Foreword to "After War, Baudrillard"
The occasion for the essay to follow is the recent news that Dr. Ben Zweibelson is planning to release another book soon1. This book will focus on non-standard ways of looking at war. I told Dr. Zweibelson that I was excited to see what the new book would contain with regard to Jean Baudrillard2, who remains my favorite author—although the question must be quickly asked, and answered: “which Baudrillard?”
Dr. Zweibelson answered that Baudrillard text The Gulf War Did Not Take Place3 will feature into his seventh chapter4, which he has just recently completed as he moves to write the final three chapters of his book. It seems therefore an opportune moment for me to compile my thoughts on Baudrillard and the topic of war, in order to present to (you) Dr. Zweibelson when this topic is so close to mind and when it is perhaps still possible to influence the writing of the book.
I also linked to Dr. Zweibelson a post I wrote last year about the concept of complex emergency5. My contention, extending General Rupert Smith’s assertion that “war no longer exists,”6 is that war has perhaps never existed. (Compare this thesis to that offered by Baudrillard in The Mirror of Production7 about the core Marxist concept of modes of production: “Are we, quite simply, within a mode of production at all, and have we ever been in one?”)
In my reading, what is considered to be war is an example of a complex emergency. The notion of complex emergency is still waiting to fully molt out of its conceptualization, for example by the Joint Chiefs of Staff,8 as “a wide array of international conflict, humanitarian, and domestic disaster relief scenarios [involving] combinations of warfare, civil disturbance, and natural and man-made disasters coupled with vulnerabilities such as food insecurity, epidemics, social conflict, and displaced populations.”
I believe that Dr. Zweibelson’s thinking with respect to emergence9 and phantasmal conflict10 are crucial to bring to bear on an elaboration of the concept of “emergency” which prioritizes its sharing of a common root word with the word “emergence.” Investigation of the etymology of the word “emerge”11 shows us that the original connotation might be “rising from a liquid by virtue of buoyancy.”
This connotation brings to mind for me many poetic images, including: 1) Romain Rolland’s notion of the “oceanic feeling12” associated with mystical experiences, and hence this idea that all experience is “emerging” from this unconsicous “ocean,” 2) Plotinus’ image, born from Plato, of the sea god Glaucus emerging from the ocean covered in barnacles13; 3) the Inuit myth of Sedna, and the idea that to appease her a shaman must dive to the bottom of the sea to comb her hair14, and this shaman’s emergence from the water at the end, having succeeded or failed [Dr. Zweibelson will be especially interested to know of the dwarf planet 90377 Sedna, one of the bodies with the widest orbits around our sun which has given its name to such bodies, “Sednoids”15]; 4) the eponymous image from Weyes Blood’s 2019 album Titanic Rising16, conjuring the notion of the legendary sea disaster rising from the depths (this image should be understood with this lyric from the space-themed track Andromeda17: “lift the heart from the depths its fallen to/ we all want something new but can’t seem to follow through;” 5) The opening theme of a Godzilla18 cartoon I watched as a child, which begins: “Up from the depths…”, calling to mind Godzilla as a commentary on war’s profound social mutation effects, mediated by disruptive technology such as nuclear weapons.
A final note of introduction, finally posing the question of “which Baudrillard?” I recall reading Baudrillard’s Challenge19 by Victoria Grace (which had the virtue of introducing me to Nagarjuna20), and Dr. Grace argued that Baudrillard can be read as internally consistent. I disagree, finding that Baudrillard remains my favorite theorist for his moments of transcendence, but that there remains much within him to differ from. The answer to the question of “which Baudrillard” can only be: MY BAUDRILLARD. I endeavor not to argue for what Baudrillard “really thought,” or participate (yet) at the height of military theory. Rather, I will present the passages which are most salient to me on the topic of Baudrillard and (the simulacrum of) war.