This is what “political” power comes down to today. It is no longer driven by any positive will; it is merely a negative power of deterrence, of public health, of security policing, immunity policing, prophylaxis.
This strategy is directed not only at the future, but also at past events — for example, at that of 11 September, where it attempts, by war in Afghanistan and Iraq, to erase the humiliation. This is why this war is at bottom a delusion, a virtual event, a “non-event”. Bereft of any objective or finality of its own, it merely takes the form of an incantation, an exorcism. This is also why it is interminable, for there will never be any end to conjuring away such an event.
Virtuality and Events: The Hell of Power, by Jean Baudrillard
- French thinker Baudrillard dies (BBC)
- Jean Baudrillard, 77, Critic and Theorist of Hyperreality, Dies (New York Times)
- Articles by Jean Baudrillard (European Graduate School)
- International Journal of Baudrillard Studies
- S(t)imulacrum(b)
- Jean Baudrillard (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)