Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-083: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • ENGL 2116 sec. 083 Major Assignments (Summer 2020)
      • Final Portfolio Requirements
      • Oral Presentations
    • June 11th: Continue with I, Robot
    • June 15th: Ethics and Perspective Discussion
      • Ethical Dilemmas for Homework
      • Ethical Dilemmas to Ponder
      • Mapping Our Personal Ethics
    • June 16th: More on Ethics
    • June 1st: Effective Documents for Users
    • June 2nd: Final Project and Research Discussion
      • Epistemology and Other Fun Research Ideas
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters Better
      • Research
    • June 3rd: Technology in a Social Context
    • June 8th: Information Design and Visuals
    • June 9th: Proposals, Marketing, and Rhetoric
    • May 18th: Introduction to the course
    • May 19th: Critical Technological Awareness
    • May 20th: Audience, Purpose, and General Introduction
    • May 21st: Résumé Stuff
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters More Effective
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • May 25th: More Resume Stuff
    • May 26th: Plain Language and Prose Revision
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • May 27th: More on Plain Language
    • May 28th: Review Prose Revision
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • February 3rd: I’m in Love with the Shape of You(r Sentences)
    • January 20th: Introduction to the Course
    • January 27th: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Spring 2021)
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 4750-090 & ENGL 5050-092 Video Games & Culture
    • Assignments for Video Games & Culture
    • August 25th: Introduction to the Course
    • November 10th: Aggression & Addiction
    • November 3rd: Moral Panics and Health Risks
    • October 13th: Narrative, ludology, f(r)iction
    • October 20th: Serious Games
    • October 27: Risky Business?
    • October 6th: Hyperreality
    • September 1st: History of Video Games
    • September 22nd: Video Game Aesthetics
    • September 29th: (sub)Cultures and Video Games
    • September 8th: Defining Video Games and Critical Theory Introduction
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 13th: Umberto Eco & Jean Baudrillard
    • April 20th: Moving Forward on Theory
    • April 27th: Last Day of Class
    • April 6th: Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition
      • What is Postmodernism?
    • February 10th: St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
      • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • February 17th: Knoblauch on Magical and Ontological Rhetoric
    • February 24th: Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method
    • February 3rd: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 and 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • January 13th: Introduction to Class
    • January 27th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 16th: Friedrich Nietzsche
    • March 23rd: Mythologies and Meaning of Meaning (part 2)
    • March 30th: Derrida’s (refusal to have) Positions
    • March 9th: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213/HTAS 2100: Science, Technology, and Society
    • December 10th: Violence in Video Games
    • December 15th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • December 1st: COVID-19 facial covering rhetoric
    • December 3rd: COVID-19 Transmission and Pandemics
    • December 8th: 500-word Essay
    • November 10th: Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 12th: Frankenstein (1818) Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 17th: Frankenstein (1818) Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 19th: Frankenstein (1818) Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 3rd: Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 1-17
    • November 5th: Planet of the Apes (1964) Ch. 18-26
    • October 13th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • October 15th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • October 1st: The Golem at Large Introduction & Ch. 1
    • October 22nd: The Time Machine
    • October 29th: H.G. Wells and Adaptations
    • October 6th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology) Ch. 2
    • October 8th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 3 & 4
    • September 10th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • September 15th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • September 17th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • September 22nd: Collins & Pinch Ch. 5 & 6
    • September 24th: Collins & Pinch Ch. 7 & Conclusion
    • September 29th: Test 1
    • September 8th: Introduction to Class
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 280F
Phone: 704.687.0613
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory » April 13th: Umberto Eco & Jean Baudrillard

April 13th: Umberto Eco & Jean Baudrillard

Leading Class Discussion

We have two Leading Class Discussions tonight:

  • Anthony will do Umberto Eco’s “Travels in Hyperreality”
    • Here’s the origin of the name Anthony
  • Christopher will do Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation”
    • Chris might not be available because of a power outage, so he’ll go next week if that’s the case.
    • Here’s the origin of the name Christopher

We should again talk about the Rhetoric/al Project (due 5/04) before signing off tonight.

Eco’s “Travels in Hyperreality”

Lots of discussion of American entertainment. Our obsession for the fake is quite appearant to Eco. Let’s have a general discussion on this piece.

  • What is the point about telling us we like fake stuff?
  • In terms of rhetoric, why does knowing people prefer the fake or assume the fake is “real” important? What do we learn about public discourse after reading Eco?
  • Consider these places/ideas:
    • Concord Mills
    • Olive Garden
    • Hooters
    • Busch Gardens (“It’s like being back in the old country”–exact words of someone I used to know)
    • Democracy
    • Education
  • What else?

We will discuss Las Vegas next week after reading Jameson…this topic isn’t over.

  • simulacrum: the replication (upon replication) of a subject without being able to find the concrete beginning.
  • hyperreality: More real than real!?! Or, as White Zombie would say, “More Human than Human.” The idea of “hyperreality” is often associated with a viewer (an audience in general) believing the media-generated simulation is real or more real than an actual event, personality, condition, or, ultimately, an experience.

Brent on his experience as a helicopter gunner while playing Battlefield Vietnam (Electronic Arts). (Toscano, p. 17, 2011)

Brent’s penchant for first-person shooters suggests that he enjoys embodying the avatar’s persona: As the helicopter “gunner” in Battlefield Vietnam (Electronic Arts), Brent is in an Army attack chopper firing on the Vietcong listening to Creedance Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” and the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”—two popular songs from the Vietnam Era. Brent was never in Vietnam, but the music and his sense of attacking the VC from a software-engineered helicopter helps him better incorporate the soldier’s persona from representations he has seen in films such as Platoon (1986) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), popular war movies he watches. The video game is a synecdoche of experience and a simulacrum at best. Unlike real war, Brent’s only risk is temporary eye strain and not serious injury or death—he is engaged in a fictional world. Juul (2005) points out that “games project fictional worlds through a variety of different means, but the fictional worlds are imagined by the player, and the player fills in any gaps in the fictional world” (p. 121). What makes the video game a figured world is that the world of the helicopter gunner is simulated via the video game’s programming and accepted by gamers who enter the “text” for this virtual experience. Like Brent’s situation above regarding what it feels like to be in Vietnam, a gamer’s interpretations come from other sources—culture. Video games (and gamers) are products of the culture(s) from which they come, and we can read the culture—its values, fears, and “history”—in video games.

Acting

In February 2013, Bradley Cooper was interviewd on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He discusses his role in the indie movie Silver Linings Playbook. Interestingly, and this isn’t odd to hear from an actor, he talks about how he and David O. Russell (the director) wanted him to “play as real and authentic as [h]e could.”

What does it mean for an actor to be real, authentic, raw, etc.? What’s behind the idea of believability in acting?

  • Check out the transcript and scroll down to the line “Jacki Weaver, yeah.”
  • How is he maintaining “authenticity” of his character when the film is edited?

Some Key passages for further discussion:

  • p. 3: “Holography…achieves a full-color photographic representation that is more than three-dimensional.”
  • p. 4: “America, a country obsessed with realism, where, if a reconstruction is to be credible, it must be absolutely iconic, a perfect likeness, a ‘real’ copy of the reality being represented.”
  • Commenting on wax museums:
    • p. 7: “The Lyndon B. Johnson Library is a true Fortress of Solitude….suggest[ing] that there is a constant in the average American imagination and taste for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy.”
    • p. 7: “The aim of the reconstructed Oval Office is to supply a ‘sign’ that will then be forgotten as such. The sign aims to be the thing, to abolish the distinction of the reference, the mechanism of replacement.”
  • p. 7: “two typical slogans that pervade American advertising….’the real thing’…’more.'”
  • p. 8: “leaving a surplus to throw away–that’s prosperity.”
  • p. 8: “this journey into hyperreality…demands the real and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake.”
  • pp. 9-10: “the ravenous consumption of the present and about the constant “past-izing” process carried out by American civilization in its alternate process of futuristic planning an nostalgic remorse.”
  • p. 11: “As in some story by Heinlein or Asimov, you have the impression of entering and leaving time in a spatial-temporal haze where centuries are confused.”
    • Even animals are fake if artificially selected…but that chicken is real, right?
  • p. 12: “The whole of the United States is spangled with wax museums, advertised in every hotel.”
    • These attractions “are loud and aggressive, they assail you with big billboards on the freeway miles in advance.”
  • pp. 13-14: “Another characteristic of the wax museum is that the notion of historical reality is absolutely democratized: Marie Antoinette’s boudoir is recreated with fastidious attention to detail, but Alice’s encounter with the Mad Hatter is done just as carefully.”
  • p. 15: “The idea that the philosophy of hyperrealism guides the reconstructions is again prompted by the importance attached to the ‘most realistic statue in the world.'”
    • Is there a parallel here to a person who always claims he has “the best, most beauty, greatest–better than Obama–wonderful” policies?
  • p. 19: “the visitor is convinced that the Palace [of Living Arts in LA] itself replaces and improves on the National Gallery or the Prado” (emphasis added).
  • p. 23: On the artifacts in Hearst Castle, “The striking aspect of the whole is not…the artificial tissue seamlessly connect[ing] fake and genuine, but rather the sense of fullness, the obsessive determination not to leave a single space that doesn’t suggest something.”
    • horror vacui
  • p. 25: “The Madonna Inn is the poor man’s Hearst Castle….It says to visitors: ‘You can have the incredible, just like a millionaire.”
  • Think South of the Border on I-95
  • Yes, Las Vegas also does this.
  • pp. 36-37: “It is the ideology f preservation, in the New World, of the treasures that the folly and negligence of the Old World are causing to disappear into the void. Naturally this ideology conceals something…”
  • p. 37: “once the fetishistic desire for the original is forgotten, these copies are perfect. And at this point isn’t the enemy of the rights of art the engraver who defaces the place to keep low the number of prints.”

Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation” (1981)

Jean Baudrillard was a major contemporary philosopher (although he died in 2007). His theories would fall under a postmodernist classification. Although he has capitalist critiques, his later work focused on media and culture more broadly. In “Simulacra and Simulations,” Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) ideas of mass communications is in the background. Baudrillard argues that forms of communication mediate social relations (on a broad societal plane). Here’s some key points to McLuhan’s famous The Medium is the Message.

Marshal McLuhan

  • p. 7: “the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium–that is, of any extension of ourselves–result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”
  • p. 8: “the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.”
  • Message of the electric light (p. 9): Look to the structure that brings electricity to a household/community. Electric lighting communicates the fact that the society has a system of electric power, a grid. It shows modernization, industrialization, and progress. More importantly, though, electric lights extend or change what we can do in the dark.
  • p. 16-17: Our concept of literacy is socially constructed. We (members of a culture) have biases towards conventional ways of doing things. The norm in culture is seen as truth, and those not conforming are seen as lesser or weird. They don’t understand the “grammar” of the system; they don’t fit our patterns (e.g. a person without a cell phone is a pariah).
  • Fixed charges regarding commodities (p. 21): Societies have commodities that are, for lack of a better term, givens. The community accepts (it doesn’t have to be conscious) these commodities as givens, which “create the unique cultural flavor of any society.”{i.e. NASCAR is a given in Charlottean culture…pasta is a given in Italian culture…oil, cable TV, mobile phones are givens in American culture}
  • Jung quote image: Keith Herring’s Free South Africa drawing.

Here’s a good 2-page explanation of McLuhan’s theory.

Some Key passages for further discussion:

  • p. 1: “Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.”
  • Note 1 is actually at the end of the 1st paragraph after “second-order simulacrum.” The note mentions the 1926 German Expressionist film The Student of Prague. “In The Student of Prague, the main protagonist sells his mirror image to the devil ‘for a pile of gold’”(Kul-Want, p. 114). However, the protagonist “witnesses the Devil peeling his ‘image from the mirror as though it were an etching”….His image is subsequently made flesh and proceeds to stalk Balduin, with ultimately fatal consequences” (Smith, p. 127).
  • p. 2: “The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models – and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times.”
  • p. 2: It is a hyperreal: the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.
  • p. 2: “the age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials – worse: by their artificial resurrection in systems of signs, which are a more ductile material than meaning, in that they lend themselves to all systems of equivalence, all binary oppositions and all combinatory algebra.”
  • p. 2: “substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes.”
  • *I think we can paraphrase this latter part of his introduction by considering that ideas no longer have origins; instead, what we consider real is just a sign of something in the referential world. All we do is reproduce substitutions and continually simulate signs. We only had representations to begin with, so we aren’t actually dealing with anything real but more real.
  • p. 2: “To dissimulate is to feign not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one hasn’t. One implies a presence [simulate], the other an absence [dissimulate].”
  • p. 2: “simulation threatens the difference between ‘true’ and ‘false,’ between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary.’”
  • pp. 2-3: “As for psychoanalysis, it transfers the symptom from the organic to the unconscious order: once again, the latter is held to be real, more real than the former.”
  • p. 3: “Had they been able to believe that images only occulted or masked the Platonic idea of God, there would have been no reason to destroy them. One can live with the idea of a distorted truth.”
  • pp. 3-4: “the iconoclasts, who are often accused of despising and denying images, were in fact the ones who accorded them their actual worth, unlike the iconolaters, who saw in them only reflections and were content to venerate God at one remove.”
  • p. 4: “it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum: not unreal, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.”
  • p. 4: “Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum.”
  • p. 5: “When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality; of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity.”
  • p. 5: “Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation. To begin with it is a play of illusions and phantasms: pirates, the frontier, future world, etc.”
  • p. 6: “the America surrounding [Disneyland] are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.”
    • This is exactly how we critique Las Vegas, that oasis in the desert. Las Vegas makes you feel it’s real and everything else is a desert. Vegas is the adult version of hyperreal Disneyland and Disneyworld.
  • p. 6: “Simulation is infinitely more dangerous since it always suggests, over and above its object, that law and order themselves might really be nothing more than a simulation.”
  • p.7: “you will unwittingly find yourself immediately in the real, one of whose functions is precisely to devour every attempt at simulation, to reduce everything to some reality: that’s exactly how the established order is, well before institutions and justice come into play.”
  • p. 7: “Parody makes obedience and transgression equivalent, and that is the most serious crime, since it cancels out the difference upon which the law is based.”
  • p. 7: “namely, it is now impossible to isolate the process of the real, or to prove the real.”
  • p. 7: “where they function as a set of signs dedicated exclusively to their recurrence as signs, and no longer to their “real” goal at all.”
    • Crimes are “inscribed in advance” by repeated descriptions that the media (culture in general as well) reproduces.
  • p. 8: Let’s also look at note 5 that discusses the paradox of adolescent emancipation: “Alone at last, free and responsible, it seemed to them suddenly that other people possibly have absconded with their true liberty.”
    • Baudrillard doesn’t go down this road, but it’s obvious to me that there’s a similar paradox to getting married: The ideal, media reproduced version of marriage (through the parody of romcoms) has no “real” referent in the world but is a legally binding union that shackles (in patriarchy) women to men. Once married, the illusions disappear and the real “devour[s] every attempt at simulation, to reduce everything to some reality.” Like the new adult who has bills, responsibilities, the “freedom” to chart their own way, etc., the new couple exists in a desert of matrimony with only the media reproductions of hyperreal marriage.
  • p. 8: “As long as it was historically threatened by the real, power risked deterrence and simulation, disintegrating every contradiction by means of the production of equivalent signs.”
  • p. 8: “What society seeks through production, and overproduction, is the restoration of the real which escapes it. That is why contemporary ‘material’ production is itself hyperreal. It retains all the features, the whole discourse of traditional production, but it is nothing more than its scaled-down refraction.”
  • p. 9: “Melancholy for societies without power: this has already given rise to fascism, that overdose of a powerful referential in a society which cannot terminate its mourning.”
    • Consider all the scapegoats needed in society to maintain the “authority” of the demagogue, the “powerful referential.” That demagogue can’t stop the social pains, so they must continue to find problems to maintain the illusion they’re working on terminating mourning. To make a country great again, one needs to assume greatness is real.
  • p. 9: “A simulation which can go on indefinitely…is nothing but the object of a social demand, and hence subject to the law of supply and demand….it is dependent, like any other commodity, on production and mass consumption.”
  • p. 9: “It is as if everyone has “occupied” their work place or work post, after declaring the strike, and resumed production, as is the custom in a “self-managed” job, in exactly the same terms as before, by declaring themselves (and virtually being) in a state of permanent strike.”
  • Occupy Wall Street using the new media technologies brought to you by those multinational corporations that “liberate” you when you purchase them.
  • p. 10: “Ideology only corresponds to a betrayal of reality 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.”

Hence, this is why we say we live in a tissue of lies.

Works Cited

*Kul-Want, Christopher. 2019. “On Contemporary Alienation or the End of the Pact with the Devil.” Pp. 113-116 in Philosophers on Film from Bergson to Badiou: A Critical Reader, edited by Christopher Kul-Want. New York: Columbia University Press.
*Smith, Richard G. 2010. The Baudrillard Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press.

Next Week’s Readings

Next week we have several readings, but you only need to choose one to read. They’re all on Canvas. The following week (4/27) is the last reading–Knoblauch Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword” (pp. 130-200). Also, your Rhetorical Projects are due that day. You’ll present them in 4-5 min on our Final Exam Day, 5/4.


“The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
–Morpheus from The Matrix (1999)

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