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Oracle of DelphiJean Baudrillard and 9/11: 'The Spirit of Terrorism'
September 12th 2006 23:23
In the wake of the 9/11 five year anniversary I've been wondering once again what motivated the attacks. Conventionally, Islamic extremism is blamed, that is, the cause for the attack is found in competing and contrasting ideologies, Islamic religiosity versus Western capitalism. However, an interesting and unconventional account that I've come across recently provides a very different explanation. It's complex and I don't fully understand it yet but here's the best summation I've got presently.
In Jean Baudrillard's essay 'The Spirit of Terrorism' he characterises the attacks on the World Trade Centre as the 'absolute event.' He sought to understand them in terms of an (ab)reaction to the techno-political expansion of globalization, rather than in terms of a religious or civilization-based conflict. He termed the event and its consequences as follows (p. 11 in the 2002 version):
"This is not a clash of civilisations or religions, and it reaches far beyond Islam and America, on which efforts are being made to focus the conflict in order to create the delusion of a visible confrontation and a solution based upon force. There is indeed a fundamental antagonism here, but one that points past the spectre of America (which is perhaps the epicentre, but in no sense the sole embodiment, of globalisation) and the spectre of Islam (which is not the embodiment of terrorism either) to triumphant globalisation battling against itself."
Baudrillard thus placed the attacks - in a manner befitting his theoretical approach to society - firmly in the context of a symbolic reaction to the continued expansion of a world based solely upon commodity exchange.
More full explanation will be forthcoming
In Jean Baudrillard's essay 'The Spirit of Terrorism' he characterises the attacks on the World Trade Centre as the 'absolute event.' He sought to understand them in terms of an (ab)reaction to the techno-political expansion of globalization, rather than in terms of a religious or civilization-based conflict. He termed the event and its consequences as follows (p. 11 in the 2002 version):
"This is not a clash of civilisations or religions, and it reaches far beyond Islam and America, on which efforts are being made to focus the conflict in order to create the delusion of a visible confrontation and a solution based upon force. There is indeed a fundamental antagonism here, but one that points past the spectre of America (which is perhaps the epicentre, but in no sense the sole embodiment, of globalisation) and the spectre of Islam (which is not the embodiment of terrorism either) to triumphant globalisation battling against itself."
Baudrillard thus placed the attacks - in a manner befitting his theoretical approach to society - firmly in the context of a symbolic reaction to the continued expansion of a world based solely upon commodity exchange.
More full explanation will be forthcoming
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