Jean Baudrillard - Radical Thought

Translated by Francois DebrixTranslated by Francois Debrix

Sens & Tonka, eds., Collection Morsure, Paris, 1994

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The novel is a work of art not so much because of its

inevitable resemblance with life but because of the
insuperable differences that distinguish it from life.
- Stevenson
And so is thought! Thought is not so much prized for its
inevitable convergences with truth as it is for the insuperable
divergences that separate the two.
It is not true that in order to live one has to believe in one's
own existence. There is no necessity to that. No matter what,
our consciousness is never the echo of our own reality, of an
existence set in "real time." But rather it is its echo in "delayed
time," the screen of the dispersion of the subject and of its
identity - only in our sleep, our unconscious, and our death are
we identical to ourselves. Consciousness, which is totally
different from belief, is more spontaneously the result of a
challenge to reality, the result of accepting objective illusion
rather than objective reality. This challenge is more vital to our
survival and to that of the human species than the belief in
reality and in existence, which always refers to spiritual
consolations pertaining to another world. Our world is such as
it is, but that does not make it more real in any respect. "The
most powerful instinct of man is to be in conflict with truth, and
with the real."
The belief in truth is part of the elementary forms of
religious life. It is a weakness of understanding, of common-
sense. At the same time, it is the last stronghold for the
supporters of morality, for the apostles of the legality of the
real and the rational, according to whom the reality principle
cannot be questioned. Fortunately, nobody, not even those
who teach it, lives according to this principle, and for a good
reason: nobody really believes in the real. Nor do they believe
in the evidence of real life. This would be too sad.
But the good apostles come back and ask: how can you
take away the real from those who already find it hard to live
and who, just like you and me, have a right to claim the real
and the rational? The same insidious objection is proclaimed
in the name of the Third World: How can you take away
abundance when some people are starving to death? Or
perhaps: How can you take away the class struggle from all
the peoples that never got to enjoy their Bourgeois revolution?
Or again: How can you take away the feminist and egalitarian
aspirations from all the women that have never heard of
women's rights? If you don't like reality, please do not make
everybody else disgusted with it! This is a question of
democratic morality: Do not let Billancourt despair!
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note1#note1" 1. You can never let people
despair.
There is a profound disdain behind these charitable
intentions. This disdain first lies in the fact that reality is
instituted as a sort of life-saving insurance, or as a perpetual
concession, as if it were the last of human rights or the first of
everyday consumer products. But, above all, by
acknowledging that people place their hope in reality only, and
in the visible proof of their existence, by giving them a realism
reminiscent of St. Sulpice, they are depicted as naive and
idiotic. This disdain, let us acknowledge it, is first imposed on
themselves by these defenders of realism, who reduce their
own life to an accumulation of facts and proofs, of causes and
effects. After all, a well-structured resentment always stems
from one's own experience.
Say: I am real, this is real, the world is real, and nobody
laughs. But say: this is a simulacrum, you are only a
simulacrum, this war is a simulacrum, and everybody bursts
out laughing. With a condescending and yellow laughter, or
perhaps a convulsive one, as if it was a childish joke or an
obscene invitation. Anything which belongs to the order of
simulacrum is obscene or forbidden, similar to that which
belongs to sex or death. However, our belief in reality and
evidence is far more obscene. Truth is what should be
laughed at. One may dream of a culture where everyone
bursts into laughter when someone says: this is true, this is
real.
All this defines the insoluble relationship between thought
and the real. A certain type of thought is an accomplice of the
real. It starts with the hypothesis that there is a real reference
to an idea and that there is a possible "ideation" of reality. This
is no doubt a comforting perspective, one which is based on
meaning and deciphering. This is also a polarity, similar to that
used by ready-made dialectical and philosophical solutions.
The other thought, on the contrary, is ex-centric from the real.
It is an "ex-centering" HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note2#note2" 2. of the real world and,
consequently, it is alien to a dialectic which always plays on
adversarial poles. It is even alien to critical thought which
always refers to an ideal of the real. To some extent, this
thought is not even a denial of the concept of reality. It is an
illusion, that is to say a "game" HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note3#note3" 3. played with desire (which this
thought puts "into play"), just like metaphor is a "game" played
with truth. This radical thought comes neither from a
philosophical doubt nor from a utopian transference
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note4#note4" 4. (which always supposes an
ideal transformation of the real). Nor does it stem from an
ideal transcendence. It is the "putting into play" HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note5#note5" 5. of this world, the material and
immanent illusion of this so-called "real" world - it is a non-
critical, non-dialectical thought. So, this thought appears to be
coming from somewhere else. In any case, there is an
incompatibility between thought and the real. Between thought
and the real, there is no necessary or natural transition. Not an
"alternation," HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note6#note6" 6. not an alternative either: only
an "alterity" HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note7#note7" 7. keeps them under pressure
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note8#note8" 8.. Only fracture, distance and
alienation safeguard the singularity of this thought, the
singularity of being a singular event, similar in a sense to the
singularity of the world through which it is made into an event.
Things probably did not always happen this way. One
may dream of a happy conjunction of idea and reality, in the
shadow of the Enlightenment and of modernity, in the heroic
ages of critical thought. But that thought, which operated
against a form of illusion - superstitious, religious, or
ideological - is substantially over. And even if that thought had
survived its catastrophic secularization in all the political
systems of the 20th century, the ideal and almost necessary
relationship between concept and reality would in any case
have been destroyed today. That thought disappeared under
the pressure of a gigantic simulation, a technical and mental
one, under the pressure of a precession of models to the
benefit of an autonomy of the virtual, from now on liberated
from the real, and of a simultaneous autonomy of the real that
today functions for and by itself - motu propio - in a delirious
perspective, infinitely self-referential. Expelled, so to speak,
from its own frame, from its own principle, pushed toward its
extraneity, the real has become an extreme phenomenon. So,
we no longer can think of it as real. But we can think of it as
"ex-orbitated," as if it was seen from another world - as an
illusion then.
Let's ponder over what could be a stupefying experience:
the discovery of another real world, different from ours. Ours,
one day, was discovered. The objectivity of this world was
discovered, just like America was discovered, more or less at
the same period. But what was discovered can never be
created again. That's how reality was discovered, and is still
created (or the alternate version: this is how reality was
created, which is still being discovered). Why wouldn't there
be as many real worlds as there are imaginary ones? Why
would there be only one real world? Why such a mode of
exception? In reality, the notion of a real world existing among
all other possible worlds is unimaginable. It is unthinkable,
except perhaps as a dangerous superstition. We must stay
away from that, just as critical thought once stayed away (in
the name of the real!) from religious superstition. Thinkers,
give it another try!
In any case, the two orders of thought are irreconcilable.
They each follow their own path without blending into one
another. At best, they slide on one another, like tectonic
plates, and from time to time their collision or their subduction
creates fault lines inside which reality is engulfed. Fatality is
always at the crossing point of these two lines. Similarly,
radical thought is at the violent crossing point of sense and
non-sense, of truth and non-truth, of the continuation of the
world and the continuation of nothingness.
In contrast to the discourse of reality and rationality, which
bets on the fact that there is something (some meaning) rather
than nothing, and which, in the last analysis, wants to be built
on the preservative notion of an objective and decipherable
world, radical thought bets on the illusion of the world. This
thought wants to be illusion, restituting non-veracity to the
facts, non- signification to the world, and formulating the
reverse hypothesis that there may be nothing rather than
something, tracking down this nothingness which runs under
the apparent continuation of meaning.
The radical prediction is always that of a non-reality of
the facts, of an illusion of the factual. It merely starts with the
foreboding of this illusion, but never fuses with the objective
state of things. Any fusion of this type would be similar to
mistaking a messenger for his message, which still today
consists in killing the messenger who always brings the bad
news (for example, the news that all our values are null, that
the real is uncertain, that certain events do not "take place"
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note9#note9" 9.). Any fusion of the thought (of
writing, of language) with the real - a so-called "faithfulness of
the real" with a thought that has made the real emerge in all of
its configurations - is hallucinatory. It is moreover the result of
a total misinterpretation of language, of the fact that language
is an illusion in its very movement, that it carries this
continuation of emptiness or nothingness at the very core of
what it says, and that it is in all its materiality a deconstruction
of what it signifies. Just as the photograph (the image)
connotes an erasure, the death of what it represents, that
which gives the photograph its intensity, what gives intensity
to writing, be it the writing of a fiction or the writing of a
theoretical fiction, is emptiness, an underlying nothingness, an
illusion of meaning, an ironic dimension of language, which is
corollary to an ironic dimension of the facts themselves, which
are never what they are - in all meanings: they are never more
than what they are, and they are always only what they are - a
perfect . The irony of the facts, in their miserable reality, is
precisely that they are only what they are. At least, that is what
they are supposed to mean: "the real is the real." But, by this
very fact (so to speak), they are necessarily beyond [truth]
because factual existence is impossible: nothing is totally
evidentiary without becoming an enigma. Reality, in general, is
too evident to be true.
It is this ironic transfiguration through language which
constitutes the event of language. And it is on a restitution of
this fundamental illusion of the world and language that
thought must work, without however taking language in its
literality, where the messenger is mistaken for the message,
and thus already sacrificed.
The two modes of thought present radically opposed
projects: one hopes to reveal the objective reality of this world
but wants to be a distinct thought; the other seeks to restore
an illusion, of which it is an integral part. One seeks a total
gravitation, a concentric effect of meaning. The other seeks to
be anti-gravitational and to reach an "ex-centering" of reality, a
global attraction of the void toward the periphery (Jarry).
The requirement of this thought is double and
contradictory. It does not consist in analyzing the world to
extract from it an improbable truth. It does not adapt itself
dialectically to the facts and abstract from them some logical
construction. It is much more subtle than that, and more
perverse as well. This thought consists in putting into place a
form, a matrix of illusion and disillusion, a strange attracting
force, so that a seduced reality will be able to spontaneously
feed on it. This thought will also be implacably self-fulfilling
(you just have, from time to time, to displace the "object"
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note10#note10" 10. a bit). Indeed, reality only
asks to be submitted to hypotheses, so that it can fulfill
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note11#note11" 11. all of them: this is reality's
own trick and vengeance. A theoretical ideal would be to put
into place some theses so that they could be denied by reality
and so that reality would have no choice but to oppose them
violently and thus unmask them. For reality is an illusion, and
any thought must first try to unmask it. For this purpose, reality
itself must remain masked and must shape itself as a decoy,
without even thinking or caring about its own truth. Reality
must place its pride in never being an instrument of analysis,
or a critical instrument, because it is the world that must
proceed to its own analysis. It is the world, not reality, that
must be revealed not as a truth, but as an illusion.
We must trap reality, we must go faster than reality. The
idea too must go faster than its own shadow. But if the idea
goes too fast, even its shadow faints: no longer having the
faintest idea... HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note12#note12" 12. Words go faster than
signification. But if they go too fast, everything turns into sheer
madness: an ellipse of meaning may even cause one to lose
one's taste for the sign. What can we exchange this work, this
shadow, this intellectual economy and patience for? What can
we sell it to the devil for? It is hard to tell. In fact, we are the
orphans of a reality that came too late and which is only, like
truth, an "official report" in "delayed time."
The ultimate prize HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note13#note13" 13. is when an idea
disappears as an idea to become a thing among other things.
That's where it finds its completion. Having become con-
substantial with the surrounding world, the idea no longer has
to appear as an idea and no longer has to be supported as
such. A vanishing of the idea through a silent dissemination,
and of course an antinomy of any intellectual celebration. An
idea is never destined to burst open but on the contrary to
fade away in the world, in the trans-appearance the idea gives
to the world, and in the trans-appearance of the world as it
was expressed by the idea. A book is finished only when its
object has vanished. Its substance must not leave any marks.
It is as if it were a perfect crime. Whatever its object, writing
must allow illusion to radiate and turn it into an elusive
enigma: unable to be received by the specialists and the
Realpolitikers of the concept. The objective of writing is to alter
its object, to seduce it, to make it disappear from its own
vision. Writing aims at a total resolution, a poetic resolution as
Saussure would have it, a resolution marked by a rigorous
dispersion in the name of God.
If the thought enunciates an object as a truth, it is only as a
challenge to this object's own self-fulfillment. The trouble
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note14#note14" 14. with reality (reality's ennui)
is that it goes head-on toward the hypotheses that negate it.
And then reality surrenders to the first warnings, and bends to
conceptual violence. Its distinguishing sign is that of voluntary
serfdom. Reality's a bitch! HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note15#note15" 15. Contrary to what is said
(the real is what resists, that on which all hypotheses come to
crash), reality is not very strong, or at least less and less so.
Rather, reality appears to be ready to operate a disorderly
withdrawal. Full walls of reality crumble - just like the collapse
of Buzatti's "Baliverna," where the smallest crack triggers a
total chain reaction. We can find the decomposed ruins
everywhere - just as in Borges' "Map and Territory." Not only
does reality resist those who still criticize it, but it also
abandons those who defend it. Maybe it is a way for reality to
get its revenge from those who claim to believe in it for the
sole purpose of eventually transforming it: sending back its
supporters to their own desires. Finally, reality is perhaps
more like a "femme fatale" than a "bitch." HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note16#note16" 16.
More subtly, reality also gets its revenge from those who
challenge it by, paradoxically, proving that they are right.
Whenever any risky idea, any cynical or critical hypothesis
proves to be right, it in fact turns out to be a dirty trick. You are
fooled and disarmed. Your arguments are lamentably
confirmed by a reality without scruples.
So, you may posit the idea of a simulacrum, and yet,
secretly, not believe in it, hoping that the real will avenge itself.
The theory is then not necessarily convinced of its own
validity. Unfortunately, only those who are reality fanatics react
negatively. Reality does not seem to be willing to deny itself,
far from it: all simulacra wander freely. Reality today is nothing
more than the apocalypse of simulation. Consequently, the
reality supporters (who defend reality as if it was a moral value
or a virtue) play, so to speak, the part of those who once were
called the fanatics of the Apocalypse.
The idea of simulacrum was a conceptual weapon against
reality, but it has been stolen. Not that it has been pillaged,
vulgarized, or has become common-place HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note17#note17" 17. (which is true but has no
consequence), but because simulacra have been absorbed by
reality which has swallowed them and which, from now on, is
clad with all the rhetoric of simulation. And to cap it all,
simulacra have become reality! Today, simulacra guarantee
the continuation of the real. The simulacrum now hides, not
the truth, but the fact that there is none, that is to say, the
continuation of Nothingness.
This is the very paradox of any thought that reveals the
falsehood of the real: when reality steals your concept and
realizes (fulfills) it, and by the same token flies away from any
criticism. Events, deprived of any direction, steal any possible
meaning. HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note18#note18" 18. They adapt to the most
fantastic hypotheses like natural species and viruses adapt to
the most hostile environments. They show an extraordinary
mimetic capacity. There has been a reversal here too: it is no
longer theories that have to adapt to events, but events that
adapt to theories. In any case, they mystify us because a
theory that realizes itself HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note19#note19" 19. is no longer a theory. A
realized hypothesis is no longer a hypothesis. It is terrifying to
see a hypothesis be realized like this. It is terrifying to
suddenly see the idea coincide with reality. This is the agony
of the concept. The epiphany of the real is the twilight of the
concept.
We have lost the advance that ideas had on the world, that
distance that makes an idea stay an idea. Thought must
anticipate, be exceptional, and in the margin - the projected
shadow of the future events. Yet, today, we are lagging behind
the events. They may sometimes give the impression that they
regress, that they are not what they should be. In fact, they
have passed over us for a long time. The simulated disorder of
things has gone faster than us. The effect of reality has
disappeared behind the acceleration of things - an
anamorphosis of speed. What happens to the heterogeneity of
thought in a world that has been converted to the craziest
hypotheses and to an artificial delirium? In their accelerated
occurrence, the events have in a sense swallowed their own
interpretation. Things have been cleansed of their own
meaning. And consequently, they are like black holes and can
no longer reflect. They are what they are, never too late for
their occurrence, but always beyond their meaning. What is
late rather is the interpretation of things. Interpretation is then
merely a retro figure for an unpredictable event.
What to do then? What is there to do when suddenly
everything fits the ironic, critical, alternative, and catastrophic
model that you suggested (everything fits the model you gave
beyond any hopes you had because, in a sense, you never
believed it could go that far, otherwise you would never have
been able to create it)? Well!... It's heaven! We are beyond
doomsday, in the realm of immortality. All there is to do is
survive. For, then, at this point, the irony, the challenge, the
anticipation, and the evil are terminated, just as hope
inexorably dies in front of the gates of hell. In fact, hell starts
here. Hell as an inferno characterized by the unconditional
realization of all ideas: an inferno of reality. We then
understand (see Adorno) that concepts prefer to commit
suicide rather than come to that point.
Something else has been stolen from us: indifference.
The power of indifference, which is the quality of the mind, as
opposed to the play of differences, which is the characteristic
of the world. But indifference has been taken away from us by
a world that has become indifferent. Similarly, the eccentricity
of thinking has been taken away by an eccentric world. When
things and events refer to one another and to their non-
differentiated concept, the equivalence of the world joins and
erases the indifference of thinking. Boredom emerges. No
more confrontations, no more stakes. Just a parting of dead
waters.
How beautiful indifference was in a world that was not
indifferent! In a world that was different, convulsive and
contradictory, with stakes and passions. Back then, the
indifference of the mind could turn into a stake or a passion, in
total opposition to the world. It could anticipate the indifferent
future of the world and turn this indifference into an event.
Today, it is difficult to be more apathetic and more indifferent
than the facts themselves. The world in which we operate
today is apathetic, indifferent to its own life, without passion,
and deadly boring. There is no point in being dispassionate in
a world without passions. Being dis-invested in a world without
investment makes no sense. That's how we have become
orphans.
Our point is not to defend radical thought. Any idea that
can be defended is presumed guilty. Any idea that does not
sustain its own defense deserves to perish. But we have to
fight against charges of unreality, lack of responsibility,
nihilism, and despair. Radical thought is never depressing.
This would be a complete misunderstanding. A moralizing and
ideological critique, obsessed by meaning and content,
obsessed by a political finality of discourse, never takes into
account writing, the act of writing, the poetic, ironic, and
allusive form of language, the play with meaning. This critique
does not see that the resolution of meaning is right here, in the
form itself, in the formal materiality of an expression. As for
meaning, it is always unfortunate. Analysis is by its very
definition unfortunate since it is born out of a critical disillusion.
But language on the contrary is fortunate (happy), even when
it designates a world with no illusion, with no hope. This would
in fact be here the very definition of radical thought: an
intelligence without hope, but a fortunate and happy form.
Critics, always being unfortunate (unhappy) in their nature,
choose the realm of ideas as their battle field. They do not see
that if discourse always tends to produce meaning, language
and writing on the contrary are always a matter of illusion.
Language and writing are the living illusion of meaning, the
resolution of the misfortune of meaning operated through the
good fortune of language. This is the only political or
transpolitical act that a writer can accomplish.
Everyone has ideas, even more than they need. What
matters is the poetic singularity of analysis. Only this witz, this
spirituality of language, can justify writing. Not a miserable
critical objectivity of ideas. There will never be a solution to the
contradiction of ideas, except inside language itself, in the
energy and fortune (happiness) of language. So the loneliness
and sadness in Edward Hopper's paintings are transfigured by
the timeless quality of light, a light which comes from some
place else and gives to the whole picture a totally non-
figurative meaning, an intensity which renders loneliness
unreal. Hopper says: "I do not paint sadness or loneliness; I
only seek to paint light on this wall."
In any case, it is better to have a despairing analysis in a
happy language than an optimistic analysis in despairingly
boring and demoralizingly plain language. Which is too often
the case. The formal boredom that is secreted by an idealist
thought on values, or by a goal-oriented HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note20#note20" 20. thought on culture, is the
secret sign of despair for this thought - not despair with the
world, but despair toward its own discourse. This is where the
real depressing thought emerges. It emerges with those
people who only talk about a transcendence HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note21#note21" 21. or a transformation of the
world, while they are totally unable to transfigure their own
language.
Radical thought is in no way different from radical usage
of language. This thought is therefore alien to any resolution of
the world which would take the direction HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note22#note22" 22. of an objective reality and
of its deciphering. Radical thought does not decipher. It
anathematizes and "anagramatizes" concepts and ideas,
exactly what poetic language does with words. Through its
reversible chaining, it simultaneously gives an account of
meaning and of its fundamental illusion. Language gives an
account of the very illusion of language as a definite
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note23#note23" 23. stratagem and through
that notes the illusion of the world as an infinite trap, as a
seduction of the mind, as a stealing away of all mental
capacities. While being a transporter of meaning, language is
at the same time a supra-conductor of illusion and of the
absence of meaning HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note24#note24" 24.. Language is only
signification's unintentional accomplice. By its very force, it
calls for the spiritual imagination of sounds and rhythms, for
the dispersion of meaning in the event of language, similar to
the role of the muscles in dance, similar to the role of
reproduction in erotic games.
Such a passion for the artificial, a passion for illusion, is
the same thing as the seductive joy (jouissance HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note25#note25" 25.) to undo a too perfect
constellation of meaning. It is also a joy (jouissance) to
render transparent the imposture of the world, that is to say
the enigmatic function of the world, and its mystification which
supposedly is its secret. Doing this while perhaps rendering its
imposture transparent: deceiving rather than validating
meaning. HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note26#note26" 26. This passion "wins"
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note27#note27" 27. in the free and spiritual
usage of language, in the spiritual game of writing. And it only
disappears when language is used for a limited finality, its
most common usage perhaps, that of communication. No
matter what, if language wants to "speak the language" of
illusion, it must become a seduction. As for "speaking the
language" of the real, it would not know how to do it (properly
speaking) because language is never real. Whenever it
appears to be able to designate things, it actually does so by
following unreal, elliptic, and ironic paths. Objectivity and truth
are metaphoric in language. Too bad for the apodicticians or
the apodidacticians! This is how language is, even
unconsciously, the carrier of radical thought, because it
always starts from itself, as a trait d'esprit vis-a-vis the world,
as an ellipse and a source of pleasure. Even the confusion of
languages in the Tower of Babel, a powerful mechanism of
illusion for the human race, a source of non-communication
and an end to the possibility of a universal language, will have
appeared, finally, not as a divine punishment but as a gift from
God.
Ciphering, not deciphering. Operating illusions. Being
illusion HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "note28#note28" 28. to be event. Turning into
an enigma what is clear. Making unintelligible what is far too
intelligible. Rendering unreadable the event itself. Working all
the events to make them unintelligible. Accentuating the fake
transparency of the world to spread a terroristic confusion, to
spread the germs or viruses of a radical illusion, that is to say
operating a radical disillusion of the real. A viral and
deleterious thought, which corrupts meaning, and is the
accomplice of an erotic perception of reality's trouble.
Erasing in oneself any remaining trace of the intellectual
plot. Stealing the "reality file" to erase its conclusions. But, in
fact, it is reality itself which foments its own contradiction, its
own denial, its own loss through our lack of reality. Hence, the
internal feeling that all this affair - the world, thought, and
language - has emerged from some place else and could
disappear as if by magic. The world does not seek to have
more existence, nor does it seek to persist in its existence. On
the contrary, it is looking for the most spiritual way to escape
reality. Through thought, the world is looking for what could
lead to its own loss.
The absolute rule, that of symbolic exchange, is to return
what you received. Never less, but always more. The absolute
rule of thought is to return the world as we received it:
unintelligible. And if it is possible, to return it a little bit more
unintelligible. A little bit more enigmatic.
Notes
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text1#text1" 1. "Billancourt," a French
automobile production plant renowned for its repeated strikes,
is here Baudrillard's metaphor for the "proletariat".
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text2#text2" 2. Excentration is the term
used in French.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text3#text3" 3. The term used in French is
jeu. Jeu means either game, play or mechanism.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text4#text4" 4. Transfert utopique is the
term used in French.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text5#text5" 5. The term mise en jeu
(putting into play) renders the idea of play/game. But it may
also signify the beginning of a process, game, activity (for
example, the biginning of a soccer game or a card game). It
may also connotethat which is at stake (en jeu).
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text6#text6" 6. Alternance in French.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text7#text7" 7. "Alterity," of alterite in French,
reiterates the notion of "radical otherness" already expressed
by Jean Baudrillard in another work. See Marc Guillaume &
Jean Baudrillard, L'Alterite Radicale (Paris: Gallimard, 1994),
still not published in English.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text8#text8" 8. Sous Tension in French.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text9#text9" 9. Ont lieu in French means
either "taking place" (in the sense of happening) or "taking its
place" (in the sense of ocupying a place, a specific locus).
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text10#text10" 10. The term used by
Baudrillard is objectif which means either objective, goal/aim
or lens (as in a photographic device). To leave the term
objectif undecided in this translation the word "object",
unsatisfactory as it is, seemed appropriate.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text11#text11" 11. The term used in French is
verifier: to fulfill, to check or to prove.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text12#text12" 12. The pun is better rendered
in French. "Shadow" (ombre in French) appears in the
common saying: ne plus avoir l'ombre d'une idee, no
longer haveing the slightest idea about anything, but literally
meaning "no longer having the shadow of an idea.".
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text13#text13" 13. Le fin du fin signifies that
which is highest among the already high, the top of the top.
Yet the term fin also means the end (so, "the end of the end"
perhaps too...).
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text14#text14" 14. Ennui means trouble but
also conveys the notion of "boredom".
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text15#text15" 15. La realite est une
chienne in French.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text16#text16" 16. A very shaky translation
of: "la realite est peut-etre plutot une sphinge qu'une
chienne.".
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text17#text17" 17. The term used in French,
lieu commun, gives the idea of place (literally, a common
place), but also signifies "banality".
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text18#text18" 18. Baudrillard here plays on
the term sens which, in French, means "direction" or
"meaning" (it can also mean "sense"). The terms "direction"
and "meaning" are interchangable in this sentence and can be
conbined any way the reader prefers.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text19#text19" 19. Or "fulfills itself.".
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text20#text20" 20. Voluntariste in French.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text21#text21" 21. Depassement.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text22#text22" 22. or the meaning.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text23#text23" 23. definitif.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text24#text24" 24. non-sens.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text25#text25" 25. joie.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text26#text26" 26. imposteur, et non
composteur de sens..
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text27#text27" 27. L'emporte in French
means either "winning" or "carrying away with oneself." La
passion l'emporte can thus signify the success of this
passion over meaning or the fact that this passion has
grabbed meaning and takes it away with itself.
HYPERLINK
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-radical-
thought.html" \l "text28#text28" 28. Faire illusion is also a
French expression which means "conveying unfulfilled hopes
or promises,".
Baudrillard, Jean. "La Pensee Radicale." Sens & Tonka, eds.,
Collection Morsure, Paris, 1994. Available: HYPERLINK
"javascript:extUrl('http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/r
adical.html')"
http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/radical.ht
m.
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