evil, a la _Nietzsche for example) and the game with the resulting amorality, a game which as it proceeds becomes more and more romantic, more and more pathetic. With this game one enters the domain of 'hypermorality', if you like. You play the game with amorality: you do not discard morality -- rather you retain it, but purely as one of the rules, as one of the conventions which are completely perverse but nevertheless necessary if the game is to proceed at all. In fact, in this sort of game the whole question of what one does with morality remains completely open.

I can perhaps try to explain this more clearly in the following way: once you go beyond the question of morality, of good and evil, you have indeed entered the realm of amorality but you have not for all that exhausted the question. The game can continue, to involve amorality itself. And this is why I prefer the word 'immorality'.

Interview wi t h Jean Baudrillard

There is a play on words in th e ll· xl - - morality, amora l i ty , i mmorality - - wh i c h I th i n k i s absolute ly essential here. T h e po i n t is that amorality a s a concept is not very i n teresting or challengi ng. The concept of immora l i ty, on the contrary, i s far more dramatic.

' Take N ie tzsche s treatment of God, for i nstance. What Nietzsche says is that God is dead. This is a far more interesting situation than if Nietzsche were to simply say "there is no God" or "God has never existed", etc. -- that would be mere athe ism -- whereas to say that God is dead as N ietzsche does is to say something far more dramatic, and really something else altogether: it is an attempt to go beyo n d God . Simi l ar l y , the w o r d 'immorality' as used i n the text is an attempt to go beyond not just morality but also amorality. It is certainly an attempt to state the disappearance of morality, but also to situate the ensuing game at a level different from mere amorality itself.

A.C.: So Nietzsche is not a mere atheist.

J.B.: Yes, Nietzsche is not i n the least an ordinary 'atheist'. He is not committed to the denial of the existence of God as an ordinary atheist would be. He is actually denying not that God exists but that God is alive. He is saying that God is dead, and that is a fundamental concept.

The concept is similar to my concept of 'challenge' in De la Seduction. This is the idea that the disappearance of something is never objective, never final -- it always involves a sort of challenge, a questioning, and consequently an act of seduction. In almost everything that I have written, there is this challenge to morality, to reali ty , e tc . So N i e tzsc h e , for examp l e ,

Interview with Jean Baudrillard

challenges the existenc<' of God by issuing a challenge to God. It is just a s u n i n teresting to say "God does not exist" a s to sa y " ee ( ; od exists". The problematic for Nietzsche is rnmplctely different . He is challenging the ' l i v(• lirwss', the being, of God. In other wo rd s , h e i s sed u c i ng God . Similarly, in my work what I try lo do is to issue a challenge to .meaning and lo re a l ity, to seduce them and to play with them . . .

T.C./D.K.: To play the devil's advocate, there does seem to be, in th i s text, both an ethical vocabulary, implying a position to be adopted, and a more or less urgent directive to come to grips with the indisting uishability between the real and the order of simulation. To an audience this might imply one of two modes of address:

O n the one h a n d a so l i lo q u y , m a y b e dispassionate, that nonetheless plays a part in the dramaturgy of the final act -- the eclipse of history, the vanishing of the real. In this case can we understand this text to be the words of a provocateur -- intervening to preci pitate , or arrest, this devolution; or rather those of an -- analyst commenting upon and clarifying this action? In other words, does this text have a role to play?

On the other hand could this be an ironic aside, neither participating in the action nor critically detached from it, a knowing remark that clues us in but is, for all that, inconsequential?

J.B.: Well, congratulations on an excellent question. It deals with an important problem: the position of a text (and especially of a text such as this one), as well as the position being adopted in the text in relation to its object -- or at least the object as described by the text itself. In the sense

Interview wl/h le.in Baudrillard

that the t1• x t attempts to move to w : 1 rds the end of someth i n g - - towards a sort of ea ta s t ro phe, a something lost -- there is indeed a n e l e ment of provoca ti o n , since the text must be s i tu ated within i ts own logic, within its own p roce sses. There i s p rovocation in that o n e w i s h e s to acce lera tc· this logic. One goes ther e fo re i n the same d i rection as the text -- but one a eeele rates, one goes much faster towards the end of the text. And one p l ays on the logic itself to be a b le (at least) to reach a point beyond it, so as to ma ke the system reveal itself more clearly. It is more or less a strategic position that one ado pts : one of precipitation, of acceleration, as demanded by the text itself.

Nevertheless, I do not for all that abandon in any way the posi tion of the analyst. There is here perh aps an ambiguity, an ambivalence, which is quite fundamental. On the one hand we have a position which is strategically necessary, and on the other hand we retain the position of the analyst. This ambiguity p ro bably re mains throughout the text at every point. One i s compelled to produce meaning in the text, and one produces this meaning as if it arises from the system (even if in fact the system lacks meaning) in order precisely to play that meaning against the system itself as one reaches the end. So th ere is a position here -- a third position -- which I would describe as that of objective irony.

Objective irony is not subjective irony : it is not an irony based on solipsism or on any separation of discourse from the subject . Objective irony is precisely the irony whereby one is able to turn the system, to make it work against itself, to play against itself. This creates an ironic effect within the text, since its position is bound to be ambiguous. In other words, one always in a sense

Interview with Jean Baudnll.ird

remains the subject of a d i sco 1 1 rs1 . , any discourse, so one always in a scmw a ss 1 1 m P s the position of an analyst. But the n . o rn · 1 1 1 1 1 st also exert the same strategy to the o/�11·<'1 of d iscourse: in the same way that one wo r k s wi th the subject, one must also work towa rds th 1 · position of pure ' object, towards the v a n i sh i n �� poi nt' of discourse itself.

Consequently I do not th i n k th a t one has to choose one way or a n o t h 1• r . What the text involves, simultaneously, is both provocation and analysis. There is a si m u l t:uu·o u s requirement to give meaning to the te x t ( a na lysis) and to also give an end to that mea n i n� ( provocation). And what really differenti a tes th i s procedure from other processes of nega tio n for example, the negative dialectic of Adorno is precisely what I call objective irony. That is. tlw re i s a movement within the text, from subjecti v•� i rony as used by Adorno and others ( based on the i rony of the subject) to objective irony - - the i rony of the object itself. What I try to do, if you l i ke, is to try to get out of the subjectivity/objecti v i ty dia lectic, in order to reach a point where I can make of the system an object, a pure object, one with no meaning whatsoever. I try, in other words, to constitute the subject of discourse in turn as an object; I try to create a sort of distance (which is not a 'critical' but an 'ironic' distance) between the subject and the text -- and when this occurs, then of course the posi tion of the analyst disappears.

And yet, while one remains within a theoretical type of discourse, within a discourse such as this one, one cannot exclude oneself from any of these positions. I do not have to choose -- and I would hesitate to choose -- between any of them. All three positions have their place in the game as it

Interview wi t h Jean Baudrillard

proceeds - - and this i s in its e l f, o f eo urse , the supreme i rony of the text.

T.C./D. K.: You have titled this pa pe r The Evil Demon 1 1( Images. In the Meditatio n s Descartes refers to a n evil demon that c a n rn nj u re an inexiste n t world that includes the i ne x i stent figure of Descartes himself. Descartes was able to exi le that demon through corrosive do u b t, confirmi ng the world and its objects; here you have conjured that evil demon's return, exiling instead both doubt and the real. How wou ld you de scribe the relation between this text a nd the Cartesian project it seems to invoke?

J.B.: In the Cartesian project there is at least the inauguration of a rational principle. It is from this rational principle that the whole question of doubt arises. This doubt comes from the subject - as subject of knowledge, as subject of discourse.

Whether Descartes in fact succeeds in making the subject constitute itself, in its re al i ty , in relation to a diabolical world which is fu l l of superstitions and hallucinations and so on is a controversial matter. But the fact remains that Cartesian doubt is based on the promise of a world which can be confirmed only in terms of its own reality: there is doubt on the one hand and there is reality on the other hand; and there is the conflict between the two, which Descartes tries to resolve.

For me the question is totally different. When I evoke the principle of evil, of an evil demon etc., my aim is more closely related to a certain kind of Manichaeism. It is therefore anterior to Descartes, and fundamentally i t is irrational. There are in fact two principles at stake: on the one hand there is the (Descartes') rational

4 1

Interview with Jean Baudril/.1 1 d

principle o r p r i n c i p l 1 · I l l' r:1 l. i ( ) n ality - - th e fundamental attempt. through d1 1ubt or anyth i n g else, to rationalise thP w o r l d : i n d on the other hand there is the i n vP rs1· p r i 1 1 1 · i ple, which w a s . for example, adopted by I.h i · ' h 1 · n · li cs' all the way throughout the history 1 1 1' ( ' l i ri sli anity. This is the principle of ev i l i ts1 · l f. W h a t the heretics posited was that the v 1 • ry c n · : 1 Li on of the world, hence the reality of th(• w o r l d . w a s the result of the existence of the ev i l d 1 · 1111 , 1 1 . The function of God, then, was rea l ly to try to repudiate this evil

phantom -- that wa : Uw n · a I r<' a son why God had to exist at all. So in th i s si tu a ti o n it is no longer a question of doubt or n o n dou bt, o f whether one should exercise this do u bt 1 1 r w h e ther this doubt could lead us to confi rm or d1·11y the existence of the world. Rather, i t i s o rn « · :q.{a i n the principle of seduction that needs to lw i nvoked in this situation: according to M : 1 11 i c h : 1 1• i sm , the reality of the world is a tota l i ll u s i o n ; i t i s something which has been tainted from the very beginning; it is something which has h l'l ! n sl'rl uccd by a sort of irreal principle since ti me i m memori a l . In this case what one has to i n vo k e is precisely this absolute power of illusion - - a n d th i s is indeed exactly what the heretics d i d . They based their theologies on the very negation of the real. Their principal and primary convention was that of the non-reality, hence of the non-rationality, of the world. They believed that the world, its reality, is made up only of sign s -- and that it was governed solely through the power of the mind.

This idea of the world as being constituted only by signs is, if you like, some sort of magic thinking -- and indeed it was condemned as such. For it does entail that the 'real' -- and any sort of 'reality' -- that one sees in the world is quite simply an absolute utopia. The rationality that one has to invoke in order to make the world 'real'

In terview wi t h lean Baudrillard

is really just a product of the power of thought itself, wh ich is itself totally anti - rational and anti-ma tPrialist. This is complete ly opposed to Descartes ( whose rationalism leads eventually but di rel'tly to materialism). For me to invoke the qut>sti on of doubt or of non-doubt and to either assert or to question the rea l i ty of the world wou ld be completely futile. The principle fundamentally and from the very beginning is that there is no objectivity to the world.

But nevertheless one has to recognise the reality of the i l l usion; and one must play upon this illusion itself and the power that it exerts. This is where the Manichaean element in my work comes in. It is a question which, really, is purely strategic.

We can compare this position easily with that of Freud if you like -- with his juxtaposition of the principles of Eros and Thanatos. These two principles are at first absolutely opposed to each other. But there is also the crucial moment in Fre ud's work w h e n , h a v i n g despe rate l y attempted to unify and integrate the two, he finally abandons the project and invokes instead the principle of their total irreconcilability. This is something that works very much to the advantage of the principle of Thanatos itself, since of course Thanatos is itself the principle of irreconcilability.

This is the key to the whole position: the idea is that of a most fundamental and rad i c a l antagonism, of no possibility existing at all of reconciling the 'illusion' of the world with the 'reality' of the world. And I have to say this once again: here the 'illusion' is not simply irreality or non-reality; rather, it is in the literal sense of the word (il-ludere in Latin) a play upon 'reality' or a

Interview with Jean Baudnl/.11d

mise en jeu of the rca I . IL i s, to say it one more time, the issuing of a c h : i l lenyre to the 'real' - - the attempt to put the rea l , q u i I.I ' sim p ly, on the spot.

There is here a fundanwn t.a l d istinction -- which it seems to me e x i sts i n t.1 1 1· w hole history of thought in general. Tlwn· i s Liu· principle of the possibility of reconcil i a lio11 1 111 the one hand, and there is the recogni tion of to ta I i rreconcilability on the other hand. For mP Ll11· n • : i l i ty of the world has been seduced, and th i s is rea l ly what is so fundamentally ManichaPa n i n my work. Like the Manichaeans I d o n o t b e l i e v e in the possibility of 'real-ising' tlw worl d through any rational or materialist pri n e i pie -- hence the great difference betwel'n m y w o r k and the process of invoking radica l dou bt as in Descartes.

A.C.: Did semiology a rr i v e to ::;ave meaning precisely at a point whe n i t was a l ready lost? Is semiology a nostalgic, a rom a n tic project?

J.B.: I do not really know abou t the nostalgia of semiology: one must believe in the first place that meaning did once exist - - and so you could then attempt to try to find it again, at least as a lost object ... Obviously I do not believe this, so the nostalgia might have been there in semiology but it would have been in my view totally unfounded. One thing is certain: semiology did attempt -- and does sti ll -- to save meaning and to produce meaning as a sort of repudiation or conjuration of non-sense, and i n that light se miolo gy as a discipline does appear to be evangelical. And this is so in spite of the fact that today in semiology there i s to a certai n extent an awareness of production, o f its own production of signs.

The problem arises in the way that semiology operates: in so far as it immediate ly establishes a

Interview wi th Jea n Baudrillard

distincti v(• opposition between s i gn i fie r and signified a nd between sign and re ferent, etc., from the very first point of de pa rtu re what semiology tries to do is to domesltcate the sign. By com p:1 rison, in the world which I evoke, the one w h e n· i llusion or magic thought plays a key role , the si gns evolve, they concate nate and produce themselves. always one upon the other - so tha t there is absolutely no basic reference which ca n sustain them. Thus they do not refer to any sort of 'reality' or 'referent' or 'signified' whatsoever. So in this situation what we have is the sign alone; and it is the power which is proper to the sign itself, it is the pure strategy of the sign itself that governs the appearance of things. This posi tion is vastly different from semiology -- as for instance in Lacan and in the Tel Quel school, where a primary role is given to the 'signifier'. In other words, for me th e sign is, if you li ke , without recourse. There is no basic reserve, no 'gold standard' to the sign -- no basic reserve of reference from which the sign can be recovered or accommodated. On the contrary, reali ty is the effect of the sign. The system of reference is only the result of the power of the sign itself.

This is what Artaud meant when he talked about the 'savage power' of the sign, when he alluded to this 'cruel' capacity that the sign has to 'erupt' and so o n . The framework h e r e fo r a n understanding of the effect of the sign i s hardly a representational one. Rather, the framework is the fundamental antagonism between the sign and re ality : here the sign is precisely that which operates against reality, not for it. From this point of view, there is really no semiology at all, properly speaking . No real logos (as is implied in the couple 'signified/signifier', etc.) is available. Instead, we have a sort of single brutal sign which exists in its purest state and whi ch goes

Interview with Jean Baudril/.ud 45

through the universe , si m p l y n · p rnducing itse l f, constantly and forever. I n tlw n · p resentati o n a l system, one cannot do th i s . < ) 11 1 · L'annot go from one sign to anothe r d i n·1· t l y ; 0 1 1 1 • must mediate from one si gn to a rrn l h 1• r th ro u gh meani ng, through the duality 'si g11 i fi Pc l/s i g n i fier' and so on. This is why I invok e th1· 1·011 n·pt of destiny, the concept of the destrny of tl1t• si g·n - whereas what semiology invok es is a co 11 1·1·pt of the history of the sign, the history of Uw si i{n as a domesticated product of me anin g . Thi s donH'sti cation process, of course, is also to he foun<l i n oth e r disciplines - in psychology, for exa m p l e - · · a nd to me it seems to be only a despe r a te a tk m pt to seek salvation . . .

Having said all this, i t i s t r u e th a t semiology has become much more sop histica ted i n the last few years. So today we have a semiology of poetry, for example, or of the speech act, of Langue and parole. A lot of attempts are bei ng made to go beyond the representa tiona l mode, which was obviously deficient. But in my opinion semiology wil l never be able - - to adopt the coinage of Nietzsche - - to go beyond its shadow. It will never be actually able to find the sign in its purest state -- in the way in which I, for example, try to do in De la Seduction and in the world of illusion.

T.C./D.K.: In an earlier essay ('Design and E nvi r o n m e n t or H o w P o l i ti c a l E c o n o m y Escalates into Cyberblitz' ) y o u specified a n historical moment when the object resigned its use value status by entering into a pure order of the sign function. In this essay your reference point is rather the media image. Has the media image supplanted the order of events and of objects in the same manner as the Bauhaus project of total design supplanted the realm of nature? And does the delirious proliferation of

In terview wi th Jean Baudrillard

the m e rl i a i ma ge h av e a s i m i l a r l y s p e c i fi c historica I moment?

A propos th is, can you explain the q u a l i tative differe n rl' between the media im a g e a nd those other fo rm s ( th e a tre , archi tectu re , p a i n ti n g, langu a ge ) that were incapable of overwhe lming the re a I to such effect?

J. H.: Y es, i n a sense there is an historical shift. The re is an historical evolution, which begi ns and also culminates with the phase where si gns, as I said, lead from one another according to the - logic of i l lusion. So this was indeed a first stage not necessari ly a chronological 'first' stage b ut certainly a logical one. And then the phase of rationality fo llowed, with the production of the reality-effect by the sign. It seems to me th at towards the end of this stage the sign fo und itself being separated and being sent back towards its own transcendence and i mma n e n c e . W h a t followed therefore was the game o f the dialectic of the sign , the game whereby reality wou ld be posited against the immanence or transcendence of the sign. Consequently, there is indeed a sort of historical movement.

The movement reaches i ts apotheosis in the arrival of the media. Now, once again, the sign is all alone. But this is not to say that we are back at the first stage once more. The situation now is different. Now the sign seems to me to posit what I have called the 'principle of hyperreality'. That is, what we have now is the disappearance of the r e fe r e n t - - a n d i t i s i n r e l a t i o n to t h i s disappearance of the referent that there is a sort of omnipresence to the sign. The problematic of the disappearance of the referent was not an issue according to the first logic of i llusi o n ; rather, there was simply n o referent. S o in a

Interview with Jean Baudn/l.u J

sense we are going ba('k low:i rrls a n anterior state - - but nevertheless with a d i ff1 • n • 1 1 t·1- .

Is this evolution an h i storil':i I nrw? [ do not think it is. It is, rathe r , a m l' l.: 1 p h y s i c a l one : the universe of the med i a w h i c h w 1 · a re currently immersed in is not the m : i g'i t-:d u n i verse or the cruel universe which we h : 1 d : 1 l : 1 n anterior stage, where the sign was op1· ra t i o n a l purely on the basis of its own functi on i n g a s si gn. With the advent of the media , it sPP m s lo m e that we have lost that prior state of to la I i 1 1 usi o n , of the sign as magic. We are, in oth e r words. i n that state of 'hyperreality' as I h a ve ca l l Pd i l. Now we are dealing with a sign tha t posi ls the principle of non-reality, the pri ncipll• of Uw a bsolute absence of reality. We went beyond Uw rea l i ty principle a long time ago, and no w the ga me w h i ch is being played is no longer bei ng p l ayerl i n the world of pure illusion. It is as if we a rc now i n a shameful and sinful state, a post- i l l m;ion sta te .

We can try to put this another way, if you like: as we all know, philosophy is based on the negation of the real. There is at the heart of philosophy a primordial act regarding the negation of reality; and without that negation there is no philosophy. Now, it seems to me that throughout a certain p e riod thi s n e gati on was the pri v i l e ge o f philosophers. But today this i s n o longer the case . Today the n e gati on of the re a l has penetrated inside things themselves, so much so th at i t i s no longer the p r i v i l e ge o f j u st philosophers but an axiom that belongs to all. What has happened is that the negation of reality has now been incorporated into 'reality' itself. In short, what we have now is a principle of non rea l i ty b ased on 're ality' -- a principle of 'hyperreality' as I cal l it. T h e mutation is interesting, since it implies nothing other than

In terview wi t h Jean Baudrillard

the e n d o f p h i loso phy. T h e p h i l o so p h i c a l princi p l P of the negation of r e a l i ty h as now pervadl'd t>veryday 'reality' itse lf.

This is w h y I say that today we h a ve a form of irony w h i c h is objective . Irony can no longer today he s i mply the subje ctive i ro n y o f the phi loso p h e r. It can no longer be exercised as if from o u tside of things. Instead, it is the objective irony w h ich arises from within things themselves -- it is a n irony which belongs to the system, and it a ri ses from the system itse lf bec a u se the system is constantly functioning against itself.

Now to go to the second part of the question -- the Bauhaus q uestion . The Bauhaus project of total design is certainly one of the important episodes in the evolution of simu lation, which marks the passage of the sign from the dialectic of the real to the order of the sign itself. Nevertheless, the Bauhaus project does not go to the stage of seduction of the rea l, and there are radical differences between simulation and seduction . The Bauhaus remains at the stage o f simulation. To say it once more: seduction seems to me to i nv o k e a n e n c h a n t e d u n i v e r s e , w h e r e a s simulation invokes a universe which i s totally disenchanted and , as I said, almost shameful.

And finally, the last part of the question: in my v i e w t h e r e i s n o s u b s ta n ti a l q u a l i ta ti v e difference between electronic media such as TV on the one hand and other fo rms such as language, painting or architecture on the other hand. In my opinion there is no real difference between them; they all operate at the same level, that of simulation. Of course one would have to discuss this at some length, and in any case I am not an expert in any of these areas. However, it does seem to me, for example, that simulation has

Interview with Jean Baudnll.u d

invaded theatre just a s m u ch a s it has invaded painting, and that a s a n · s u l t. n e i ther of the m have the power to exert lnt.a l i l l u si on any longe r. Both the theatre a nd pa i 1 1 ti 1 1 g· h a ve entered the order of simulation a 11d i 11 fa c t they now typ i f simu lation .

So all the forms ca n in fa ct ill' su bstituted one for another. They have a 1 1 ht•t · n co n taminated by simulation, and so now t h ey fu nction in terms of ' communication ' and ' i n f o rm a ti o n', which are nothing other than the hy p rod ucts of sim ulation . Neither archi tectu re n o r pa i n ti n g, for instance, have today any e ffe c t::> w h i c h are p ro p e r to themse lves; instead, tod a y they fu ncti o n merely as indications of the tra nsli mnalion of the world.

We must remember th is: the a i m of a rt was once precisely to posit the powe r of i 1 1 usion a gai n st reality. There was a ti me w hen a rt was trying to make reality play a game which was d i ffe re n t to the game that art itself was playi ng. In other words , there was a time indeed when a rt was always trying to force rea l i ty to p lay the game along different rules, when it was al ways trying to seduce the reality of things. But today this is no longer the great game that art is playing. All the art forms are now playing the game at the level of the simulation of reality -- and whether t h e p a rti c u l a r a r t fo r m b e p a i n ti n g o r architecture makes no difference whatsoever.

That is, there is no longer any great 'challenge ' -- being posited by these art forms a challenge to go beyond the reality principle. For example, the very project of the Bauhaus (which incorporated, of course , all of the v arious art forms) was precisely and by definition the attempt to design the world -- and this attempt does not make any sense unless the world is being considered in

Interview with Jean Baudrilfard

terms of th e reality of its thi n gs. This is very differe n t from the attempt to con front the world with the non-reality of its things , a nd really it is simply a so rt of e xercise of simulation. B ut all this i s O f H ' n to discussion and I would l i k e one day to be a h i t > to analyse the issues in grea ter detail...

Thi• i11fr n •i1•11.wrs are grateful to Philippe 'f'anguy for his im n11•di"''' n•ndering of their questions into French a nd of Pro f1•s.rnr H a 11drillard 's ans wers into Engl i s h . T h e inlervi1• w /ooh place a t the Bondi Hotel i n Sydney on 12 August [!)84 .

ACKNOW LE D<; E M E NTS

The Power Institute of F i ne Arts wishes to thank Mick Carter, Alan Cho lode n ko, D avid Kelly, Pau l Patton and Ph i l i ppe Tanguy for the i r assistance i n the preparation of thi s text fo r publication. In addition, the Institute expresses its gratitude to Russell Barker for his help in the editing and design of the text.

Cover photo by Mark Titmarsh

THE EVIL DEMON OF IMAGES

Jean Baudrillard

Dedicated to the Memory of

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CONTENTS

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

PREFJ\CI•:

DEDICATION

REMEMBHJ\NCE

David Stratton

INTRO I >l JCTION

THE EVIL DEMON OF IMAGES

Jean Baudrillard

AN INTERVIEW WITH JEAN BAUD RILLARD

A.C.: So Nietzsche is not a mere atheist.

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