Baudrillard on War and World Cup

Penalty
Originally uploaded by Liberoliber.

An awfully juicy nugget from Baudrillard apropos today's non-events:

"Empty war: it brings to mind those games in World Cup football which often have to be decided by penalties (sorry spectacle), because of the impossibility of forcing a decision. As though the players punished themselves by means of 'penalties' for not having been able to play and take the match in full battle. We might as well have begun with the penalties and dispensed with the game and its sterile stand-off. So with the war [Gulf War]: it could have begun at the end and spared us the forced spectacle of this unreal war where nothing is extreme and which, whatever the outcome, will leave behind the smell of undigested programming, and the entire world irritated as though after an unsuccessful copulation."

(from The Gulf War Did Not Take Place)

Or, as Johnny Rotten might say: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"...

Comments

[CR]

Tony Negri on soccer, AC Milan, etc.

http://tinyurl.com/gbyef

[s0metim3s]

Anyone know what Materazzi said to Zidane so as to get a header to the chest?

[CR]

Well, that's the question of the hour, isn't it.

The speculation I've seen so far:

1) M twisted Z's nipple
2) M said something about Z's ethnic background
3) M said something pertaining the rumors about Z's sexuality
4) M said something about the shot that Z had just missed
5) Z was tuckered out and wanted to take a seat
6) Z knew the game was doomed - Barthes vs. Buffon in the shootout - and wanted no part in it.

[Nate]

I think the headbutt argues against Baudrillard's argument. It was an extreme act, within the rules of the game, hence his ejection. Similarly the extremity of the gulf war results in a red card being given to any portrayal of that extremity.

[Amish Lovelock]

Nah, it was a hair joke.

[RIPope]

Nate - ha! You are analysing too much. But, if you're really going to make me think about the particulars of this silly match, you are right. It was a little moment of the Real, particularly since it wasn't shown in real time but had to be 'found' to be replayed after the Italian goal-keeper was running around hysterically trying to get everyone to believe what he saw with his eyes, like the trauma that only 'comes to be' in its after-the-'fact' symbolization.

I thought Zidane's act had something graceful to it, a kind of encapsulation of the impotence and frustration that is the game of soccer. Maybe we can say he even Realized the stupidity of the sport, and he had, in his last game, finally had enough... and just wanted, for once, to leave the field when HE felt like it.

(And of course, the violent headbutt to the chest just after missing a headbutt scoring opportunity - so directly Realizing, in this repetition, the painfully boring pace of the sport.)

[infinite thought]

You assumed no one would read this quote on my site a few days back! Fair enough...s'pose.

[daniel]

"a kind of encapsulation of the impotence and frustration that is the game of soccer"

What a total load of shit.

[Nate]

I thought the headbutt was totally out of order, but if it turns out Amish is right then I change my mind. As one of the balding I think it ought to be general policy that hair jokes lead to headbutts. And Italy should be retroactively docked two points. Full-pated no good rotten...

[John]

ZZ is expected to make a press statement later this week, and recent reportage points to the "terrorist" label being the catalytic epithet.

I have to admit I'm still confounded by the whole exchange, and after reading Richard:

"...we can say he even Realized the stupidity of the sport, and he had, in his last game, finally had enough... and just wanted, for once, to leave the field when HE felt like it"

and Daniel:

"What a total load of shit."

I have to (paradoxically) embrace the Realization that both sentiments likely point toward a Truth within the event.

[RIPope]

John, yes, I agree, I think Daniel's comments are right on the money. Precisely what I was saying, yes.

What was Zidane's act if not a kind of impotent acting-out (especially when considering the inevitable consequences in this his much-hyped final game)?... And what is soccer if not a woefully impotent sport, as Baudrillard intimated?

[s0metim3s]

Would it be 'unsporting' to point out just how masculinised these tropes of impotence and frustration are? Why would anyone go looking to sport for libidinal satisfaction - or was it just the mention of nipple tweaking between men that brought this on?

If so, tweak eachothers nipples by all means - but interesting theoretical/political commentary (on sport or anything else) it aint.

[John Q. Rotten]

You could, of course, always check out the news sources and see what's purported to've been said. And from there, you could, of course, consider the fact that all sports contain a psychological (note, not necessarily psychoanalytic) element in which getting into the opponent's head is considered fair game. And you could, of course, recognize that were you a competitive athlete, this notion of yours is beyond ridiculous:

"Maybe we can say he even Realized the stupidity of the sport, and he had, in his last game, finally had enough... and just wanted, for once, to leave the field when HE felt like it."

I mean, I love that capital "R" on "realized," as if, you know, a man in the 110th minute of a football match acquired Lacanian Truth...although, I'm sure it'd be easier to take such patent bullshit seriously whilst dehydrated, exhausted, and the victim of an endless stream of racist remarks. (I know it'd take at least that much convince me.)

But back to you speaking with, you know, something resembling the facts:

"It was a little moment of the Real, particularly since it wasn't shown in real time but had to be 'found' to be replayed after the Italian goal-keeper was running around hysterically trying to get everyone to believe what he saw with his eyes, like the trauma that only 'comes to be' in its after-the-'fact' symbolization."

You love to fly off every available handle, that much is obvious--but were you to do so from, I don't know, a position in which you possessed the most basic of facts, you'd realize Zizi was not, in fact, carded after evidence his foul was "found," but was witnessed by the line judge who, as soon as he was consulted, immediately indicated the severity of the foul. Seriously, your commitment to the truth rivals that of American conservatives, by which I mean, you have none. They deploy theirs in defense of neoconservative nonsense; you deploy yours in defense of Lacanian, but other than that, what difference is there.

P.S. Did you you see the copy of Ecrits in Materazzi's back pocket on the replay? It demonstrates that his words to Zizi were designed with cruel intent to undermine the very Truth he had just come into possession of. From my vantage point, it is clear he informed Zidane of the utter conceptul inadequacy of the Real, twisted his nipple, then proved (via a diagram cunningly tatooed on his chest) that the unconscious is structured like his ass. Zidane couldn't handle it.

P.P.S. "Hysterically"? Care to illuminate the second- and third-wave feminist critique of Lacanian misogyny for me? What was that? Didn't think so.

[Kenneth Rufo]

I agree with:

a) total load of shit.
b) masculinised tropes.
c) witnessed by line judge.

Soccer is a beautiful, beautiful game, and if there's a problem with World Cup, it's that it doesn't allow ties, not that the sport is deficient.

[RIPope]

Rotten, your insistence on facts means you completely miss the level of perception, and how reality is experienced by the person in question - in other words, you miss entirely the realm where psychoanalysis works. The line judge may have seen it, but on the television (where the vast majority of people experienced it), the commentators didn't see it and they had to rewind the tapes to find it - much later...

You obviously haven't a clue as to what psychoanalysis is about, and since the bulk of my probes above were psychoanalytic, there's not much point in beginning to discourse with you. You are a travesty to your name.

s0metim3s: yes, it is a tad masculine, but it is a masculine game, watched by many a lad! So it's kind of ironic that it's rather impotent at its heart...

[RIPope]

What are you people trying to do? Eliminate masculine tropes from a bunch of guys running around a field kicking a ball? Isn't this the clearest case of academia being completely out of touch with the world, and dare I say, 'Rotten', the (barest of) facts, in the interest of liberal niceties???

[isakofsky]

The incident is known to most people around the world through TV, not through having seen it. Meanwhile, it wasn't seen by the ref or the assistant refs. It was only seen, supposedly, by the fourth and/or fifth official. It's now reckoned that these officials only 'saw' it by 'seeing' it on a TV monitor. But they can't admit that because to do so would throw into difficulty some other decisions or non-decisions that took place in that game and in the tournament, most specifically, another act of violence in which a player headbutted another but wasn't seen by the ref but was 'seen' by TV.

Even now someone is writing 'The World Cup Did Not Take Place'.

In fact, I'm sure it could be argued that Materazzi only said what he said because he was on TV. Not because he knew he would be witnessed, but because of the level of hysteria created by the match as a piece of world watched spectacle. The very next day, there were sites that were not only streaming the headbutt episode but also montages of past Materazzi incidents. His violence as a player has been packaged up and is available as a piece of online entertainment/evidence.

[John]

Of course the tropes are masculine, but I was reminded of something Angela wrote that I think relates to what Richard is saying and I think is interesting. Namely, doesn't this blind "impotence" at the heart of the machismo circumvent its phallogocentric base, with Baudrillard's "empty war" as a radically impossible sexual relationship and rather a fetishized submissive/dominant one, as theorized (with masculine tropes intact) by Gayle Rubin and others?

And while, yes, the fourth official apparently did see the act, according to the Times article, Richard is right to point out that for the primary referees, the media and many of the fans present, this amounts to a "lost moment" that is only available via its by-now-endlessly replayed simulacrum. Now, I don't want this to seem like a Last Temptation of ZZ, but doesn't the emergence of the replayed act (over and over again on the American broadcast that I watched) occur at the expense of the "beauty" of the game Kenneth mentions? Doesn't it evacuate the "meaning" of the sport itself (whether or not that Symbolic investment is libidinal)?

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

First, I've been following this from 3 Quarks Daily of all places, which strikes me as odd.

Second, this is a prime example of psychoanalysis producing the most predictable, least interesting readings of cultural events. I mean, there's the "shock value" (and the concomitant pleasures of its production) of the conventional psychoanalytic reversal--"impotent," indeed.

Then there's this:

It was a little moment of the Real, particularly since it wasn't shown in real time but had to be 'found' to be replayed after the Italian goal-keeper was running around hysterically trying to get everyone to believe what he saw with his eyes, like the trauma that only 'comes to be' in its after-the-'fact' symbolization.

On what level does this work? If a subordinate official saw it, he wasn't obligated to rush the pitch to inform the field official. As I understand, the official doesn't volunteer the information until asked, much like the appeal to the first or third base ump on a check swing. So I'm not sure what experience you reference here, or how you do so. Or are you merely trying to say that that particular moment was an allegory of Lacanian psychoanalysis. And if that's the reason, I can't help but ask "Why?"

isakofsky, at the 3 Quarks link above, they have links not only to Materazzi, but to Zidane's former misbehavior, including a damn near identical headbutt. They also claim he has a famous temper, something Americans, treated to a constant stream of "the Great Zidane"--"the ball's cleared, taken by the Great Zidane, touch pass, back to the Great Zidane," &c.--wouldn't have known about.

Anyhow, isn't the more interesting comment Materazzi's bizarre profession of innocence via ignorance. He "doesn't even know what [the word 'terroist'] means"? What?

[Kenneth Rufo]

Oh Scott, I have a post I meant to send you, though it's not inappropriate to do the self-promotion here.

http://ghostinthewire.org/archives/2006/07/on_genetic_priv.php

[Kenneth Rufo]

Oh, and on a related matter, Baudrillard thinks psychoanalysis is as silly and simulacral as Marxism, so we might want to consider reading the starting quote without all the Lacnian overtones.

[isakofsky]

And we haven't even begun on headbutt, heads, giving head, bowing down in front of someone but only in order to assault them, Materazzi's backward fall, Materazzi prone etc etc.

[Adam Kotsko]

So an unsuitable quotation from Baudrillard leads to a Lacanian-inflected "analysis" that doesn't match the facts or even seem to get Lacan right, aside from throwing around the jargon. (You actually wrote "Realized?" What the hell?)

What a thoroughly useless post! You are truly one of the Internet's leading discreditors of Lacanian psychoanalysis -- but apparently unconsciously (see, did you catch the reference to psychoanalysis there, with the word "unconsciously"?).

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Ken, I earmarked that a couple days ago, after my iatrogenic post, and plan on incorporating it into my follow-up (today or tomorrow).

And yes, I considered the Baudrillard independently of psychoanalysis, just not RIPope's statements about the Real. So I spoke more to the comments than the post. Were I to speak to the post, I'd say Baudrillard's "so with" is too far, far easy. Unearned, even. But I find most Baudrillard similarly flip, as if the ideas are tossed off to an audience he assumes will welcome them and ponder their profundity. With Zizek, at least, there's a sense that the wheels churn behind the easy associations. (I speak to prose style here more than quality of thought, but the latter's tough to fathom from so short a selection.)

[Kenneth Rufo]

Strangely, my impression of the two thinkers is reversed. Baudrillard seems to say stuff that he thinks is interesting or witty, somewhat off the cuff, somewhat hyperbolically, makes fun of himself for doing so, and then seems surprised when he builds up a bevy of acolytes. Whereas Zizek seems to pride himself on cultivating disciples who don't read carefully anyone besides Zizek, which then helps Zizek's arguments against other thinkers make sense and thus establish Zizek as bad-ass philo-mo-fo.

They're both over the top, but the madness in their methods seems a bit different to me.