“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age” (Lovecraft 1926).
If only I could save them…
Did Mr. Lovecraft know the implications of the visions of reality he communicated in his stories? Although postmodernist social theories have established well the limitations and secrets of modernist epistemology, Lovecraft prefigured their darker and more unsettling implications before they were even written. Why don’t we read him in social theory classes? Postmodernist social theory calls into question the most “natural” and “sacred” aspects of existence, challenging us to interrogate our formal knowledge, our common sense, our cultural productions, our language, and even our senses. Sometimes, this can be liberating because it allows us to undo constructions that oppress us, but at other times, it can be frightening because it leads us to realities that are shocking and terrifying.
According to Bauman (1992), postmodernity is the logical conclusion of modernity. “[I]nstitutionalized pluralism, variety, contingency, and ambivalence” are the products of modernity, yet they were treated as problems to be solved or covered over (p. 187). Postmodernity can be seen as an embrace of those products of modernity, and being so different, it requires a new theory, consisting of sociological concepts and models distinct from those of modernity. A new theory, according to Bauman, must let go of ideas of a social organization, progress, and logical priority; instead, it should emphasize social autonomy, mobility, and dialectic. Society must be seen as complex and dynamic, with radical potential for shifts and changes in all directions.
This complexity is best exemplified in Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) adoption of the botanical term “rhizome.” While the parts of a tree proceed from a single source that is prior to those parts, in a hierarchical sense, there is no semblance of hierarchy in a rhizome—just endless points connected to one another, extending outward indefinitely. The authors write, “The rhizome is an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system without a General and without an organizing memory or central automaton, defined solely by a circulation of states.” But what are these states? If we are no longer oriented vis-à-vis some transcendent force or purpose, then what is the new “reality”?
Sparks and wires and code. Insisting everything is all right. But I feel it. The wires connect me. Plugged into the feeling of humanity. What’s this one? Let’s plug in and we’ll just see…
Baudrillard (2004) might suggest an answer in his now-famous theory of simulations and hyperreality. His theory depends on the notion of simulacra—“copies” without an original, signs that are effectively autonomous because they do not point to an underlying reality. What is “real,” according to Baudrillard, “is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks, and command models…it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal” in that what is produced from these component parts becomes more “real” than reality itself (p. 472). This is expressed in the concept of a simulation, a staging that is designed to appear and be experienced by people as real; when the components of a simulation cease to refer to some reality, instead taking reality’s place, the simulation becomes hyperreal.
As for us, we cannot claim to stand outside of the simulation, looking down upon it; like the rhizome, we are within it—indeed, part of it. The relatively new nation of Israel is especially illustrative of simulation and hyperreality. It was carved out of predominantly Arab land in the 1940s, populated with (for all practical purposes) an imported citizenry, given an official language (Hebrew), and attached to a millennia-old historical, religious narrative. Supported heavily by U.S. tax dollars, it boasts the most powerful military and most modern accommodations in the Middle East. Chic, modern, democratic, Israel is everything that we, the West, would like the rest of the Middle East to be. Isn’t it grand? In our professions of Israel’s greatness, we ourselves become components of the simulation—Isra-Vision!
ENGAGE ISRA-VISION…
I’m walking through a city in Israel, and what a beautiful site it is! I see lush greenery, new houses, buildings of concrete and steel, near-flawless paved roads, restaurants, stores, shopping malls, and fancy hotels. Storefronts, road signs, and billboards are covered in Hebrew. How great is Israel, how marvelous its ingenuity, how glorious its accomplishments! Look what they have done; they have created life out of mere desert. Once so primitive, but now so modern! How great is Israel!
One house looks particularly interesting—a perfectly mowed lawn, flowers in front, and an SUV in the garage. It seems that no one is home, so I step across that perfectly mowed lawn and look through the front window. Their living room is really nice. It has a couch, a carpet, an entertainment center, and pictures on the wall. I turn to the side. Between the fence and the house, there’s a little pathway. I follow it into the backyard to find more grass, along with an Israeli flag atop a fencepost. The triumph of the Jewish people—how great is Israel!
As I pace the backyard, my foot suddenly descends upon a lump in the ground…EEAAAGGGGGHHHH! A horrific sound, a thousand bloodcurdling screams of terror, a thousand lengths of barbed wire being pulled through my body in a thousand different places from a thousand different directions. I fall to my knees—terrified, anguished, angry, despairing, vengeful, exhausted. If only I could save them…
La ilaha ill Allah
La ilaha ill Allah
La ilaha ill Allah
La ilaha ill Allah
La ilaha ill Allah
La ilaha ill Allah
La ilaha ill Allah
La ilaha ill Allah
Not even the United States’ billions can finance a ghost-free simulation for Israel. No amount of Hebrew text or Israeli flags can repel the phantoms of the past. No platitudinal praises can exorcise the specters haunting hyperreal Israel. Gordon (1997) proposes an approach to sociological investigation that does not focus on positiveness and presence but on negativity, absence. Specifically, she refers to “haunting” which “describes how that which appears to be not there is often a seething presence, acting on and often meddling with taken-for-granted realities” (p. 8). As an empirical phenomenon, “haunting” could be said to refer to those experiences that cannot be represented in terms of existing language, discursive constructions, and theories. Specifically, this may mean emotions, feelings, sensations, disturbances—those phenomena that are not recorded by the average social scientist yet pervade everyday experience. No visible (i.e., perceivable, representable) cause is present, yet something is obviously there. Trust me, you don’t want to know…
Perhaps herein lays a deeper reason for much of the popular opposition to theories of postmodernity and postmodern theories. Even though the theories tend to express skepticism towards traditional social sciences and, therefore, to eschew attempts to look for “the big picture,” they actually tend to promote attempts on our parts to “put two and two together.” They unsettle our assumptions about a ordered, progressive, and logical social reality and challenge our received subjectivities relative to it, instead pushing us to see the chaotic aspects of it, placing ourselves in the midst of the chaos, as part of the chaos. They call into question all appearances, even those that appear the most natural, asking…what if our most treasured “realities” are mostly simulations? Engage ISRA-VISION… And, what if our simulations are “too good to be true”? What if we follow the glitches, the static-y spots—i.e., the hauntings? What might we find? Postmodernism impels us to correlate the contents of our everyday experiences—the gaps in understanding, the too-good simulations, the hauntings. The scatterplot may be more than we ever bargained for!
REFERENCES
Baudrillard, Jean. 2004. “Simulacra and Simulations: Disneyland.” Pp. 471-476 in Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, edited by Charles Lemert. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1992. Intimations of Postmodernity. New York: Routledge.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 2004. “The Rhizome/A Thousand Plateaus.” Pp. 665-667 in Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, edited by Charles Lemert. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Gordon, Avery F. 1997. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lovecraft, Howard Phillips. 1926. “The Call of Cthulhu.” Last accessed May 9, 2007 from http://www.noveltynet.org/content/books/lovecraft/fiction/html/cthulhu.html
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