What does that even mean "the gulf War did not take place"

@krishna_bound whats ur thoughts on Baudrillard's gulf war essays tho

I read the first one and it seems he thought there literally would be no war and wrote the two essays after to make the first one seem less stupid and give it a philosophical spin

Idk but that's hilarious to me

I don't think it means anything i think he was just tryna make his prediction seem deeper than it was bc he turned out to be wrong

He made some good points about how war has changed tho but that was 100% just an exercize in mental gymnastics for making a bad prediction that philosophy nerds have since taken to mean something significant

That's the move tbh never admit you were wrong

I don't really fully agree with that. the initial "the gulf war will not take place" is less of a political prediction (although it references political spheres) and more of an observation on the changing nature of war and also what the purpose and meaning of war is or cosntitutes. he even says in the gulf war will note take place essay:

"Since it never began, this war is therefore interminable. By dint dreaming of pure war, of an orbital war purged of all local and political peripeteias, we have fallen into a soft war."

and

"War has not escaped this virtualization which is like a surgical operation, the aim of which is to present a face-lifted war, the cosmetically treated spectre of its death, and its even more deceptive televisual subterfuge (...) Even the military has the lost the privilege of use value, the privilege of real war."

Beyond Baudrillard's flowery writing and pretentious presentation, I've never taken this to be a real political statement so much as a ponderance over what war serves to achieve. If he wanted to make a more overt political statement I think he would have done so instead of turning it into this more flowery philosophical essay.

I think the logic he uses in "Is it really taking place" expounds the same idea pretty well, I don't think it's inconsistent or just cope. Out of all the essays, the "is it really taking place" one I think is the most poignant in his observations and reflections on what the purpose of definition of war actually is.

The "did not take place" essay is less poignant than the other ones, but i honestly don't think it reads as a disseparate piece, they all carry the exact same idea and have consistency.

I will say I think its a poor example though of trying to tie real world events to philosophy. There's always going to be a level of disconnect or fragmentation between events and philosophy, and the grey area in that disconnect makes waxing poetic over current events rather than retrospective ones always seem unsavory and like cope more than a***ysis. The disconnect becomes more obvious when you're trying to apply philosophy to events as they unfold as if you're acting as an oracle rather than someone applying a***ysis

wonder what he would have thought of the russia-ukraine war though

I mean he makes some good points but idk bro he seemed to say it was actually not gonna happen to me in the first essay

He rly tried to say the UN giving a green light made the war less likely to happen

Also closed the essay saying he knew he was taking a gamble

Baudrillard essay on the Ghost of Kiev would be amazing

that's not really the way i read it tbh but i guess the chronology matters, obviously reading this before the gulf war and before the other two were printed vs reading it now where you can read all 3 at once is gonna lend a different interpretation to if you were reading it at the time when they were chronologically available

I would be more open to the first not being meant literally if he didn't publish it before the war actually happened

Also what did he mean by this? @krishna_bound

Certainly. Iran and Iraq did as much as they could to save the fiction of murderous. fratricidal. sacrificial and interminable (1914 style) war. But they were savages and that war from another period proved nothing with regard to the status and the possibility of a modern war.

that's what i mean by interpretation being skewed by chronology, reading it now it's hard to disassociate retroactively, but at the time it would have read different

I know vro

I wonder what the reception was like during the period of the first and second essay

Lenin lowkey my favorite Marxoid writer style wise

Clarity>>>unnecessary complexity

Using difficult language when getting the same point across in easier language is possible is disgusting imho

They gotta use a PROFUNDITY PRETENSE as a result of PARADIGMATIC OVERDEVELOPMENT

realistically he was probably just being french racist but if you want to try to intellectualize it you could argue he's saying that, not being apart of the first world, they still clung to ideas of "real war" thinking this was possible due to not being as acclimated/consumed by the spectacle of the first world, not realizing ultimately they'd still be subjected to that spectacle once it spilled outside of their locality

Yeah that would still be kinda dumb especially since the first world was also very much involved in that war

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