Dust Breeding

Criando polvo

Jean Baudrillard

Our reality has become experimental. Without destiny, modern man is left with an endless
experimentation of himself. Let's take two recent examples. The first one, the Loft Story
show, is a media illusion of live reality. The second one, the case of Catherine Millet’s
book, is a phantasmatic illusion of live sex.

Nuestra realidad ha llegado a ser experimental. Sin destino, el hombre moderno es librado a
una experimentación sin fin de sí mismo. Déjenme dar dos ejemplos recientes. El primero,
El show Loft story (historia de un Loft), es una ilusión mediática de la realidad viva. El
segundo, el caso del libro de Catherine Millet, es una fantasmagórica (phantasmatic) ilusión
de sexo.

The Loft show has become a universal concept: a human amusement park combined with a
ghetto, solitary confinement (huis-clos), and an Angel of Death. The idea is to use
voluntary seclusion as a laboratory for synthetic conviviality, for a telegenetically modified
society.

El show del Loft ha llegado a ser un concepto universal: un parque de atracciones humano
combinado con un geto, confinamiento solitario (huis-clos), y un Ángel de la Muerte. La
idea es usar la reclusión voluntaria como un laboratorio de convivencia sintética, para una
sociedad modificada telegenéticamente.

In this space, where everything is meant to be seen (as in "Big Brother", other reality-TV
shows, etc.), we realize that there is nothing left to see. It becomes a mirror of dullness, of
nothingness, on which the disappearance of the other is blatantly reflected (even though the
show alleges different objectives). It also reveals the possibility that human beings are
fundamentally not social. This space becomes the equivalent of a "ready-made" just-as-is
(telle quelle) transposition of an "everyday life" that has already been trumped by all
dominant models. It is a synthetic banality, fabricated in closed circuits and supervised by
a monitoring screen.

En este espacio, donde todo será visto (como en “Big Brother”-“El gran hermano”, otro
show de reality TV, etc.), nos damos cuenta que nada queda para ver. Esto llega a ser un
espejo de la estupidez, de la nada, en el cual la desaparición del otro es obviamente
reflejada (aunque el show alegue diferentes objetivos). Esto también revela la posibilidad
de que los seres humanos no sean fundamentalmente sociales. Este espacio llega a ser el
equivalente de una rápida y directa (telle quelle) transposición de una “vida común” que ha
sido ya formada por los modelos dominantes. Es una banalidad sintética, fabricada en
circuitos cerrados y supervisada por una pantalla de monitoreo.
In this sense, the artificial microcosm of the Loft Story is similar to Disneyland which gives
the illusion of a real world, a world out-there, whereas both Disney's world and the world
outside of it are mirror images of one another. All of the United States is (in) Disneyland.
And we, in France, are all inside the Loft. No need to enter reality’s virtual reproduction.
We are already in it. The televisual universe is merely a holographic detail of the global
reality. Even in our most mundane activities we are deep into experimental reality. And this
explains our fascination with immersion and spontaneous interactivity. Does it mean that it
is all pornographic voyeurism? Not at all.

En este sentido, el microcosmos artificial de historias de Loft es similar a Disneylandia, que

da la ilusión de un mundo real, un mundo afuera, en el que ambos, el mundo de Disney y el
mundo exterior, son imágenes de espejo uno del otro. Todos los Estados Unidos son (están
en) Disneylandia. Y nosotros, en Francia, estamos todos dentro del Loft. No necesitamos
entrar en la reproducción de la realidad virtual. Ya estamos en ella. El universo televisual es
meramente un detalle holográfico de la realidad global. Aún en nuestras más mundanas
actividades estamos dentro de una realidad experimental. Y esto explica nuestra fascinación
con la inmersión y la interactividad espontánea. Significa eso que ¿es todo voyerismo
pornográfico? No todo.

Sex is everywhere else to be found, but that's not what people want. What people deeply
desire is a spectacle of banality. This spectacle of banality is today's true pornography and
obscenity. It is the obscene spectacle of nullity (nullité), insignificance, and platitude. This
stands as the complete opposite of the theater of cruelty. But perhaps there is still a form of
cruelty, at least a virtual one, attached to such a banality. At a time when television and the
media in general are less and less capable of accounting for (rendre compte) the world's
(unbearable) events, they rediscover daily life. They discover existential banality as the
deadliest event, as the most violent piece of information: the very location of the perfect
crime. Existential banality is the perfect crime. And people are fascinated (but terrified at
the same time) by this indifferent "nothing-to-say" or "nothing-to-do," by the indifference of
their own lives. Contemplating the Perfect Crime --banality as the latest form of fatality--
has become a genuine Olympic contest, the latest version of extreme sports.

El sexo se puede encontrar en todas partes, pero no es lo que la gente quiere. Lo que la
gente desea profundamente es un espectáculo de banalidad. Este espectáculo de banalidad
es hoy en día verdadera pornografía y obscenidad. Es el espectáculo obsceno de la nulidad
(nullité)., insignificancia, y rutina. Pero quizás hay aún una forma de crueldad, en última
instancia virtual, unida a esa banalidad. En un tiempo en que la televisión y los medios en
general son menos y menos capaces de dar cuenta (rendre compte) del los (insoportables)
eventos mundiales, ellos redescubren la vida diaria. Ellos descubren que la banalidad
existencial es el evento más mortal, es la más violenta pieza de información: la verdadera
localización del crimen perfecto. La banalidad existencial es el crimen perfecto. Y la gente
está fascinada (pero asustada simultáneamente) por este indiferente “nada que decir” o
“nada que hacer, por la indiferencia de sus propias vidas. Contemplar el crimen perfecto –
banalidad como la última forma de fatalidad- a llegado a ser una genuina prueba Olímpica,
la última versión de un deporte extremo.
What makes it worse is the fact that the public is mobilized as the judge of all this. The
public has become Big Brother. We are well beyond panopticism, beyond visibility as a
source of power and control. It is no longer a matter of making things visible to the
external eye. It is rather a question of making things transparent to themselves, through the
diffusion of control into the masses, a mode of control which by the same token erases the
marks of the system. Thus, the audience is involved in a gigantic exercise of negative
counter-transference (contre-transfert), and this is once again where the dizzying attraction
of this kind of spectacle comes from.

Lo que lo hace peor es el hecho de que el público es movilizado como el juez de todo esto.
El público ha llegado a ser el Gran Hermano (Big Brother). Estamos mucho más allá del
panopticismo, más allá de la visibilidad como fuente de poder. No es más un asunto de
hacer las cosas visibles a los ojos externos. Es más bien un asunto de hacer las cosas
transparentes para sí mismas, a través de la difusión del control en las masas, un modo de
control a través del que las mismas señales borran las marcas del sistema.

In fact, all this corresponds to the inalienable right or desire to be nothing and to be
regarded as such. There are two ways to disappear. Either you demand not to be seen (the
current issue with image rights); or you turn to the maddening exhibitionist display of your
insignificance. You make yourself insignificant in order to be seen as such. This is the
ultimate protection against the need to exist and the duty to be oneself.

De hecho, todo esto corresponde al inalienable derecho o deseo de ser nada y de ser
considerado como tal. Hay dos formas de desaparecer. Una es lograr no ser visto ( la forma
corriente de tratar con los derechos sobre la imagen); o virar hacia el enloquecedor
exhibicionismo de mostrar hasta lo más insignificantemente suyo. Usted se hace invisible al
ser visto de esa manera. Esta es la última protección contra la necesidad de existir y de la
tarea de ser uno mismo.

But this situation also creates the contradictory demand to simultaneously not be seen and
to be perpetually visible. Everyone must have it both ways. No ethic or law can solve this
dilemma. There is no possibility to adjudicate between the unconditional right to see and
the unconditional right not to be seen. Complete information is a basic human rights
requirement. And this necessity brings with it the idea of forced visibility, including the
right to be over-exposed by the media.

Pero esta situación crea también la demanda contradictoria de simultáneamente no ser visto
y de ser perpetuamente invisible. Todo debe ser de estas dos maneras. Ni la ética ni la ley
pueden resolver este dilema. No hay posibilidad de dictaminar entre el derecho sin
condiciones de no ser visto y el derecho sin condiciones de ver. La completa información es
un derecho humano básico. Y esta necesidad conduce a la idea de visibilidad forzada,
incluyendo el derecho de ser sobre expuesto por los medios.

Foucault used to refer to self-expression as the ultimate form of confession. Keeping no

secret. Speaking, talking, endlessly communicating. This is a form of violence which targets
the singular being and his secrecy. It is also a form of violence against language. In this
mode of communicability, language loses its originality. Language simply becomes a
medium, an operator of visibility. It has lost its symbolic and ironic qualities, those which
make language more important than what it conveys.

Foucault usualmente se refería a la auto expresión como la última forma de confesión. No

tener secretos. Hablar, conversar, comunicar sin pausa. Esta es una forma de violencia que
apunta al ser individual y sus secretos. Es también una forma de violencia contra el
lenguaje. En este modo de comunicabilidad (communicability), el lenguaje pierde su
originalidad. El lenguaje llega a ser simplemente un medio, un operador de visibilidad. Ha
perdido sus cualidades simbólicas e irónicas, aquellas que hacen al lenguaje más importante
que lo que expresa (convey).

The worst part of this obscene and indecent visibility is the forced enrollment, the
automatic complicity of the spectator who has been blackmailed into participating. The
obvious goal of this kind of operation is to enslave the victims. But the victims are quite
willing. They are rejoicing at the pain and the shame they suffer. Everybody must abide by
society's fundamental logic: interactive exclusion. Interactive exclusion, what could be
better! Let’s all agree on it and practice it with enthusiasm!

La peor parte de esta obscena e indecente visibilidad es el enrolamiento forzoso, la

complicidad automática entre el espectador que ha sido chantajeado para participar. La
meta obvia de este tipo de operación es esclavizar a las víctimas. Pero las víctimas son
complacientes. Ellas se regocijan del sufrimiento y la vergüenza que sufren. Todos deben
aguantar la lógica fundamental de la sociedad: exclusión interactiva. ¡Exclusión interactiva,
qué puede ser mejor! ¡Dejen a todos aceptarla y practicarla con entusiasmo!

If everything ends with visibility (which, similar to the concept of heat in the theory of
energy, is the most degraded form of existence), the point is still to make such a loss of
symbolic space and such an extreme disenchantment with life an object of contemplation,
of sidereal observation (sidération), and of perverse desire. "While humanity was once
according to Homer an object of contemplation for the Gods, it has now become a
contemplation of itself. Its own alienation has reached such a degree that humanity’s own
destruction becomes a first rate aesthetic sensation" (Walter Benjamin).

Si todo termina con la visibilidad (que, de manera semejante al concepto de calor en la

teoría de la energía, es la más degradante forma de existencia), el punto es aún hacerla una
pérdida de espacio simbólico y un extremo desencanto con la vida, un objeto de
contemplación, de observación sideral (sidération), y de perverso deseo. “Mientras la
humanidad fue una vez de acuerdo a Homero un objeto de contemplación para los dioses,
ha llegado a ser ahora una contemplación de sí mismo. Su propia alineación ha alcanzado
tal grado que la autodestrucción de la humanidad ha llegado a ser una primera tasa de
sensación aestética (aesthetic)” (Walter Benjamin).

Everywhere the experimental takes over the real and the imaginary. Everywhere, principles
of scientific evidence and verification are introduced. Under the scalpel of the camera, and
without recourse to any symbolic language or context, we are vivisecting and dissecting
social relations. The case of Catherine Millet is another example of experimental reality,
another type of vivi-sexion. In her book, the sexual imaginary is blown away. All that’s left
is a principle of unlimited verification of sexual operations. It is a mechanism which is no
longer sexual.

A double misinterpretation is taking place. The idea of sexuality is turned into the ultimate
reference. Whether it is repressed or it is displayed, sexuality is at best nothing more than a
hypothesis. It is incorrect to take a hypothesis for a truth or a solid reference. It may well
be that the sexual hypothesis is nothing more than a fantasy. In any case, it is through its
repression that sexuality has gained such a strange power of attraction. Once it is played
out, sexuality loses its postulated quality. Hence, it is absurd and misplaced to act it out
and to systematically call for sexual "liberation." One never liberates a hypothesis. And
how sad is the idea of demonstrating sexuality through the sexual act! As if displacements,
deviations, transfers, and metaphors had nothing to do with sex. Everything is in the filter
of seduction, in détournement. Not the seduction in sex and desire, but the seduction of
playing with sex and desire (le jeu avec the sexe et le désir). This is exactly what makes
impossible the idea of "live sex." The concepts of live death or live news are just as naively
naturalist. They are all linked to the pretentious claim that everything can happen in the
real world, that everything craves to find its place inside an all encompassing reality. After
all, this is the essence of power too: "The corruption of power is to inscribe into reality
what was only found in dreams."

The key to the problem is provided by Jacques Henric’s understanding of photography and
the image. For Henric, our curiosity with the visual is always sexual. There’s no escaping
it. What we always look for in an image is sex, particularly the female sex. This is not only
the Origin of the World (Courbet) but also the origin of the visual. So, why not go there
directly? Let’s take pictures of sex! Let’s surrender fully to the scopic drive! This is a "Real
Erotic" principle, and Catherine Millet’s perpetual coital "acting out" is the equivalent of
this principle at the level of the body. Since everyone dreams of a limitless sexual use of the
body, let’s go for it!

No more seduction, no more desire, no more jouissance even. All we have is an endless
repetition, a general accumulation which marks the superiority of quantity over quality.
Out with seduction! There is only one question left, whispered by a man in a woman’s ear:
"What are you doing after the orgy?" But this question is useless. She can no longer think
past the orgy. She is beyond the end. She has reached the point where all processes have
gone exponential and can only reproduce themselves ad infinitum. This is what Alfred Jarry
predicted in his Overmale (Surmâle). Once you have reached a critical point, you can
endlessly make love. You have become a sexual machine. When sex is nothing more than a
matter of sex-processing, then it has reached its exponential, transfinite (transfini) degree.
But this does not mean that it has fulfilled its objective: to exhaust sex, to go to the end of
its process. This is impossible. And this last impossibility is what is left of seduction and its
revenge (sexuality’s own revenge). It’s all sexuality has to turn against its unscrupulous
users, unscrupulous about themselves, their desires, and their pleasure.

"To think like a woman undresses," Bataille used to say. Perhaps, but Catherine Millet’s
naivete is to think that people undress in order to get naked, to reach the naked truth about
sex and about the world. People take off their clothes to be revealed (pour apparaître). But
not to be revealed in their nakedness like truth (can anyone still believe that truth remains
when its veil of secrecy is lifted?) but to join the realm of appearances, of seduction. That’s
totally different.

The modern, disenchanted interpretation of the body as something which cannot wait to be
undressed and of sexuality as a desire which wants to be acted out and find pleasure is
misconstrued. Cultures which privilege masks, veils, adornments affirm the opposite: the
body is a metaphor. The genuine objects of desire and pleasure are the marks and signs
that pull the body away from its nakedness, its naturalness, its "truth," and the entire reality
of its physical presence. Everywhere seduction pulls objects away from their truths
(including the truth about sexual value). When thought lifts its veil, it is not in order to be
seen naked or to reveal a secret buried for a long time. Thought lifts its veil to reveal the
body as a definite enigma, as a secret, a pure object whose mystery will never be solved
and has no need to be discovered.

Under these conditions, an Afghan woman hidden behind a moucharabieh window or

another woman covered with a metallic net on the cover of Elle present contrasting
alternatives to the image of Catherine Millet’s wild virgin. It is the opposition between an
excess of secrecy and an excess of indecency.

In a sense, this kind of indecency, this radical obscenity found in Loft Story, is yet another
veil. It is a final, unremovable veil which remains after all previous covers have been lifted.
We want to reach the extreme, attain the paroxysm of exhibition, achieve total nudity, find
absolute reality, consume live and raw violence (au direct et à l’écorché vif). We’ll never
succeed. It’s impossible! The fortress of obscenity cannot be brought down. But,
paradoxically, such a lost quest helps to resurrect the basic rule of the game: the rule of the
sublime, the rule of secrecy, of seduction (always tracked down through the endless lifting
of covers).

So, why not propose a reverse hypothesis (opposed to the idea of voyeurism and collective
stupidity)? Why not suggest that what people want, what we all want in our quest which
inevitably stops in front of the fortress of obscenity, is precisely to gain the sense
(pressentir) that there is nothing to see, that we’ll never find the final clue? What we want
is to verify (by negation) the ultimate power of seduction. This is a desperate search, but
experimental reality is always desperate. What Loft Story claims to prove is that human
beings are indeed social beings... but nothing is so sure. What Catherine Millet claims to
demonstrate is that she is a sexual being... which is not a sure thing at all. What these
experiments confirm is merely the presence of the conditions for the experiment (simply
pushed to their limit). The system is perhaps best decoded through its excesses, but it is the
same system everywhere. Cruelty is the same everywhere. Going back to Duchamp, we can
sum it all up as a case of "dust breeding."

Notes
 1. A translation of "L'Elevage de Poussière," Libération, May 29, 2001. The title is
borrowed from one of Marcel Duchamp’s works (1920). "Dust Breeding" is also the title of
one of Man Ray’s photographs.

2. Loft Story is the latest reality-TV sensation in France. The premise of this "Big Brother"
like real-time game show on the M6 network is to lock 11 young French adults (in their
early twenties; there are 6 men and 5 women) for ten weeks in an apartment with 26 round-
the-clock surveillance cameras. They are constantly being filmed, and on the day the show
airs on M6, viewers vote to eject one of the tenants (similar to the "Big Brother" show on
US and British television). The idea is to end up with two participants, a male and a female,
who will win a $407,000 house, but only if they can stay together for another 6 months
under the 24 hour a day surveillance of the live-cams (Translator’s note).

3. Catherine Millet is an art critic and art philosophy scholar who recently published La Vie
Sexuelle de Catherine M. (The Sexual Life of Catherine M.) (Paris: Seuil, 2001), a
pornographic autobiography. In this book, the narrative is nothing but a succession of
extremely graphic sexual acts. The book presents itself as an unmediated pornographic
scene where the sexual imagery is privileged over narrative coherence (Translator’s note).

4. The French sentence reads: "L ’exclusion interactice, c’est le comble! Décidée en
commun, consommée avec enthousiasme."

5. Baudrillard’s play on vivisection and sex.

6. Moucharabiehs are the thick wooden windows found in Middle Eastern countries. They
allow outside light to filter into the room while preventing outsiders from seeing inside.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Translated by François Debrix, Miami.