I'm not sure how I feel about Edelman's use of Baudrillard, especially the sentence "And all this [the human race slipping into the void] because (heterosexual) sex has "become extraneous, a useless function"" (65). First, I read Baudrillard as opposing two types of death: the death of the individual versus a second death, which is really more like deathlessness, that comes from identicality.

Edelman's interpretation of Baudrillard's "The Final Solution"* resonated with what I've read in Baudrillard's book America.

Before reading The Psychic Life of Power, I had often thought of the performance of drag as a sort of simulacrum.

I don't quite know what to make of this. A Dutch teenager has stolen 4,000 euros worth of virtual furniture from the virtual social networking site, Habbo Hotel . . . and he's been arrested for it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094764.stm

I keep thinking of Baudrillard's claim about how subversion in the simulacrum is more complicit than that in the real . . . where does this fall?

While trying to get a grasp on Foucault's position on power, I was very intrigued by his negation of the "juridico-discursive" model of power. This maintains that there is always a negative relationship between sex and power where power's ultimate objective is to suppress sex. Of course, Foucault adamently contradicts this belief throughout the book as he claims that power works to bring sex into discourse. Rather than supressing sex, power wishes to approach it in a more controlled manner.

Reading "The Beaubourg Effect: Implosion and Deterrence," I couldn't help but feel like Baudrillard needs to chill out a little. His hysterical writing gets a bit out of hand! But he makes some interesting observations about the Beaubourg, in relation to architecture, its role, and mass culture. Additionally, he hints at the whole art debate we talked about earlier with Derrida, Lyotard, etc.

"The hypermarket is already...the model of all future forms of controlled socialization: retotalization in a homogeneous space-time of all the dispersed functions of the body, and of social life...; retranscription of the contradictory fluxes in terms of integrated circuits; space-time of a whole operational simulation of social life, of a whole structure of living and traffic." (76)

How does this statement map onto considerations of space & time in Harvey and Jameson?

What is a non-simulacric social order and when did it exist?

Beginning on p.39, Baud delves into his analysis of the psychology of nuclear might, arguing that acquiring the tangible means for nuclear warfare will never result in the 'real' deployment of these weapons. Acquiring nuclear weapons is to acquire the deterrent. Because they can, they will not. Hence, deterrence, in Baudrillard's account. Global acquisition (and consumption) of this deterrent is "an accelerated process of implosion."

I thought the section on the Holocaust was particularly interesting, and somewhat daring to talk about. He seems to essentially be saying that television has transformed this tragedy into a cold, televised memory and because of this, this history has been exterminated.