Post-structural agency
Post-structuralism like Debord and Baudrillard discuss how the modern society creates alienating, unreal conditions. Most of their theories discuss frameworks and language to discuss, classify and categorize these structures in society and their outcome. A specifically useful term for identifying and discussing said structures is defined in Baudrillard’s work “Simulacra and Simulation”: the simulacrum, a copy of a copy that lost its original reference. It is thus hyperreal in the sense that it has no meaning to actual reality. He argues that it is overtaking reality and that real images are replaced by non-real images, the simulacra. The structure that produces the simulacra is the simulation, specifically the state of conditions that allow for things to be exchangeable by something non-real, without a change in outcome.
The second structure we will use is that of economic and symbolic exchange. In his book “Symbolic Exchange and Death” Baudrillard argues that in pre-capitalist society most interhuman exchanges were of symbolic nature, i.e. non-measurable and non-reciprocal. As a great example we can take a gift. A gift invites to reciprocate it, but not in economically measurable terms. Baudrillard argues that modern society shifts most exchanges to an economical exchange which alienates the participants. If your friend told you I have given you $5.54 for the gift you gave me and we are now even, it would turn the symbolic exchange into an economic one.
Enough with the vocabulary.
My problem with applying this systemic thinking and turning it into any kind of action, is that they imply agency, i.e. agentic power suppressing by creating deliberately alienating structures. Debord is much more direct in implying class agency (footnote: it’s not that simple in Debord, he specifically also says that there is emergent behaviour), while Baudrillard simply does not discuss it to my knowledge. They imply that there is a specific structure or person that can be attacked and the effect on society will simply vanish.
Furthermore, Baudrillard does not introduce a selection mechanism for simulacra or a mechanism of refinement. Simulation produces simulacra but how and after which mechanism? Simulacra outcompete the real but by which mechanism? Why would I as a human choose the simulated reality over the real reality? “Realness” vaguely left undefined has to measure, has to count for something when a simulacrum is competing with a real image. (This implies that humans can measure it, kinda vague, they think they can, Tinbergen says they mostly can’t.)
The supernormal stimulus
Enter Tinbergen’s supernormal stimulus. (Mnemonically easier to store as Tinbergen’s Fake G-Cups.) Tinbergen shows in his work on ethology, that there are stimuli to a biological system that exaggerate a biological or anthropological stimulus that developed due to evolution. The response to this artificial stimulus is higher than to the natural stimulus to which the sense evolved. Like fake G-Cups, you know they are fake, you’re still looking. It is very important to pause and think here for a second, since the supernormal stimulus is just a stimulus to senses, it might not (and most likely will not) include the actual functionality of the stimulating object. E.g. fake G-Cups don’t produce milk and do not imply fertility.
The supernormal simulacrum
We can thus think of a supernormal simulacrum, an emergent mechanism by which simulacra are valued and changed. My hypothesis is that simulacra can only compete in economic exchange when they are “better” by any metric, e.g. cheaper to produce, more scalable, whatever. But when you compete with nature, e.g. in sexual attraction, how do you commoditize a symbolic exchange that is naturally occurring? By replacing the real stimulus with a supernormal stimulus that is perceived as better by the natural being.
Making the simulacrum supernormal by economic exchange
Everything where a symbolic exchange is replaced by an economic exchange, it does so by creating a supernormal version which is hyperreal simply for the reason that it does not need to have meaning if the supernormal stimulus is better than the natural stimulus, since “meaning”, “reality” or “realness” are simply not in the optimization function of the economic exchange.
For each economic exchange is optimizing its commodity to fulfill an economic function, so does the simulation with the supernormal simulacrum. It does so by economically increasing the supernormal stimulus. We the customer (not in the literal sense but as consumers of an economic exchange) choose to be fooled, we vote by consumption. Thus the commodity of the economical exchange gets more and more supernormal, since it is outcompeting the alternatives economically, by our choice. The natural image can’t compete since it is mostly bound to the rules of symbolic exchange.
Simulation optimizes the simulacrum for supernormality by means of economic exchange.
The order of simulacra revisited
That means simulacra that traverse higher in the order of simulacra decrease in their “realness”, but increase in their supernormality. That explains why Baudrillard implies that this process is irreversible: restoring the natural signal from the supernormal is impossible as it is measurably (by the senses that fall for the supernormal) WORSE. We can’t restore it not since it is impossible, but because we don’t want to.
The supernormalization of counterculture
Every now and then instead of reaching a too high level of absurdity, collapsing culture, as Debord predicted, the search begins for the real. It can be discovered but is then in the simulation occupied by another supernormal simulacrum of the real. The alienated human creates realness, the simulation occupies and supernormalizes until the supernormalized resistance is “more real than real”. “The antithesis is the apotheosis of the thesis”, as Baudrillard correctly identifies. This contribution just explains the mechanism as emergent, not agentic.
Emergence vs agency
This implies that the creation of simulacra is an emergent property of economic exchange, not agentic behaviour of agents in the system. We are reminded of Serres: “Le maître a quitté le champ de bataille.”, the master has left the battlefield. I think it is even worse: the master has left the battlefield, since he also is not in control. This emergent behaviour fucks us all equally. As in Foucault’s Panopticon the prisoners guard themselves, we are both prisoners and guards of the supernormal. The conditioning is total and stronger than assumed by Baudrillard since we CHOOSE the supernormal simulacrum over the real.
Footnote: The point of this essay
If your first thought with this text is “akshually:…” and you want to write a comment, I invite you to do so, but please read these footnotes first:
The point of this essay is not to make a new discovery, more like hint at an isomorphism between evolutionary psychology/behavioural economics and French post-structuralism, and thus deduce which mechanism they missed.
Secondly this theory at first glance implies that there is no class agency, since it is all emergent behaviour. I specifically want to negate this thought, it is just due to the brevity of the text, there most certainly is class agency, but it might not be the only mechanism.
Thirdly, I am well aware of Deirdre Barrett’s book “Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose”, but the point of this essay is not to make a grand overarching claim, but to improve upon post-structuralism, so that we can use the tools, methods and vocabulary derived.
Fourthly, that still does not show a way out, correct, this is an essay not a revolutionary guideline. While Debord argued that workers need to become dialecticians and Baudrillard simply said simulacra are not reversible and we’re all fucked, this essay at least implies some mechanism by which we make simulacra supernormal and give them the ability to replace real images, which in theory should be circumventable.
The symbolic and economic exchange is not as binary in Baudrillard’s work as presented here for brevity. While there is an inherent power struggle in symbolic exchanges, this is not discussed here as it would make the paragraph significantly longer. E.g. the work of Mauss specifically shows this, specifically on the example of symbolic exchange of gifts.
Tinbergen’s stimulus as used in this essay is complecting two distinct effects, the biologically hardwired reflex and the generalized concept of the reaction to culturally constructed rituals. While Tinbergen uses the word supernormal stimulus solely for the prior, I took the liberty, just as Barrett, to generalize it to the latter.