Vital Strategies Part Three

The Problem of Strategy

Baudrillard in his magnum opus Symbolic Exchange and Death¹ constructs a radicalization of classical semiotics through a vision of culture based on an analysis of images. According to Baudrillard, the age of classical semiotics where a principle of exchangeability between a sign and what it signifies has been lost through the growth of commodity society. In wake of this signs begin exchanging amongst themselves rather than with the real. The real then is no longer referenced by signs, instead these systems of signs transition from simulation to simulacra. The real, along with its various sub-apparatuses including the social and traditional conceptions of power and political economy, become lost. Capital in particular becomes no longer determined by the operations of political economy but instead political economy becomes its simulation. Political economy haunts capital as a mechanism that once determined its operations, that once was the real of capital, yet in our current context operates as a cultural entity. Capital has been freed from its symbolic base, instead promoting a symbolic freedom found through the endless exchange of signs. The same goes for various other symbolic apparatuses, including objects such as power and desire. In Forget Foucault², Baudrillard concludes that the genealogy of Foucault and the libidinal economy of Deleuze and Guattari operate only as simulations of their respective objects (this is a break from his previous comments on both in the aforementioned Symbolic Exchange and Death). The real of both objects become lost through their entrance into the symbolic realm, making them freely exchangeable with other signs such as capital. Anti-Oedipus³ is indeed the greatest work of political economy since Marx’s Capital⁴, yet this is to its own detriment. Of course power and desire are grounded in minor formations, outside of a central apparatus such as Marx’s capital. Power and desire if grounded in vitality no longer appear as simulations, but instead as liberatory rallying points. Of course neither is to be blindly placed as a revolutionary subject—power especially given its connotation—however both can be used through a subjective vitality as a point of resistance (my power, my desire, etc). The code is where connotation, affect, etc go to die. As soon as power, desire, etc are seen within systems of signs rather than as an insurrectionary discourse it will become a mere phantasm of its subject matter. Baudrillard’s substitution for vitality within his realm of symbolic exchange is the object of death, which crucially cannot be exchanged. Death is a reversion of symbolic exchange, as a system is always haunted by its own death. This relies on the notion of the gift, which is the basis of Baudrillard’s notion of symbolic exchange. Death is the mirror image of Situationist vitality, which playfully reversed the symbolic system in affirmative sense via removing an object’s symbolic value and substituting one’s own. The practice of détournement reversed sign value via substituting the values of the symbolic realm via the repurposing of cultural images. Baudrillard contends that détournement as a practice has become the official policy of capital, yet without the same radical subjectivity imbued within its practice. Signs are exchanged and repurposed to the extent that they form the basis of the third order simulacra, they form floating signifiers. Death to Baudrillard is the only radicality that remains within hyperreality, as via a complete negation of the symbolic realm its logic collapses. This does not return us to a modern subjectivity or social, or even return us to a real of any sort, however it allows for a future outside of capital’s symbolic realm. This mirror’s Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of schizophrenia, as schizophrenic deterritorialization is both fundamental to capital and in an accelerationist sense can allow for a post-capitalism of sorts through the fold. Schizophrenia here is a model of death in a Landian sense, rather than the personal and vital schizophrenia found in other aspects of libidinal economy. Seeing this it is no wonder that Deleuze and Guattari’s libidinal economy and Baudrillard’s fatal theory have found an unlikely kinship through the contemporary theory of accelerationism. This connection is found through Baudrillard’s notion of the fatal strategy.

The fatal strategy is what exchanging death through reversibility means practically. It implies a highly ironic and nihilistic discourse that freely plays within cultural spectacle with a goal of reversibility. It takes the place of Baudrillard’s exchange of a system’s death in his later work as he begins to dive into pataphysics. Whereas the exchange of death implies a nihilistic reinterpretation of situationist strategy from a vital affirmation of life’s potentialities to play within the ever-present code, the fatal strategy explicitly dismisses any affirmation of subjectivity through his theory of the object and seduction. Baudrillard in Fatal Strategies⁵ makes an explicit shift towards the primacy of the object. He is perhaps the first to do so, anticipating the trend of accelerationism and speculative realism within contemporary philosophy. The object’s primacy is based upon a shift in Baudrillard’s work from symbolic exchange to seduction. Symbolic exchange makes no metaphysical distinction between subjects and objects, instead making reference to the death of the classical signifier-signified relationship. Signifiers are indeed found within the realm of the object, yet subjectivity still has a sense of agency here. After all individuals are able to exchange death, implying a direct refusal of the rule of sign value. Through this reversibility a future characterized by vitality becomes possible, as through the death of symbolic value individuals are free to recharacterize signifiers as they please. Within this free manipulation the law of value collapses, allowing for what one might call a post-capitalism or post-hyperreality. In this sense the early Baudrillard still holds onto his situationist roots, as utopianism finds its mirror image in symbolic refusal. Yet the fatal strategy denies even this, resigning reversibility to a mere play among code. Seduction’s primacy denies any victory for subjectivity, as through seduction the category of agency is reassigned⁶. This is just as metaphysical as the traditional vision of subjective agency, as it gives one metaphysical pole an artificial superiority over another. However in Baudrillard this is not a simple metaphysical axiom, but instead a symptom of hyperreality. Our cultural scene has become oversaturated with objects which have increased in both intensity and seduction. In a world so oversaturated by images a symbolic revolution occurs, leading to the freeing of the sign from traditional subjectivity. As such seduction is only the symbolic exchange that explicitly rejects the role of subjectivity. The fatal strategy is likewise only the exchange of death within a plane of transcendence, playing within a reversibility of intense seductive images rather than simple signifiers.

Through the notion of the fatal strategy, symbolic exchange does not take an ambivalent position towards situationist vitality, instead directly opposing itself towards it. The same vital nomadism is found within both, however situationism posits potentialities for outsides and points of resistances. Within fatal theory subjectivity is forever trapped within the context of objects, the subject itself becoming merely an object upon many. Fatal theory does not begin with a body without organs, but instead positions itself out of the seduction of libidinal investment. In a sense through seduction the machine overtakes the body, creating somewhat of a Zizekian organs without bodies⁷. Baudrillard falls into the same trap as Lacan, as he creates a metaphysics that makes the sign the basis of ontology, rather than that which lies before and/or between signs. Through emphasizing the sign-object, fatal theory cannot view the body without organs, instead it can only perceive a plane of transcendence. The symbolic revolution in a sense creates a nomadism with its notion of exchangeability, however this nomadism cannot reach into the base of ontology or find any outside to the symbolic system. Plant is right in stating that Baudrillard takes the spectacle’s own view of itself⁸, as Baudrillard can only consider the sign-image as it is presented in capitalist media and culture. Instead of theorizing on recuperation he directly reproduces it, as his theory is only expressed through the lens of the spectacle’s symbolic system. Even his ultimate insurrectionary act is expressed through a system of signs, as death is here only an absence rather than an affirmation. Even at his most radical and anti-capitalist, his notion of reversibility can only conceive of struggle within a system of signs. Baudrillard writes:

“Only those who escape the swings and roundabouts of production and representation can disrupt these mechanisms and provoke, from the depths of their blinded state, a return to the ‘class struggle.’ Which might indeed mark the end of this struggle as a locus within the ‘political’”⁹

Here a theory of insurrection is presented in which a symbolic refusal allows a return to anti-political struggle. To tear down the political is to tear down the code, which is to create what Battaile calls a general economy¹⁰, a non-order of expression and expenditure. This is, in short, communism. However Baudrillard can only see this non-order, this liberated plane of consistency, within the symbolic realm. It is a symbolic freedom, a multiplicity of fatal strategies finding “community” through a series of seductions. It is no return to connotation, to affect, to vitality. It would hypothetically destroy the code of course, yet it would only produce an overcoming of the rules of the symbolic system rather than the system itself. Instead of giving metaphysical justification for an immanent lack of lack, Baudrillard affirms lack itself. Fatal theory cannot conceive of an outside or before to the symbolic system, it cannot conceive of any nomadism or vitality that is not produced through a system of signs. As such it cannot give a proper theory of the body without organs or the libidinal vitality it so readily dismisses. The body without organs is not necessarily subjective, as desire constitutes both subject and object. It is however connotated with subjectivity, as the body without organs is the becoming-planar of intensity and affect. Vitality positions itself from the smooth nomadism of the body without organs, as it produces intensity and emphasizes affect in all things. Vitality is not merely an affirmation of the body without organs, as the body without organs is castrated without its investments, instead it emphasizes the act of creating and exploring investments and emphasizing intensity through the situation. The situation is a Deleuzian reversal of Badiou’s event, as instead of emphasizing a transcendent event and the rediscovery of the historical moment it emphasizes events either outside or before recognition within transcendent history. It takes a given experience or moment and emphasizes it outside the transcendent time of capital. It is a break, a singularity, that refuses to be assimilated into the wider spectacle that pervades capitalist society.

In response to the notion of the fatal strategy, a strategy that in contrast emphasizes vitality must be formulated. This is not a simple humanism, as Baudrillard sets in juxtaposition to the fatal, it is instead an exit from his dichotomy altogether. Ironically, seeing as Baudrillard critiques Deleuze and Foucault as simply providing phantasms of their respective subject matter, Baudrillard presents his own account of the symbolic realm through a symbolic system grounded through a dichotomy between subject and object. The only “true” binary that divides the fatal and vital is the distinction between representation and affect. This binary is not a true binary as it collapses through radical immanence, representation is an artificial metaphysical pole created and invested within for the purposes of regulation. This regulation allows pragmatic communication through its limits (language, roles), but in turn produces normalization and power. Biopower is itself based on the process of regulation based on representation, on identity. Any anti-biopolitical form of communication and sociality can only arise through the investment of vitality within the symbolic realm. Signs have to no longer operate as a form of representation or identity, but instead operate as things in themselves. This differs from Baudrillard’s approach by not presupposing some lack of essence within the sign. Without essence and without lack the sign-form does not form a simulacra but instead collapses into affect. Affect and its exploration through vitality thus becomes the primary metaphysical “pole” as through the vital strategy representation collapses into a plane of immanence. Vital strategies aim, just as fatal strategies aim to present a nomadism within the symbolic realm, to explore the potentialities of affect and subjectivity. As such, it is a strategy that aims to rediscover presence. This is not to present a return to Heidegger, though he undoubtedly has much to contribute as Agamben shows¹¹. Heidegger, despite largely providing the basis for the philosophy of postmodernity, presents a metaphysics entrenched in modernist presence. Presence is now stuck in limbo through our systems of representations, it is lost in Baudrillard’s simulacra. The traditional presence of the subject is not to be put on a pedestal, liberatory potentiality after all can be found in letting the subject be swept away through sheer entropy (some applications of cute accelerationism operate this way, though this comes with its own difficulties.) Presence is not opposed to flow, though flow can certainly be opposed to presence in the traditional sense. Presence here only means the ability to form situations, moments which break with the transcendent time of capital. The situation is not opposed to flow, though it does present a break from it if momentarily. The vital strategy is likewise the emphasis of affect over representation and as such presents its primary goal as the construction of situations. What these situations imply is distinct from the situationist means of praxis found in the sixties. Psychogeography and détournement have become recuperated strategies that only operate in a recuperated self-awareness of themselves. Instead situations have to operate, like Baudrillard’s notion of the catastrophic, as an exchange that breaks down the code. However this exchange is not an affirmation of death or even utopia as Baudrillard posits in his early and middle period. Instead it is an affirmation of affect and vitality which refuses the sign value found in our structures of representation. The vital and the fatal both operate in pure opposition to the code, as both are insurrectionary strategies. However vitality allows for affirmation out of the death of the code, a freedom beyond mere free exchange of signs. It is through this that genuine connection between individuals and singularities can be found outside the normalizing and representative structures of the social, a social that mind you only exists as a phantasm of a lost object. This is in the same vein as what we might call a tiqqun, a plane of consistency¹², what have you. Through this collective expression of vitality and refusal there is a potential for an end to Baudrillardian postmodernity, in which we can finally begin to dream and affirm new futures.

1. Baudrillard, Jean. 2017. Symbolic Exchange and Death. Los Angeles, California: Sage.

2. Baudrillard, Jean. 2007. Forget Foucault. Los Angeles, Ca: Semiotext(E) ; Cambridge, Ma.

3. Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari. 2016. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

4. Marx, Karl. 1867. Das Kapital. Vol. 1. Verlag Von Otto Meisner.

5. Baudrillard, Jean. 2008. Fatal Strategies. Los Angeles, Ca: Semiotext(E) ; Cambridge Mass.

6. Baudrillard, Jean. 2007. Seduction. New York: St. Martin’s Pr.

7. Slavoj Žižek. 2015. Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.

8. Plant, Sadie. 2002. The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age. Routledge.

9. Baudrillard, Jean. 2017. Symbolic Exchange and Death. Los Angeles, California: Sage.

10. Georges Bataille. 1988. The Accursed Share. New York: Zone Books.

11. Giorgio Agamben. 2013. The Coming Community. Minneapolis ; London University Of Minnesota Press.

12. Tiqqun. 2011. This Is Not a Program. Cambridge, Mass ; London: SemiotextE.