Return to Saussure

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...

War as Spectacle. AI art Introduction In the early twentieth century, the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti founded Futurism, a movement that exalted speed, machinery, and violence as sources of artistic inspiration. A fervent nationalist and later an open supporter of Mussolini, Marinetti gave cultural expression to fascist ideology by fusing aesthetics with warfare. His Manifesto of the Colonial War in Ethiopia (1935) exemplifies this tendency: it glorified Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia as both a civilizing mission and a technological adventure. Around the same time, Walter Benjamin was formulating his critique of modern art and politics. In The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1935–36), he warned that fascism transforms political life into spectacle, channeling collective energies into the destructive theater of war. These texts, though written from opposing standpoints, share a common concern with the relation between art, technology, and human d...

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...