Refining the concepts of power, desire and seduction — interview with J. Baudrillard’ smile (1929-2007), by C. Aires (182-?-19--?)

Found with with an umbrella & the following "Warning": "Who was C. Aires? We are not going to deny here the alleged affinity of some of our previous works with murky and supernatural speculations, but what follows bellow is not unrelated to the well-known “seven notebooks”, “manuscripts with very stiff cover”, etc. Clearly enough, Esaú e Jacó was entitled "the last". Check with the immortals of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (there is only one, who is legion, all the others being left out, including Jorge Luis Borges). Actually, we have no reason to date this interview as after March 2007. The interview was found together with the unpublished fat-as-always photograph of Baudrillard we were also indecently publicizing. Where, though, is something we passionately let others now to ask. Indeed, we stop reading Baudrillad after we realize Deleuze didn't like him, which proves the futility of our philosophy and sophistry, the frailty (if not the weakness, and wickedness) of our  own character!!"

"C. A. – Foucault’s conception of power is supposed to be an improvement in relation to older conceptions. It is certainly different from any classical understanding of power. You have maintained, however, that the concrete result of Foucault’s original and rigorous analyses is to devoid the concept of power of any meaning by developing its logic to the most. Do you believe this should be taken as a compliment?
J. B. S. – Yes. I believe so. First of all, because this deflationary movement would be true of any original and rigorous analysis of any concept whatsoever. You see that my own position, if taken as outright criticism, would be devoid of any meaning in the same way, and this is why you asked your question. It has been said that if I would like to forget him, he would not even bother to remember me. And I take this comment as a compliment as well.

C. A. – Accordingly you relate to him symbolically?
J. B. S. – Yes. I believe so. He might have taken my comments as something rather outrageous. Indeed I accused him of sticking with the concept (of power) when he should not. But to keep spinning around an empty centre, like a vortex, might be the best way to point towards what I call seduction. Foucault would not bother to remember me because he had already forgotten himself. We did not relate consciously, we did not actually talk to each other, but while disappearing we connected symbolically, quite independently from what we said. This happens to any person, including the most despicable. 

C. A. – How seduction is supposed to be different from desire?
J. B. S. – If you desire something you are got into a movement. Desire is not the movement itself. The movement is what structure desire. It (the movement) might be called, again, power, or even law. Of course, power and law must be understood not merely as what represses. They are rather productive forces; they are what enable things to become visible. They enable one to see x as different from y, and to desire x as such. In order to desire and to be desired you need power and law. Not only you, but everything (I suppose no one is taking this personally). And seduction would be something like following this movement (of power and law) utterly spread. It would be something like short-circuiting all its paths. It would be the culmination and cancelation of the many desires (instituted by power and law), and perhaps their realization, but in a way we are not able to imagine.

C. A. – Do you believe seduction ever really happens? Is it cyclical?
J. B. S. – It might be happening right now, when you ask me this question, when you listen to my answer, when a reader read this interview, but we would not notice. We should not be able to notice if it really happens. And it might happen many times indeed, but we wouldn’t be able to say if it is always the same or something different. This is a mistake I made in some of my books. I said seduction was cyclical, but we have no means to know that.

C. A. – How to lie through your teeth relate to seduction?
J. B. S. – Seduction is rather lying through someone else’s teeth. You make the utmost effort to become someone else, something else, and at the same time to say something. It should not be something strictly false. It does not have to be something false. Actually this point is not really important. What is at issue is that what you say emerges from yourself, but faraway dislocated. Opened in all its voids, that is, from nowhere, utterly spread. It is not what, not even how you say it, but from where you say it. It is a lie only because and to the extent that you say it from a place that is impossible to locate, and you really say it. Space becomes intimate.

C. A. – Are you not speaking through your own teeth?
J. B. S. – (J. B. makes a smile, then explains…) The fatal mistake of most if not all people intending to improve or radically transform society, help minorities or conserve majorities, etc. is that they take Cheshire to be a quite extraordinary character. It is not. In any case, it should not be. Not in real life. I would like to put you a question myself: who was the father of Nativity’s twins? The extinguished or the future person? In a sense both persons are. It is something tricky, because excess per se can not be conveyed, no matter if it happens, and even if it happens.

C. A. – What is the relation between excess and violence? Isn’t your position unethical?
J. B. S. – Now it is you who must be speaking through someone else’s teeth. Like journalists or politicians, when they pretend to speak for the public. What they intend is rather to move people around. And with this we reached the nadir of this interview, but I accept the challenge, however, because there is no other way to face the situation and because I believe in Cheshire and excess. Violence is more like myopia than excess. But the same can be said about (violent) anti-violence. Both have to do with short-sightedness. It is not simply myopia, it is rather little endurance, a quite overspread unhealthy condition. The best way to answer to the problem (of violence, anti-violence and little endurance) is not by outright opposition. I’m not saying you should not do anything. You should find a way to get smaller, disappear, wait for deflection, as when you feel any pain. Women, gay, old people, Susan Boyle, rats and cockroach — the earth — must have always been there like men, as men, Nicole Kidman, in a noisy silence, ages before they got emancipated. If you want people to produce less garbage you must first realize that everything is garbage from the beginning. Plastic is Nature’s inner nature revealed, that is, perennial expense (dépense). As any revelation, as anything emancipated, it is also little endurance, and violent. What is not violent, without being anti-violent as well, is excess in its invisible, little deflected, intimacy."

See also:
- défi du non-circoncis;
- List des figures du chaos primordial;
- Structuralism, Poststructuralism;
- Sur les premiers chapitres d’Esthétique et théorie du roman;
- Pier Paolo Pasolini & Deconstruction;
- Favorite quotes from Detlev Claussen's Theodor W. Adorno;
And also:
- Concretos &/ou Brazilian Inteligentsia;
- Eduardo Viveiros de Castro: Brazilian Perspectivism?
- Poème du retour (Leminski/Nietzsche);
- Augusto Meyer & Machado de Assis;

- Kinds & Phantasmagoria circa 1900;
- Foucault Statement in Context;