Tag Archives: Jean Baudrillard

burroughs: stepping into silence

Sexually transmitted viral traumatic fear. Contagion as the drug of the ruling class and the fear it engenders and the forces of conformity it gives rise making up the essential moving gears of the control machine. William Burroughs and modern … Continue reading

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jerusalem day: if I forget thee

The power of identity. But is it about bolting it down to the weight of tradition or about creating a whole new world? We could begin by asking, using the theoretical base of Jean Baudrillard, to question whether Jerusalem even … Continue reading

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the breathless historical present

Andre Malraux sought the key to man’s fate by a philosophical study of all the world’s art in his Metamorphosis of the Gods… …Writing almost continuously in the breathless, historical present, Malraux began by reporting a fact: the discovery during … Continue reading

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gnostic picnic with the guy in the armor

Yahweh and nihilism. Nothing like a nice flood or some other event to wipe the slate clean and make a fresh start. Turning the mattress over. Putting the world through the deep scrub dishwasher cycle.Clearly, Harold Bloom and his Yahweh … Continue reading

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when the saints come marching in

Friends of poverty. Suffering as a gift of god? The context for Hitchens attack on Mother Teresa was certainly sensational, down the sexual innuendo of the title Missionary Position. But, the broader context of Mother Teresa and the role charity … Continue reading

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a second voice: whispers out of the dust

Ventriloquy and horror. Those strange little creatures always seem to be up to no good. Yes. They are a lot like us. But who is the master and who pulls the strings….. “For Ventriloquy, or speaking from the bottom of … Continue reading

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inanimate itch for the kitsch: real men don’t eat kitsch?

Modernist culture is simply not animated by eternal values of the purity of art and abstract truth. Like the dinosaur it failed to adapt and we tossed the baby out with the bath water. Not surprisingly, Walter Benjamin said that … Continue reading

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coke: the it and id of it all

Pure nothingness.The embracing of empty contradictions. The fraternization of impossibilities.  The essence of nothingness.Kitsch. It comes from a German word, or even perhaps Yiddish, to denote bad taste. In inexhaustible supply of cheap images to pacify the longings of the … Continue reading

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war and conflict: those pauses that refresh

Its the ultimate kitsch product. Coke. All style and form. No substance. Something with multiple layers of meaning exposing a vast fictionality of the object situated in a space between reality and illusion. Kitsch. Both imitative and its negation, kitsch … Continue reading

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body and soul sold separately

Does our pop culture reinforce Western materialism by playing on commercial images which represent people as commodities, a sort of person, hyper-unrealistic, objectified, stereotyped into another object of the consumer culture spectacle.An endless process of the hollowing out of appearances, … Continue reading

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