Download The Perfect Crime djvu

Absolutely an amazing book! But be prepared it is not for the faint of heart. It is devastatingly clear account of reality or rather the lack of it.

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer most associated with the “Postmodern” movement.

He wrote in the introductory section of this 1996 book, “This is the story of a crime---of the murder of reality. And the extermination of an illusion---the vital illusion, the radical illusion of the world. The real does not disappear into illusion; it is illusion that disappears into integral reality. If the crime were perfect, this book would have to be perfect too, since it claims to be the reconstruction of the crime. Alas, the crime is never perfect. Moreover, in this grim record of the disappearance of the real, it has not been possible to pin down either the motives of the perpetrators, and the corpse of the real itself has never been found. And the idea that underlies this book has never been pinned down either. That idea was the murder weapon.”

He states in the first chapter, “The great philosophical question used to be ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Today, the real question is, ‘Why is there nothing rather than something?’ The absence of things from themselves, the fact that they do not take placed though they appear to do so, the fact that everything withdraws behind its own appearance and is, therefore, never identical with itself, is the material illusion of the world. And, deep down, this remains the great riddle, the enigma which wills us with dread and from which we protect ourselves with the formal illusion of truth.” (Pg. 2)

He continues, “Not to be sensitive to this degree of unreality and play, this degree of malice and ironic wit on the part of language and the world is, in effect, to be incapable of living. Intelligence is precisely this sensing of the universal illusion, even in amorous passion---though without the natural course of that passion being impaired. There is something stronger than passion: illusion. There is something stronger than sex happiness: the passion for illusion.” (Pg. 8)

He concludes a chapter, “This is what is at stake in Virtuality… If it were brought to completion, that radical effectuation would be the equivalent of a perfect crime… future extermination… would leave no trace. We would not even have time to disappear. We would be disintegrated in Real Time and Virtual Reality long before the stars went out. Fortunately, all this is literally impossible. Very High Definition, with it ambition of producing images, sounds, information, bodies in microvision, in stereoscopy, as you have never seen them before… is unrealizable. As is the phantasy of Artificial Intelligence: the brain’s becoming a world, the world’s becoming a brain, so as to function without bodies, unfailing, autonomized, inhuman. Too intelligent, too super-efficient to be true. There is, in fact, no room for both natural and artificial intelligence. There is no room for both the world and its double.” (Pg. 34)

He observes, “all of the advanced technological process points up the fact that behind his doubles and his prostheses, his biological clones and his virtual images, man takes advantage of these things to disappear. So it is with the answer-phone: ‘We aren’t here. Leave a message…’ And the video plugged into the TV takes over the job of watching the film for you… you always feel a little responsible for the films you haven’t seen, the desires you haven’t fulfilled, the people you haven’t replied to, the crimes you haven’t committed, the money you haven’t spent. This amounts to a whole array of repressed possibilities, and the idea that there is a machine to store them and filter them, into which they go to die away quietly, in a profoundly reassuring tone.” (Pg. 40)

He notes, “The info-technological threat is the threat of an eradication of the night, of that precious difference between night and day, by a total illumination of all moments. In the past, messages faded on a planetary scale, faded with distance. Today we are threatened with lethal sunstroke, with a blinding profusion, by the ceaseless feedback of all information to all points of the globe.” (Pg. 52-53)

Not one of Baudrillard’s “major works,” this book still is filled with many of Baudrillard’s perceptive and sometimes acerbic comments on society.

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer most associated with the “Postmodern” movement.

He wrote in the introductory section of this 1996 book, “This is the story of a crime---of the murder of reality. And the extermination of an illusion---the vital illusion, the radical illusion of the world. The real does not disappear into illusion; it is illusion that disappears into integral reality. If the crime were perfect, this book would have to be perfect too, since it claims to be the reconstruction of the crime. Alas, the crime is never perfect. Moreover, in this grim record of the disappearance of the real, it has not been possible to pin down either the motives of the perpetrators, and the corpse of the real itself has never been found. And the idea that underlies this book has never been pinned down either. That idea was the murder weapon.”

He states in the first chapter, “The great philosophical question used to be ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Today, the real question is, ‘Why is there nothing rather than something?’ The absence of things from themselves, the fact that they do not take placed though they appear to do so, the fact that everything withdraws behind its own appearance and is, therefore, never identical with itself, is the material illusion of the world. And, deep down, this remains the great riddle, the enigma which wills us with dread and from which we protect ourselves with the formal illusion of truth.” (Pg. 2)

He continues, “Not to be sensitive to this degree of unreality and play, this degree of malice and ironic wit on the part of language and the world is, in effect, to be incapable of living. Intelligence is precisely this sensing of the universal illusion, even in amorous passion---though without the natural course of that passion being impaired. There is something stronger than passion: illusion. There is something stronger than sex happiness: the passion for illusion.” (Pg. 8)

He concludes a chapter, “This is what is at stake in Virtuality… If it were brought to completion, that radical effectuation would be the equivalent of a perfect crime… future extermination… would leave no trace. We would not even have time to disappear. We would be disintegrated in Real Time and Virtual Reality long before the stars went out. Fortunately, all this is literally impossible. Very High Definition, with it ambition of producing images, sounds, information, bodies in microvision, in stereoscopy, as you have never seen them before… is unrealizable. As is the phantasy of Artificial Intelligence: the brain’s becoming a world, the world’s becoming a brain, so as to function without bodies, unfailing, autonomized, inhuman. Too intelligent, too super-efficient to be true. There is, in fact, no room for both natural and artificial intelligence. There is no room for both the world and its double.” (Pg. 34)

He observes, “all of the advanced technological process points up the fact that behind his doubles and his prostheses, his biological clones and his virtual images, man takes advantage of these things to disappear. So it is with the answer-phone: ‘We aren’t here. Leave a message…’ And the video plugged into the TV takes over the job of watching the film for you… you always feel a little responsible for the films you haven’t seen, the desires you haven’t fulfilled, the people you haven’t replied to, the crimes you haven’t committed, the money you haven’t spent. This amounts to a whole array of repressed possibilities, and the idea that there is a machine to store them and filter them, into which they go to die away quietly, in a profoundly reassuring tone.” (Pg. 40)

He notes, “The info-technological threat is the threat of an eradication of the night, of that precious difference between night and day, by a total illumination of all moments. In the past, messages faded on a planetary scale, faded with distance. Today we are threatened with lethal sunstroke, with a blinding profusion, by the ceaseless feedback of all information to all points of the globe.” (Pg. 52-53)

Not one of Baudrillard’s “major works,” this book still is filled with many of Baudrillard’s perceptive and sometimes acerbic comments on society.