Return to Saussure

Minimal Pairs. AI art   Introduction: Between Flexibility and Limit The postmodern claim that “all interpretations are equally valid” has had a decisive influence on contemporary philosophy and the social sciences. Its appeal lies in the fact that, at first sight, it reflects common experiences: what feels cold to one person may feel warm to another; what for some counts as freedom may for others be restriction. Yet behind this interpretive flexibility hides a fundamental confusion: the difficulty of making certain categories explicit is taken as proof that limits do not exist. This mistake leads to a radical relativism that ignores the role of reality as a structuring framework. Although concepts such as heat, love, or truth cannot always be defined with precise conceptual clarity, this does not mean that any interpretation is valid. There are objective boundaries which, beyond our disagreements, impose the category. The Postmodern Confusion The genealogy of this confusion ...

Introduction In his provocative book Simulacra and Simulation (1981/1994), Jean Baudrillard dismantles the notion that images are secondary to reality. His famous meditation on Disneyland insists that the theme park is not a harmless fantasy but a machine for sustaining belief in the “real” outside its gates. Disneyland, in other words, is presented as imaginary so that the rest of America can appear authentic. Yet, for Baudrillard, the opposite is true: America itself has already become Disneyland, a world of simulations where signs precede and determine reality.  We treat here Baudrillard’s framework as a conceptual lens for analyzing contemporary media; where he did not directly discuss technologies such as social platforms, NFTs, or the metaverse, we extend his ideas as interpretive tools. Today’s digital environments — social media, virtual reality, and the metaverse — extend this diagnosis. Platforms marketed as “virtual” actually reinforce the idea that offline life rem...

Introduction In Simulacres et Simulation (1981/1994), Jean Baudrillard sketches a radical genealogy of the image. His concern is not merely with photography or painting, but with the broader fate of representation in a media-saturated culture. “La précession des simulacres” describes how images evolve from reflections of reality to entities that no longer bear any connection to what they ostensibly represent. In this light, AI–generated images present a striking case study. They are not representations of an external reality, but creations of statistical models trained on vast datasets. What might Baudrillard’s framework reveal about the cultural and philosophical significance of these synthetic images? This essay examines the four phases of the image as outlined in Simulacres et Simulation and applies them to the phenomenon of AI-generated art. The Destiny of the Image Baudrillard begins by tracing four successive stages in the fate of the image. The first phase presents the i...

Introduction The rise of artificial intelligence as a creative medium has unsettled our categories of art, authenticity, and reproduction. Unlike earlier technologies that reproduced existing works, generative systems fabricate images from prompts, data, and algorithms, without an identifiable origin. This development invites a reconsideration of Walter Benjamin’s reflections on mechanical reproduction, Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance, and Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra. Together, these perspectives clarify that AI does not merely extend the trajectory of reproduction but inaugurates a new mode of cultural production, one that transcends aura, origin, and reference. Benjamin and the Crisis of Aura Walter Benjamin’s landmark essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936/1969) distinguished between manual copying and technological reproduction. Copying by hand—whether by apprentices, scribes, or forgers—produced singular versions of an image, al...

The Debate. AI art Introduction The 2019 debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson, held in Toronto, was billed as a confrontation between Marxism and Capitalism. However, beyond economic systems or identity politics, one of the most revealing moments came when Žižek expressed distaste not for capitalism or ideology, but for marginality itself. Reacting to what he saw as a postmodern valorization of resistance without   real subversion of power , he remarked: “His project was never revolution but rather small resistances, marginal sites of power. And that’s precisely what I don’t like about what you call postmodernism. Let’s not even call them Marxists, but ‘revolutionaries.’ It’s this enjoyment of self-marginalization. The good thing is to be at the margin, not at the center. It almost makes me nostalgic for old Communists who at least had the honesty to say, ‘We don’t enjoy being marginal—we want to seize power.’ I find this celebration of marginality disgusting.” Thi...

The Debate. AI art. Photorealism Introduction The debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson, held on April 19, 2019, at the Sony Centre in Toronto before more than 3,000 people (and millions of online viewers), was presented as a confrontation between capitalism and Marxism. However, one of the most contentious points was the supposed existence of a movement called postmodern neo-Marxism . Peterson argues that this trend represents a narrative continuation of Marxism within identity discourse; Žižek, on the other hand, denies any real connection to "pure" Marxism. This apparent dichotomy—Marxism versus postmodernism—reflects a reductive reading that overlooks their shared history. Thesis: Although often portrayed as irreconcilable opposites, Marxism and postmodern currents share a common genealogy. Many thinkers labeled as postmodernists emerged from the Marxist tradition and developed their critiques from within it. To deny this continuity, as Žižek does, is t...