Wednesday, 2 July, 2003

THE AMERICAN SENSE OF HISTORY History can be fun. If necessary, they rewrite it, in the US. Or Disneyfy it. Or press it in some 'significant' soundbytes. 'Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America, that is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. The only weapon of power ... 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 - why not? - 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.' (Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation. 1981). 11:39:39 AM

© Copyright 2003 Hetty Litjens.