Contemporary Theory Essay

Cara Fotofili

How do the theories of Jean Baudrillard inform our reading of The Name of the Rose, by Umberto
Eco? Not right yet

After a brief discussion of the precursors of Jean Baudrillard and some general defining
characteristics of postmodern thought, I will examine the more contemporary ideas of Baudrillard,
concentrating on his concept that reality no longer exists and that we live in a simulated world. I will
then determine to what extent these ideas add meaning to a reading of Umberto Ecos postmodern
novel, The Name of the Rose, and how Baudrillards theory compares to the theories of Umberto
Eco.

In his lecture Murder of the Real (1999) Baudrillard mentions that his concept is a little like
Nietzsches idea of the death of God4. Nietzsche also talks about being as the last breath of a
vapourizing reality and states that there is a breakdown of the distinction between the real and
apparent world. (Neitzsche.1882). We are also reminded of Baudrillards ideas of simulacra by
Kierkegaard with his contention that individuals have been reduced to an abstract entity he calls the
public which he describes as something created by the media. He says that individuals are therefore
no longer real. (Kierkegaard 1962, p59 ).Baudrillard began his prolific career writing works of social
theory where he criticised Marx, adding sign value to Marxs ideas of use value and exchange
value, thus supplementing social theory with semiotic theory. Sign value added qualities such as
prestige, luxury and power to the consideration of commodities. These Marxist concepts meant that
when use value became exchange value, commodities lost their existence as objects and became
abstract entities; this same abstraction applying to the humans who produced them. (Ayelsworth.
2013)

Postmodernism is a term first used by Jean Francois Lyotard who defined it as incredulity toward
meta-narratives (Lyotard. 1979). He sees language as losing a linear narrative and becoming

bunches of unstable combinations of signs breaking the subject into heterogeneous moments of
subjectivity which change position from sender to receiver to referent. (Ayelsworth. 2013).

Baudrillard demonstrates how easily we accept simulacra as reality by beginning,Simulacra and

Simulation with a quote:
The simulacrum is never what hides the truth it is the truth that hides the fact that there is none
-Ecclesiastes
In an interview with Francois LYvonnet, Baudrillard boasts that this is an imaginary quote and
nobody spotted it! Baudrillard also forgets about references or footnotes and states that
everything has to be as though I invented it myself. (Baudrillard. 2004).
Maybe say here something about use of language games as used by Wittgenstein/Lyotard
Jean Baudrillard theorises that reality no longer exists. He explains that this means that the principle
of reality, the meaning of what we take reality to be, has been annihilated and that the values that
support our idea of reality such as true and false, origin and end, cause and effect, no longer exist.
He gives various reasons how this has come about, his primary thesis being that the increase in the
production of copies (of virtual reality) has replaced reality and that the resulting virtual world is
indistinguishable from reality (Baudrillard 1999)
He explains that before the industrial revolution it was easier to distinguish a copy from an original.
Developments in technology have meant that the ability to replicate objects has improved, firstly to
a point where a copy could almost replace the original and eventually to a stage of perfection so that
there is no difference between the original and a simulation.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETykZgS176M&list=TLMS3HDnUvaB8)
Rewrite this.

As a demonstration to explain the concept that there is no reality Baudrillard begins with a
statement that appears to paraphrase the second commandment in the bible1 I forbade that there
be any simulacra in the temples because the divinity that animates nature can never be
represented, Baudrillard describes the tradition of iconoclasm whereby religious images and icons
have been destroyed. In Baudrillards opinion iconoclasts realise that the worship of images created
a mind-set amongst worshippers that the image was no different from that which it represented.
This revealed that even God himself was never anything but his own simulacrum. In other words
the danger of unmasking images is that it reveals that they have no original. The fundamental idea
that a sign represented something real, Baudrillard suggests, has been replaced by a sign
representing another sign (Baudrillard: The Precession of Simulacra. Simulacra and Simulation.
1981).
The idea of an objective reality replaced the illusion of God and Baudrillard sees this idea of reality as
being equally illusory. We can only know things by our own subjective representation of them, and
have no way of knowing whether they exist outside us. The question whether things really exist
outside of us and as we see them is absolutely meaninglessThe question is almost as absurd as
wondering whether blue is really blue, objectively blue (Georg Cristoph Lichtenberg).2 Baudrillard
sees the reality of the subject as equally illusory. Baudrillard describes the relationship between
subject and object as being parts of the same thing, rather than as opposite to one another, when he
says of the world, I think it and it thinks me. (Baudrillard. 2005).
The Name of the Rose is a postmodern novel written by Umberto Eco, who is also a semiotician and
literary critic. His book The Open Work he discusses his concept of openness in relation to literary
texts, meaning that he prefers narrative as a field rather than a line, and that meaning is left open to
interpretation by the reader. He uses this method in his novels along with intertextuality and the
inclusion of fact and fiction so that they are almost indistinguishable from one another.

Eco was greatly influenced by Jorge Luis Borges and has included many references to him and his
work in The Name of the Rose. One of the characters, a blind monk librarian, is named Jorge from
Burgos, obviously as a tribute to Borges, who lived a monk-like existence, devoted to books, and
who went blind later in life. Labyrinths and mirrors are common features in the stories of Borges, the
former could symbolise chaos and illusion, and the latter unreality and simulacra. One of Borges
short stories was The Library of Babel, a nightmarish tale about a man who was unable to decipher
a word that had no meaning. In the Name of the Rose, solving the murder depended on unravelling
the library which was labyrinthine and had a mirror which distorted images.
(www.themodernworld.com/borges/borges_infl_eco.html)
Baudrillard also employed a fable written by Borges, about the map and the territory, to
demonstrate his concept of the Precession of Simulacra. This fable told of the cartographers who
made a map which entirely covered the whole territory of the empire. As the empire declined the
map disintegrated until only traces were left in the desert. Buadrillard described the map (copy of
the territory) as replacing the original territory until only decaying traces of the real remained.
(Baudrillard. 1981)
Note to Tutor: this is where Im up to and from here I have more to add about the novel and
how it relates to Baudrillards ideas.
Then I will write some more about Ecos theories of semiotics and hyperreality
Then I will add some stuff about how they compare with one another
Then I will revise and edit the whole thing.
Then I will write a conclusion which will say something about how both the novel and
Baudrillard can be read as fiction (Baudrillards idea of fiction theory) - and as theory- and
how the difference is blurred.
Then I will fix up the references and bibliography

Other notes

In Umberto Ecos novel, The Name of the Rose, this interplay between subject and object is
expressed when the narrator speaks of how it seems to him that heretics are often created by the
inquisitor, in reaction to the fervour and violence with which the inquisitor carries out his duties.3
(p.42).
Umberto Eco
Idea of meaning as a cultural unit.
e.g. DOG
Referent not a specific dog
-

All existing dogs, which is not an object that can be perceived by the senses

A set, class, logical entity

E very attempt to establish what the referent of a sign is forces us to define the referent
in terms of an abstract entity which moreover is only a cultural convention.
p.66 Semtioics Umberto Eco

Notes
1.

Deuteronomy 5 (810):

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any

likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water
under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a

jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of
those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my
commandments.
2.

This quote does not appear in a search of Georg Cristoph Lichtenberg, but only in a search of

Baudrillard.
3. For what I saw at the abbey then (and will now recount) caused me to think that often inquisitors
create heretics. And not only in the sense that they imagine heretics where these do not exist, but
also that inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven to share
in it, in their hatred for the judges. Truly, a circle conceived by the Devil. God preserve us.
-- The Name of the Rose, First Day, Sext
4. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we
comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the
world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water
is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to
invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply
to appear worthy of it?
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125,1882 tr. Walter Kaufmann

"I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient
himself in the world. What I did not understand is the relation among signs . . . I behaved stubbornly,
pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the
universe."
"But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something. . . ."
"What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net,

or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because
you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless . . . The only truths that are useful are
instruments to be thrown away."
-- The Name of the Rose, Seventh Day, Night
References

Twilight of the Idols Kaufmann (ed.) 1954, 458-86). Nietzsche, F. The Gay Science, Section
125,1882 tr. Walter Kaufmann.
Kierkegaard, Soren. 1962. The Present Age, Alexander Dru(trans), New York. Harper and Rowe
Aylesworth, Gary, "Postmodernism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/postmodernism/>.
Lyotard. J-F. (1984) The Postmodern condition: A report on knowledge.Geoff Bennington and Brian
Massumi (trans) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Jean Baudrillard. Fragments:Conversations with Francois LYvonnet . New York: Routledge, 2004).
Murder of the Real - http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/videos/)
Baudrillard (2005)On the World in its Profound Illusoriness. In: Chris Turner (Translator). The
Intellegence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact (Talking images). Berg Publishers. November 15,2005)
Jean Baudrillard. (1981) Simulacra and Simulations from Jean Baudrillard Selected Writings ed Mark
Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press.