Comments on: How to Build a Utopia in Your Spare Time

By: Simon Sellars

Simon Sellars — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:35:33 +0000

you should write it, ben.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:25:11 +0000

Sad this, “What do you identify as?” bit. Academia seemingly now requires Soviet national identity cards. I’d be much more interested in hearing a take on utopias using the insights of, say, Voegelin, rather than an upteenth Lyonidas regurgitation.

By: Simon Sellars

Simon Sellars — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 08:25:33 +0000

Actually Scot, he told me did his PhD years ago, which is why I said in my last comment that I can’t believe that these academic feuds last so long. He clearly learnt it by rote when he was studying… These attacks on Baudrillard are ancient history, it’s like someone still saying Jagger’s the devil’s spawn when everyone knows he’s a cricket-loving knight of the realm. It’s an argument, a prejudice, from a bygone age.

By: scot

scot — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:56:15 +0000

Simon I would hazard a guess this fellow is one of the many misguided and not very broadly-read undergraduates that you find clogging up the honours programs of schools of media and english in Australian universities.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 03:02:44 +0000

I like to know about any failed Marxist utopias. As Chomsky repeatedly has to point out, Marx’s famous works were theory and analysis of capitalism and he doesn’t stray out of that in any detail.

This is a major problem in literary visions of the future too. Authors whose own world views are based on simplified propaganda.

By: Simon Sellars

Simon Sellars — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 01:23:22 +0000

Cheers, Mike.

re: Baudrillard… I’m just amazed that these academic feuds last so long and are so vitriolic. It’s like when Baudrillard wrote on Crash and was attacked by the likes of Vivian Sobchack, who wished actual physical harm on him. I think the whole Gulf War feud was a continuation of that, and here we are, over 10 years on and people are still trying to portray Baudrillard as some kind of beastly Crowley-like shaman attempting to corrupt innocent PhD students.

As for me (and this I guess is amusing in light of the ‘punchline’ to my review), I’ve always thought of Baudrillard as a staunch realist…

By: Mike H.

Mike H. — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:00:19 +0000

Great report, Simon! Look forward to reading your talk on “Rushing to Paradise”.

Incidentally, on the “Gulf War did not happen” … when I initially read about that claim by Baudrillard it did indeed come across secondhand as some sort of literal claim. For example, looking at the three references to it in “The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism”, two say that Baudrillard claimed it happened “only as a simulation” and the other says straightforwardly that he claimed it never happened.

So maybe it’s not *that* surprising that there’s many out there that take the view that your Derridean friend did.