The territory no longer precedes the map...

"Something has disappeared." That's Baudrillard from 2 decades ago---admittedly never one of my favorite theorists, but someone who I nevertheless find myself thinking about as I begin this blog.

The disappearance Baudrillard was describing and perhaps even lamenting---and I think it is probably worth considering the possibility that on one level Simulacra and Simulation can be read as a work of mourning---is the disappearance of what he calls the "sovereign difference" between map and territory, the concept and the real. Into the space formed by the collapse of this difference steps the hyperreal, a thing Baudrillard describes as "no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance...[and as] a hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any difference between the real and the imaginary."

Strange as it may seem, what turned my thoughts to Baudrillard was the recent furor that erupted over ABC's handling of the Democratic presidential debate that took place in Philadelphia. In the aftermath of the debate, scores of bloggers as well as a fair number of mainstream journalists quickly siezed the opportunity to heap scorn and the proverbial burning coals on the heads of the moderators, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos.

Amid the various allegations that the moderators displayed clear political bias, general incompetence or simple laziness, a clear narrative thread emerged: the first 50 minutes of the debate---devoted to a reiteration of familiar questions about Barack Obama's character based on certain of his associations (with his pastor, Louis Farrakhan, and ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers) and certain of his personal habits (his failure to wear a flag-pin on his lapel, for example)---were devoid of substance, a useless distraction from the real issues confronting the country.

"What's going on here?", I thought. "Haven't at least some of these people read Baudrillard? How can they so easily and so naively invoke the real, as if its status weren't immensely problematic?" And yet here they were, insisting that the moderators had some professional responsibility to address the "real world concerns of American voters."

To make matters even more interesting, New York Times columnist David Brooks swam against the tsunami of criticism, giving ABC an A for its coverage and claiming that "issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall." A day later, Brooks was at it again, insisting that voters look to issues such as Obama's attendance at "a church infused with James Cone-style liberation theology" or his "comments about working-class voters" when they cast their votes.

On the one hand then we have a chorus of critics asserting that the debate studiously avoided any engagement with the real, and on the other a well-placed columnist essentially saying it confronted issues that really will matter in the fall.

At issue here is the very thing Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation addresses: the status of the real. Like the critics, I want to critique the debate for what I regard as its prolonged evasion of anything of real substance, but the question remains how precisely to do this in a situation in which some measure of hyperreality obtains.

What I am trying to say here is that it seems somehow insufficient to assert that the debate in Philadelphia lacked reality. For a critic like Brooks (and he's far from alone), the very things the critics place in scare quotes and label as manufactured (i.e. inauthentic/unreal) "issues" are for him both real and important. Moreover, since they can presumably be shown to have real effects (or what I am tempted to call "effects of reality"), these issues cannot be simply dismissed as airy fantasies.

Their status seems both more complex and more troublesome. While I would want to insist that these "issues" emerge as part of a logic that defies traditional notions of representation and mimesis, they nevertheless appear capable---at least potentially---of doing many of the things we'd want to ascribe to real issues: galvanizing, organizing and mobilizing groups of people; influencing electoral outcomes, and all the rest.

If that's the case, then how do we distinguish them from the real? What frames of reference do we use to assess them?

As I look back on the public discourse that surrounded ABC's handling of the Clinton-Obama debate, what stands out is the way U.S. politics is still very much defined by a struggle over the real.

Addendum: Saturday's NYT letters to the editor (particularly the last two) show this struggle quite clearly.