Essentially, this blog post should follow the expectations of the course instructor, in that a theory that is being studied should be implemented in a critical analysis of what Ken Rufo has said. Already in trying to do that, the response elicits exactly what Baudrillard has postulated: critical theory produces its analyses as if they are self-fulfilling propheses. Here is another way of looking at it: the soundness or validation of a theory is determined by its premises and the conclusion that necessarily follows. When a theory proposes definitions for terms that explain and deconstruct the real world, it uses a logical form/structure in order to establish a truth. Its conclusion that arises as a result of these special premises appears as a valid truth and is accepted by the reader. The same process occurs when one decides to analyze or deconstruct a piece. They follow the guidelines of the premises proposed by the argument, or the logical structure, acknowledging the traits of their reality’s terms to be on par with the traits of the terms in the original theory, and plug them in. They’re already undergoing the process of self-fulfilling their awesome criticism: a valid conclusion that necessarily follows the premises based upon the theory’s definition.
To put it in a simpler explanation: you’re writing a research paper on a certain topic you choose. You do all the research, acknowledging only the pro points that will make your argument strong. You may bring up a point that has potential to discredit your argument, but that’s only for the reason that you refute the point within your argument to further demonstrate the credibility of your conclusion.
This process is so similar, if not exact, to Ken Rufo’s explanation of Baudrillard’s critiques on Marxism and Lacanian theory.
“The point is that everyone keeps producing these systems of production, proliferating signs and truths and concepts, and yet doing so with the pretense of discovering what they are actually inventing.”
Given my example of the research paper, the argument you are trying to exemplify in it is your “truth” result. You’re attempting to produce a truth as an answer to your research question. This is where subjectivity comes in. Guess what? There is no truth. You’ve created a truth result based upon your favored selection of evidence in order to prove your truth. That’s not a truth to the messy and unpredictable real world. That’s a freaking simulation, my friend. Your English degree? That curriculum is a simulation. Your friend’s biochemistry work? That stuff’s a simulation too. I guess in my latter statement, I am also proposing that the friend has created his/her own reality through their work, which also has a grounded credibility/authority in society (i.e. science). Are you telling me that our life in this society is a simulation because science has the ultimate truth? Maybe. I am also proposing that science work undergoes Baudrillard’s stages of simulation, with it’s current state being the fourth in that it no longer needs a model, and now acts as THE model.
Speculating the credibility of Science itself would seem preposterous knowing the number of experiments and theories created to defend its entire purpose. It would be too far off to presume the evidence from the research was seen and noted from the hyperreal. According to Baudrillard however if the experiments of Science are always being performed and done to defend the theories then they are always already being reproduced. How do we know if they are in fact real and an actual part of life rather than a long travel into the 4th order of simulation, where simulation has taken over without a need of a real model? Ken Rufo helps ground back the ideas of Baudrillard into a way that is more “real” and we can see as being interchangeable within theories that of which are just trying to make their way to the signified from signifier to signifier. In Ken Rufo’s explanation you added to your blog it simplifies the idea of simulation that can be categorized under Marxism in which instead of a movement from signifier to signifier in order to land to the signified or the “real” you are shifting from the value of usage or exchange like Rufo said. The constant shifting of ideas ultimately creates the importance which we were aiming for to further defend our conclusion (using the example of the research paper.) However the values of certain ideas that you use in your movement are not completely explaining the idea but more so hiding the absence to the entire idea that you are defending. This brings in the 2nd order of simulation according to Baudrillard. It is evident to trace everything you’ve ever done or thought of back to fit into one order of simulation further outlining the fact that we never really know what is real, leaving us in the desert of the real, as Baudrillard would say.
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