Apocalisse del terrore. Baudrillard tra intelligenza del Male e stupidità del Bene

Abstract

This essay explores and interprets the radical thought of the latest Baudrillard. If the transparent Evil turns into a ventriloquist in such a way that Evil’s intelligence reveals itself in Good’s Foolishness, there is no way to escape the law of reversibility: if one wants to reach power by means of the image, then they are bound to be killed by the return of that same image, since the carnival of the image is also self-cannibalization through the image. The result is an Apocalypse that becomes viral through the media: the terror of the anti-hegemony mingles with the terror of the hegemony itself, namely those parodistic events, those symbolic ways of dissuasion that, foolishly, put strain on how the system presents itself. Zidane’s header at the Football World Cup 2006 as well as Trump’s “ass-clown” behaviour (as described by A. James) have to do with the self-cannibalization which hegemony can’t shirk. On the other hand, the media pave the way to these events so that the background of the non-event turns into the ordinary place of inquiry, a place where “the image is a savage analyst of reality”. On this background, the videos showing the beheadings done by Isis are mingled with Hollywood movies and the capture of the executioner dubbed The Bulldozer becomes the parody of Abu Ghraib’s pictures, “terrorists without even knowing it”. Reflecting upon the latest Baudrillard becomes of outmost importance in order to learn how to read and interpret radically the image of terror. It’s one thing to understand the different kinds of Evil’s Intelligence, quite another to believe the imperatives of Good’s Foolishness.