![]() ![]() ![]() The challenge of simulation is never admitted by power (Ibid.:20).Īs these remarks show, while Baudrillard is concerned with the increasing indistinguishability of reality and simulation, he can explain this “indifference” only by means of the abstractions of “reality” and “simulation.” Albeit hyperreality is always the first, and the differentiation between reality and simulation is a subsequent abstraction, Baudrillard must first assume the abstract poles of difference in order to explain what indifference could possibly be. The simulation of an offence, if it is established as such, will either be punished less severely (because it has no ‘consequences’) or punished as an offence against the judicial system (for example if one sets in motion a police operation ‘for nothing’ – but never as simulation since it is precisely as such that no equivalence with the real is possible, and hence no repression either. This consequentially leads to a situation where the simulated National Socialist reactivation of our example had to be considered as real by power, with all that this entails. Because simulations as such do not occur in the scheme of power, power must grasp them as reality in order to control them. Yet this fact also gives rise to the inability of power to react to simulations, i.e. The incursion of simulation as a kind of non-presence would cause the whole system to collapse. This is why simulation cannot be permitted. Power, as presence, remains bound to the real, as any questioning of reality would undermine power itself. But power and reality are therefore also at each other’s mercy, as power, in order to preserve itself, can accept nothing other than reality. Indeed, insofar as presence is the main feature of both, the terms power and reality can be equated. The power of the “established order” therefore stands in a privileged relation to presence, i.e. ![]() What “power” and reality have in common is their stability, or their impenetrable presence, which Baudrillard, as we will later see, understands as “speech without the possibility of reply,” i.e. the established order, is connected to the reality principle and does not allow for such a thing as simulation”. ![]() Along with the fact that the execution of a pure simulation is impossible, Baudrillard points out that “power, i.e. the repressive apparatus of state which here apparently represents the reality pole, would react to a simulated hold-up robbery. In his essay, “The Precession of Simulacra” ( 1994) Jean Baudrillard illustrates the increasing indistinguishability between “reality” and what he calls “simulation” by means of a thought experiment. Stadtzeitung Wien November 10, 2000: 13 ff. Yet: Power knows no simulation (For an account of the whole affair, see: Falter. A few days later, Hubsi Kramar, as the subversive actor is known, was charged with “National Socialist reactivation” ( Wiederbetätigung) although in his interrogation he had stressed that his appearance at the Opera Ball had been a theater piece and he had only been portraying the Nazi dictator. With the words “We’re here again!” he strode through the reception hall where a stunned usher took his ticket just before he was arrested and led away by two police officers. Upon reaching the opera’s main entrance, the car stopped and – into a fury of flash photography – out stepped Adolf Hitler in full uniform and flashing a Roman salute. While the demonstrators chanted “Never again!” behind police barricades, a white Rolls Royce with dark-tainted windows slowly drove up the main ramp. Since several members of the new government had announced their intention to attend, the protests outside the Vienna State Opera House were especially large. Like the “Prima della Scala” of Milan, this glamorous event, where the wealthiest of the wealthy celebrate a media-intensive night out, attracts annual counter-demonstrations. In the year 2000, just after the new Austrian coalition government that included Jörg Haider’s right-wing populist FPÖ (Austrian Freedom Party) assumed power, the annual Vienna Opera Ball took place as usual. ![]()
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