Queer Theory/DnG link

Baudrillard is critical of all claims to productivity like Foucaults power or Deleuzes Desire (not understood
through lack but the positive productive flows+intensisites, as a network). This plays into the constant expansion
and circulations of signs and capital
Grace 2000 (Victoria Canterbury sociology professor,, Baudrillard's Challenge: A Feminist Reading, pg
51-54,)

This leads into a discussion of Baudrillard's arguments on desire and his critical view on
psychoanalysis, as he points out that the same comment (as that cited just above) could be

made in relation to Deleuze's 'molecular topography of desire', claiming that the flows
and connections of such a desire will no doubt soon converge with 'genetic simulations,
microcellular drifts, and the random facilitations of code manipulators' (FF: 35). He notes
that terms from microphysics and computer theory can be transferred today into
discourses of desire as well as power (for example, 'particles', 'random elements',
'clusters', and so on). In fact, Baudrillard's arguments that position Foucault in relation to
Marx on the question of power arc paralleled in the position of Deleuze in relation to
Freud on the question of desire. Baudrillard claims that the similarities between
Foucault's 'new' version of power and Deleuze's desire are not accidental. They can
be readily understood within the social, historical milieu in which they took, or are
taking, shape. According to Baudrillard, desire, in Deleuze's terms, is not to be
understood through lack or interdiction, but through the positive deployment of
flows and intensities; a positive dissemination, 'purged of all negativity'. Desire is 'a
network, a rhizome, a contiguity diffracted ad infinitum' (FF: 17-18). Desire is
productive, as power is productive, and in Baudrillard's
analysis, the same concerns must be raised . Earlier, in the discussion
of Braidotti's engagement with Deleuze's concept of desire, I raised a question about the
nomadic desiring subject embraced by Braidotti as potentially emancipatory, asking
whether this might rather be a concept of desire and subjectivity that is in fact complicit
with the contemporary construct of value and consumerism. Baudrillard is very clear
about it: This compulsion towards Liquidity, flow, and an
accelerated circulation of what is psychic, sexual, or
pertaining to the body is the exact replica of the force which
rules market value: capital muse circulate; gravity and any
fixed point must disappear; the chain of investments and
reinvestments must never stop; value muse radiate endlessly
and in every direction. FF: 25) Rather than discovering the truth of the
body through this productive, positive liberation of libidinal energy expressed and
advocated in Deleuzes writing, it is, in Baudrillards analysis, simply
unearthing the psychic metaphor of capital . Deleuze, through his

critique of psychoanalysis, instantiates the axiomatic of desire in a parallel form of

Foucaults instantiation of the inevitability of power in his critical distance from
Marx. In Forget Foucault, Baudrillards attention is understandably drawn to what he
calls the convergence of the purified axioms of Marxism and psychoanalysis in the
catchword of the productivity of desire. Desire annexed to production neatly
eradicates seduction, meaning, again in a parallel form co power, that sexuality is
everywhere at precisely the moment it is nowhere. Desire in its positive, productive
formulation functions differently from desire manifested through loss, or lack. It
becomes negotiable' in terms of signs which are exchanged in terms of phallic
values, 'indexed on a general phallic equivalent where each party operates in
accordance with a contract and converts its own enjoyment into cash in terms of a
phallic accumulation: a perfect situation for a political economy of desire' (SE&D:
103). The implications of Baudrillard's arguments regarding the positioning of 'the
feminine' in relation to contemporary discourses on 'sexuality' and 'desire', as these are
explored in Symbolic Exchange and Death, will be discussed in Chapter 5 in conjunction
with his book Seduction. My main purpose here is to foreground the critique of the
productivity of desire in Deleuze, with its implications for feminist engagement with this
theoretical notion. Further to this purpose, it is useful at this point to outline Baudrillard's
related thoughts on psychoanalysis, and 'the subject' of psychoanalytic theory.

Evidence describing simulation

Baudrillard 94 (Jean, The Precession of Simulacra, Simulacra and Simulations, 16-17)
Watergate was thus nothing but a lure held out by a system to catch its adversaries a
simulation of scandal for regenerative ends. In the film, this is embodied by the
character of Deep Throat, who was said to be the eminence grise of the
Republicans, manipulating the left-wing journalists in order to get rid of Nixon and
why not? All hypotheses are possible, but this one is superfluous: the Left itself does
a perfectly good job, and spontaneously, of doing the work of the Right. Besides, it
would be nave to see an embittered good conscience at work here. Because
manipulation is a wavering causality in which possibility and negativity
are engendered and overlap , in which there is no longer either an
active or a passive. It is through the arbitrary cessation of this
spiraling causality that a principle of political reality can be
saved . It is through the simulation of a narrow, conventional field of
perspective in which the premises and the consequences of an act or of an event
can be calculated, that a political credibility can be maintained (and of course
objective analysis, the struggle, etc.). If one envisions the entire cycle of any act
or event in a system where linear continuity and dialectical polarity no longer
exist, in a field unhinged by simulation, all determination evaporates, every act is

terminated at the end of the cycle having benefited everyone and having been
scattered in all directions. Is any given bombing in Italy the work of leftist
extremists, or extreme-right provocation, or a centrist mis-en-scene to discredit
all extreme terrorists and to shore up its own failing power, or again, is it a
police-inspired scenario and a form of blackmail to public security? All of this is
simultaneously true, and the search for proof, indeed for
objectivity of the facts does not put an end to this vertigo
of interpretation. That is, we are in a logic of simulation, which no longer
has anything to do with a logic of facts and an order of reason. Simulation is
characterized by a precession of the model, of all models based on the merest fact
the models come first, their circulation, orbital like that of the bomb, constitutes
the genuine magnetic field of the event. The facts no longer have a specific
trajectory, they are born at the intersection of models, a single fact can be
engendered by all the models at once. This anticipation, this precession, this short
circuit, this confusion of the fact with its model (no more divergence of meaning,
no more dialectical polarity, no more negative electricity, implosion of antagonistic
poles), is what allows each time for all possible interpretations, even the most
contradictory all true, in the sense that their truth is to be
exchanged , in all the image of the models from which they derive, in a
generalized cycle.
Presupposing meaning generates harms of 1ac
Baudrillard 1994
(Jean, The Implosion of Meaning in the Media, Simulacra and Simulations,)

The fact of this implosion of contents, of this absorption of meaning, of the

evanescence of the medium itself, of the reabsorption of every dialectic of
communication in a total circularity of the model, of the implosion of the social in
the masses, may seem catastrophic and desperate. But this is only the case
in light of the idealism that dominates our whole view of
information . We all live by a passionate idealism of meaning and of
communication, by an idealism of communication through meaning, and, from this
perspective, it is truly the catastrophe of meaning that lies in wait for us. But one
must realize that catastrophe has this catastrophic meaning of end and
annihilation only in relation to a linear vision of accumulation, of
productive finality, imposed on us by the system. Etymologically,
the term itself only signifies the curvature, the winding down of the bottom of a cycle that
leads to what one could call the horizon of the event, to an impossible horizon of
meaning: beyond that nothing takes place that has meaning for us but it suffices to
get out of this ultimatum of meaning in order for the catastrophe itself to no longer

seem like a final and nihilistic day of reckoning, such as it functions in our
contemporary imaginary.
Man this card is good
Baudrillard 2006 (Jean, Translated by James Benedict The Melodrama of
Difference (Or, The Revenge of the Colonized
http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol3_1/baudrillard2.htm)
What is founded on the impossibility of exchange? Wherever exchange is impossible,
what we encounter is terror. Any radical otherness at all is thus the epicenter of a
terror: the terror that such otherness holds, by virtue of its very existence, for the
normal world. And the terror that this world exercises upon that otherness in
order to annihilate it. Over recent centuries all forms of violent otherness have
been incorporated, willingly or under threat of force, into a discourse of difference
which simultaneously implies inclusion and exclusion, recognition and
discrimination. Childhood, lunacy, death, primitive societies all have been
categorized, integrated and absorbed as parts of a universal harmony. Madness,
once its exclusionary status had been revoked, was caught up in the far subtler
toils of psychology. The dead, as soon as they were recognized in their identity as
such, were banished to outlying cemeteries kept at such a distance that the face
of death itself was lost. As for Indians, their right to exist was no sooner accorded
them than they were confined to reservations . These are the vicissitudes of a
logic of difference. Racism does not exist so long as the other remains Other , so
long as the Stranger remains foreign. It comes into existence when the other
becomes merely different that is to say, dangerously similar . This is the
moment when the inclination to keep the other at a distance comes into being .
We may assume, wrote Victor Segalen, that fundamental differences will never
resolve themselves into a truly seamless and unpatched fabric ; increasing unity,
falling barriers and great reductions in real distance must of themselves

compensate somewhere by means of new partitions and unanticipated gaps.

Racism is one such new partition . An abreaction to the psychodrama of
difference: a response to the phantasy of and obsession with becoming
other. A way out of the psychodrama of perpetual introjection and rejection of
the other. So intolerable is this introjection of differences , in fact, that the other
must be exorcized at all costs by making the differences materially manifest .
The biological claims of racism are without foundation but , by making the racial
reference clear, racism does reveal the logical temptation at the heart of every
structural system: the temptation to fetishize difference . But differential systems
can never achieve equilibrium: differences oscillate con stantly between
absolute highs and absolute lows. When it comes to the management of otherness
and difference, the idea of a well-tempered balance is strictly utopian. Inasmuch as
the humanist logic of difference is in some sense a universal simulation (one
which culminates in the absurdity of a right to difference), it leads directly, for all its
benevolence, to that other desperate hallucination of difference known as
racism. As differences and the cult of differences continue to grow, another,
unprecedented kind of violence , anomalous and inaccessible to critical rationality,
grows even faster. Segalens unanticipated gaps are not simply new differences:
what springs up in order to combat the total homoge nization of the world is the
Alien monstrous metaphor for the corpse-like, viral Other: the compound form
of all the varieties of otherness done to death by our system. This is a racism
which, for lack of any biological underpinning, seizes on the very slightest
variations in the order of signs; a racism which quickly takes on a viral and
automatic character, and perpetuates itself while reveling in a generalized
semiotics. And this racism can never be countered by any humanism of
difference, for the simple reason that it is itself the virus of difference.
Sermonizing on the internalization of the other and the introjection of differences

can never resolve the problem of the monstrous forms of otherness, because
these forms are the product, precisely, of this selfsame obsessional
differentiation, this selfsame obsessional dialectic of ego and other. Herein lies
the whole weakness of those dialectical theories of otherness which aspire to
promote the proper use of difference. For if racism in its viral, immanent, current and
definitive form proves anything, it is that there is no such thing as the proper use of
difference. This is why it may also be said that the critique of racism is
substantially finished just as Marx said that the critique of religion was
substantially finished. Once the vacuousness of the metaphysical account of
religion had been demonstrated, religion was supposed to disappear as the
conditions of a more advanced mode of production became operative. Likewise, once
the vacuousness of the biological theory of races has been demonstrated, racism
is supposed to disappear as the conditions of a more advanced universal inter mixture of differences become operative. But what if religion, for example,
contrary to Marx's predictions, had lost its metaphysical and transcendent form
only to become an immanent force and fragment into countless ideologi cal and
practical variants under the conditions of a religious revival drawing sustenance
from the progress of the very social order that was expected to eradicate even the
memory of religion? For the signs of just such a turn of events are all around us
today. And much the same goes for racism, which has also become an
immanent, viral and everyday reality. The fact is that the scientific and rational
critique of racism is a purely formal one, which demolishes the argument from
biology but remains caught in the racist trap because it addresses a biological
illusion only, and fails to deal with biology itself qua illusion. Similarly, the
political and ideological critique of racism is purely formal in that .it tackles the
racist obsession with difference without tackling difference itself qua illusion.
It thus itself becomes an illusion of criticism, bearing on nothing, and in the

end racism turns out to have survived critique by rationalism just as deftly as
religion survived critique by materia lism which is why all such critiques are
indeed substantially finished.

More description of otherness problems

Baudrillard 94 (Jean, The Precession of Simulacra, Simulacra and Simulations, 8-9)
We have all become living specimens in the spectral light of ethnology, or of
antiethnology, which is nothing but the pure form of triumphal ethnology, under the
sign of dead differences, and of the resurrection of differences. It is thus very nave to
look for ethnology in the Savages or in some Third World it is here, everywhere, in
the metropolises, in the White community, in a world completely cataloged and
analyzed, then artificially resurrected under the auspices of the real, in a world of
simulation, of the hallucination of the truth, of the blackmail of the real, of the
murder of every symbolic form and of its hysterical, historical retrospection a
murder of which the Savages, noblesse oblige, were the first victims, but that for a long
time has extended to all Western societies. Nothing changes when society breaks the
mirror of madness (abolishes the asylums, gives speech back to the insane, etc.) nor
when science seems to break the mirror of its objectivity (effacing itself before its
object, as in Castaneda, etc.) and to bend down before the differences. The form
produced by confinement is followed by an innumerable, diffracted, slowed-down
mechanism. As ethnology collapses in its classical institution, it survives in an
antiethnology whose task it is to reinject the difference fiction, the Savage fiction
everywhere, to conceal that it is this world, ours, which has again become savage in
its way, that is to say, which is devastated by difference and by death.
Their attempt to simulate actually produces the impacts before anything real could
their simulation becomes realer than any real cause
Baudrillard 1994 (Jean, The Precession of Simulacra, Simulacra and Simulations, 3)
To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have
what one doesnt have. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But it is more
complicated than that because simulating is not pretending: Whoever fakes an illness
can simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an
illness produces in himself some of the symptoms (Littre). Therefore, pretending, or
dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it
is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the true
and the false, the real and the imaginary. Is the simulator sick or not, given that
he produces True symptoms? Objectively one cannot treat him as being either ill or not
ill. Psychology and medicine stop at this point, forestalled by the illnesss henceforth
undiscoverable truth. For if any symptom can be produced, and can no longer be
taken as a fact of nature, then every illness can be considered as simulatable and

simulated, and medicine loses its meaning since it only knows how to treat real
illnesses according to their objective causes. Psychosomatics evolves in a dubious
manner at the borders of the principle of illness. As to psychoanalysis, it transfers the
symptom of the organic order to the unconscious order: the latter is new and taken
for real more real than the other but why would simulation be at the gates of the
unconscious? Why couldnt the work of the unconscious be produced in the same
way as any old symptom of classical medicine? Dreams already are.

AFF ANSWERS
The plans particular demand against state violence IS radical- any small thing can
rupture the symbolic system
Robinson 13 (Andrew, a political theorist and activist based in the UK, Jean Baudrillard and Activism: A critque
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-14/)

These are challenges which can be met. Baudrillards analysis suggests that the
system is vulnerable to any act which disregards consequences or is irreducible to the
existing frame of possibilities, which is not a rational action. This is why the loss of
fear has been so central in understanding revolts, from Tahrir Square to Tottenham. In
addition, the system remains vulnerable, both to new tactics which it hasnt thought
of yet, and to any event on such a scale that it overwhelms available resources. Justin-time production has reduced redundancy within systems. The result is that they dont
have the resources to spare, to cope with any events beyond the usual. This is suggested
by Baudrillards view that the police simply simulate repression. As long as people are
broadly conforming, the simulation works. The moment the unexpected happens,
the police become unable to repress effectively. If Baudrillard is right, then the
slightest thing escaping the systems rationality is enough to pose a challenge to it.
The idea of involution suggests that the system is beginning to fray around the edges. As
control is tightened, peripheral areas slip out of control. This phenomenon is widely
discussed in relation to the global South. But fraying can also be seen in the systems
apparent incapacity to respond to emergent events, because of just-in-time
production and the maintenance of systems lacking redundancy. Something like the
August insurrection can spread on the basis of unexpectedness, rapidity and limited
police resources. Baudrillards theory of deterrence needs to be reconsidered in light of
recent events. We have seen in 2011 that it is still possible to create events: the
London unrest, the student protests, Occupy, the Wikileaks saga The system does
not actually have the power on the ground to prevent revolts, occupations,
movements. Even the systems vice-like grip on future significations is being
partially broken through movements like Occupy, which conveys different future
images in its own rhetoric. Anonymous turns the anonymity of statistical
indifference into a source of strength, using tactics based on the very vulnerability to
excess the system creates such as distributed denial of service attacks (using an
excess of web connections) and leaking of documents (relying on the obscene
overexposure of information in the Internet).
Dissent is alive and kicking---simulation just requires multiple understandings of
political spheres
Bleiker 2 (Roland, professor of international relations at the University of Queensland, Politics After Seattle:
Dilemmas of the Anti-Globalisation Movement conflits.revues.org/1057)

Any protest action that draws sufficient media attention has the potential to
engender a political process that transcends its immediate spatial environment. It
competes for the attention of global television audiences and thus interferes with the
struggle over values that ultimately shapes the world we live in. "A world united by
Benetton slogans, Nike sweatshops and McDonald's jobs might not be anyone's utopian
global village," says Naomi Klein, "but its fibre-optic cables and shared cultural
references are nonetheless laying the foundations for the first truly international people's
movement.31 But the recent wave of global protests is hardly the first international
movement of its kind. Nor is it as unproblematic as Klein suggests. For some the
revolution of speed is too random to allow for critical interference and, indeed, for human
agency. Jean Baudrillard, for instance, believes that the distinctions between reality
and virtuality, political practice and simulation are blurred to the extent that they
are no longer recognisable.32 Our media culture, he says, has annihilated reality in
stages, such that in the end its simulating image bears no relation to any reality
whatever : it is its own pure simulacrum. Television, the unproblematic
transmission of the hyperreal, has conditioned our mind such that we have lost the
ability to penetrate beneath the manifest levels of surface.33 24 Patterns of global
protest do not confirm the pessimistic views that Baudrillard and others espouse.
The blurring of reality and virtuality has not annihilated dissent. The fact that
televised images are hyperreal does not necessarily diminish their influence.
Independently of how instantaneous, distorted and simulated images of a protest
action may be, they still influence our perceptions of issues, and thus also our
political responses to them. To accept the logic of speed, then, is not to render
political influence obsolete, but to acknowledge multiple and overlapping spatial
and temporal spheres within which political practices are constantly being shaped
and reshaped.