AMERICA  ~ part 2 

Here is part 2 of my installment on Jean Baudrillard’s book, “America“.  In this portion, Baudrillard really starts ‘drawing the boundaries’, if you will; clearly defining the fundamental elements of society – elements by which we distinguish ourselves from Europe and the rest of the world.   I find great importance in his explanation;  primarily because it reaffirms the fact that we are unique… it carries with it a certain form of identity–an identity we so easily miss without the perspective of a foreigner.  

The confrontation between America and Europe reveals not so much a rapprochment as a distortion, an unbridgeable rift.  There isn’t just a gap between us, but a whole chasm of modernity.  You are born modern, you do not become so.  And we have never become so…

Every country bears a sort of historical predestination, which almost definitively determines its characteristics.  For us, it is the bourgeois model of 1789 – and the interminable decadence of that model – that shapes our landscape.  There is nothing we can do about it:  everything here revolves around the nineteenth-century bourgeois dream.

As an initial matter, I find Baudrillard’s fatalistic point of view fascinating; the differences we have with Europe are not simply skin deep but amount to an insurmountable hurdle.   His phrase, ”a chasm of modernity”, is particularily important in this regard; it implies an inescapable difference in values — values that appear impossible to change.   When he writes, It is almost as if he wishes he could have been born modern; but realizes it would be an futile attempt to become so.  

Now, this begs the question:  what are these modern traits that differentiate us from our European counterparts?   Although Baudrillard discusses a number of different alternatives, I found his explanation of pragmatism to be the most interesting:

America is neither dream nor reality.  It is a hyperreality.  It is a hyperreality because it is a utopia which has behaved from the very beginning as though it were already achieved.  Everything here is real and pragmatic, and yet it is all the stuff of dreams too.  It may be that the truth of America can only be seen by a European, since he alone will discover here the perfect simulacrum – that of the immanence and material transcription of all values.  The Americans, for their part, have no sense of simulation.  They are themselves simulation in its most developed state, but they have no language to describe it, since they themselves are the model.

We shall remain nostalgic utopians, agonizing over our ideals, but baulking, ultimately, at their realization, professing that everything is possible, but never that everything has been achieved.  yet that is what America asserts.  Our problem is that our old goals – revolution, progress, freedom – will have evaporated before they were achieved, before they became reality.  Hence our melancholy. 

This is perhaps the most generous portion of his book; one can omly imagine the nasty letters he must have recieved back home after daring publish such an idea.  After all, one would hardly expect a Frenchman to use the term “utopia” and “America” in the same sentence… but perhaps we do not give the French enough credit…

I expect Baudrillard is not entirely correct on this point; we may exert the appearance of a utopian society… but it may be so only by appearance.  We have beautiful neighborhoods, grand cities, open prairies, beautiful mountains… but this is not by any stretch a completely accurate picture.  Cities slip into slums, neighborhoods merge into industrial areas, and beautiful parks must have a nearby landfill.  And behind every white picket fence exist abuses, quarrels, depression,  all the problems inherent with all societies.  Is a society utopian in appearance alone truly a utopian society?   Does it matter?

The Pragmatism of the U.S. is also a very interesting concept; we do not attempt to invent a better mousetrap, we only insist that we build the best one.  We are not satisfied to merely imagine concepts but to realize those concepts in very practical forms.  

Our Constitution is, in many ways, a perfect example of this.  Never before in history (that I am aware) was a legitimate government created solely by the power of the people (i.e. “We the people…”).  Instead of worrying about the feasibility of such a government, the founding fathers simply assumed a priori that the people had power to establish their own government, and that the resulting sovereign would be legitimate by definition.  Instead of theorizing where rights come from, it was simply stated as fact that such rights exist… end of discussion (“We hold these truths to be self-evident… that all men are created equal”).  It would be as if the founding fathers said, “unicorns hereby exist”… and a unicorn materialized before their very eyes.  Very perceptive to say the least.

Having laid the groundword, so to speak, Baudrillard then turns to the attitudes of Europe and offers an interesting reprimand of sorts:

 We criticize Americans for not being able to either analyze or conceptualize.  But this is a wrong-headed critique.  It is we who imagine that everything culminates in transcendence, and that nothing exists which has not been conceptualized.  Not only do they care little for such a view, but their perspective is the very opposite:  it is not conceptualizing reality, but realizing concepts and materializing ideas, that interests them…  Everything that has been dreamt on this side of the Atlantic has a chance of being realized on the other.  They build the real out of ideas…

It’s funny how knowledge affects your perception of information;  it wasn’t even a day after I had read this passage that I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on the drive home and overheard him say, “I don’t search for the deeper meaning of reality… reality is enough for me”.  Like him or not, I think he represents the mindset of a very large portion of our society.  Upon reflection of his quote, it really hit me how grounded in reality we are as a society… how we look at everything in terms of it’s immediate consequences and practical ramifications.  We are not a country of day-dreamers… but a country of do-ers.  We all want to be involved with something… be that another person, an organization,  politics, career, a hobby–we all want the experience of reality; we want to participate in it as much as possible; whether or not this is a uniquely American characteristic or not is anyone’s guess; perhaps it is more a human trait then anything else.  

Well, I’m all blogged out…  more to come!  Any thoughts?