Lecture 16:
“Convulsions, coma,
miscarriage”
PATRICK MOONEY, M.A.
ENGLISH 10, SUMMER SESSION A
16 JULY 2105

Things themselves, if they exist
“No one sees the barn,” he [Murray] said finally.
A long silence followed.
“Once you’ve seen the signs about the barn, it becomes
impossible to see the barn.”
He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the
elevated site, replaced at once by others.
“We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to
maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you
feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies.”
There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold
postcards and slides. […]

“Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what
the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those
who will come in the future. We’ve agreed to be part of a
collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious
experience in a way, like all tourism.”
Another silence ensued.
“They are taking pictures of taking pictures,” he said.
He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant
clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers
that advanced the film.
“What did the barn look like before it was photographed?” he
said. “What did it look like, how was it different from other barns,
how was it similar to other barns? We can’t answer these
questions because we’ve read the signs, see the people
snapping the pictures. We can’t get outside the aura. We’re part
of the aura. We’re here, we’re now.” (12–13; ch. 3)

“Abstraction today is no longer that of the
map, the double, the mirror or the
concept. Simulation is no longer that of a
territory, a referential being or a
substance. It is the generation by models
of a real without origin or reality: a
hyperreal. The territory no longer
precedes the map, nor survives it.
Henceforth, it is the map that precedes
the territory – PRECESSION OF
SIMULACRA – it is the map that
engenders the territory and if we were to
revive the fable today, it would be the
territory whose shreds are slowly rotting
across the map.”
— Jean Baudrilliard, “The Precession of
Simulacra” (1981)
“Four phases of
the image”
1. It is the
reflection of a
basic reality;
2.It masks and
perverts a basic
reality;
3.It masks the
absence of a
basic reality;
4.It has no relation
to any reality at
all; it is its own
simulacrum.

“‘The flow is constant,’ Alfonse said. ‘Words,
pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics,
specks, waves, particles, motes. Only a
catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we
need them, we depend on them. As long as they
happen somewhere else. This is where California
comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion,
earthquakes, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax
and enjoy those disasters because in our hearts
we feel that California deserves whatever it gets.
Californians invented the concept of life-style. This
alone warrants their doom.’” (66; ch. 14)

“Wherever you are, even in California, nothing is more
demoralizing than being there and nowhere else. One
of the pleasures of travel is to dive into places where
others are compelled to live and come out unscathed,
full of the malicious pleasure of abandoning them to
their fate. Even their local happiness seems tuned to a
secret resignation. It never compares, at least, with the
freedom to leave. This is when you sense that it is not
enough to be alive; you have to go through life. It isn't
enough to have seen a town; you have to have gone
through it. With an idea, it isn't sufficient to have
thought it; you have to have gone beyond.”
—Jean Baudrilliard, Cool Memories II: 1987-1990

[Jack: ] “Just because it’s on the radio doesn’t mean we
have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses.”
[Heinrich: ] “Our senses? Our senses are wrong a lot
more often than they’re right. This has been proved in the
laboratory. Don’t know know about all those theorems that
say nothing is what it seems? There’s no past present or
future outside our own mind. The so-called laws of motion
are a big hoax. Even sound can trick the mind. Just
because you don’t hear a sound doesn’t mean it’s not out
there. Dogs can hear it. Other animals. And I’m sure there
are sounds even dogs can’t hear. But they exist in the air, in
waves. Maybe they never stop. High, high, high-pitched.
Coming from somewhere.”
“Is it raining,” I said, “or isn’t it?” (23; ch. 6)

How do you know what you know?
“Where did you get that idea?”
“I got it secondhand from Steffie.”
“Where did Steffie get it from?”
“Denise.”
She paused, conceding the possibility that if Denise is the
source of a rumor or theory, it could very well be true.” (52; ch.
11)
“Where is the media?” she [Bee] said.
“There is no media in Iron City.”
“They went through all that for nothing?” (92; ch. 18)

“The radio said a tank car derailed. But I don’t think it
derailed from what I could see. I think it got rammed and
something punched a hole in it. There’s a lot of smoke
and I don’t like the looks of it.” (108; ch. 21)
Babette’s head appeared at the top of the stairway.
She said a neighbor had told her the spill from the tank
car was thirty-five thousand gallons. People were being
told to stay out of the area. A feathery plume hung over
the site. She also said the girls were complaining of
sweaty palms.
“There’s been a correction,” Heinrich told her. “Tell
them they ought to be throwing up.” (110; ch. 21)

“Could a nine-year-old girl suffer a miscarriage
due to the power of suggestion? Would she have
to be pregnant first? Could the power of
suggestion be strong enough to work backward
in this manner, from miscarriage to pregnancy to
menstruation to ovulation? Which comes first,
menstruation or ovulation? Are we talking about
mere symptoms or deeply entrenched
conditions? Is a symptom a sign or a thing? What
is a thing and how do we know it’s not another
thing?” (123; ch. 21)

“There must be something in family life that generates
factual error. Overcloseness, the noise and heat of being.
Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive.
Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world
of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security.
The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser
our structure may seem to become. The family process
works toward sealing off the world. Small errors grow
heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and
confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family
solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why
the strongest family units exist in the least developed
societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says.
Magic and superstition become entrenched as the
powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest
where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted.
What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true.”
82; ch. 17)

“Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what
anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about
something like that? Isn’t it all a question of brain
chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical
energy in the cortex? How do you know whether
something is really what you want to do or just some
kind of nerve impulse in the brain? Some minor little
activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant
place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I
want to go to Montana or I don’t want to go to
Montana. How do I know I really want to go and it isn’t
just some neurons firing or something? Maybe it’s just
an accidental flash in the medulla and suddenly there I
am in Montana and I find out I really didn’t want to go
there in the first place.” (45; ch. 10)

Advertising and the creation of
desire
“‘Even as we sit here,’ I [Murray] tell them, ‘you are spinning out
from the core, becoming less recognizable as a group, less
targetable by advertisers and mass producers of culture. Kids
are a true universal. But you’re well beyond that, already
beginning to drift, to feel estranged from the products you
consume. Who are they designed for? What is your place in
the marketing scheme? Once you’re out of school, it is only a
matter of time before you experience the vast loneliness and
dissatisfaction of consumers who have lost their group
identity.’ Then I tap my pencil on the table to indicate time
passing ominously.” (50; ch. 11)

“You have to learn how to look. You have to open yourself
to the data. TV offers incredibly amounts of psychic data. It
opens ancient memories of world birth, it welcomes us into
the grid, the network of little buzzing dots that make up the
picture pattern. There is light, there is sound. I ask my
students, ‘What more do you want?’ Look at the wealth of
data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the
jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling
out of darkness, the coded messages and endless
repetitions, like chants, like mantras. ‘Coke is it, Coke is it,
Coke is it.’ The medium practically overflows with sacred
formulas if we can remember how to respond innocently
and get past our irritation, weariness and disgust.” (51; ch.
11)

“Advertising in its entirety constitutes a useless
and unnecessary universe. It is pure connotation. It
contributes nothing to production or to the direct
practical application of things, yet it plays an
integral part in the system of objects, not merely
because it relates to consumption but also
because it itself becomes an object to be
consumed. A clear distinction must be drawn in
connection with advertising’s dual status as a
discourse on the object and an object in its own
right. It is as a useless, unnecessary discourse that
it comes to be consumable as a cultural object.”
―Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (1968)