Liquidation of meaning and simulacricity (Baudrillard)

According to Arthur Danto, expression and content are two functions of art, in which a tendency can be observed in the twentieth century to overemphasize one function at the expense of the other to the point of its extinction (such as “pure expression” in “Abstract Expressionism”). In Danto’s words: “Art is a function of expression and idea, and the recent history of the subject is a comedy in which artists have sought to reduce, in a spirit of purity, one or the other argument of this function to zero.”³⁶ According to Danto, the separation and delineation of the two functions of expression and content—which actually only allow art (and, as Wolff suggests, also political speech³⁷ ) to emerge through interaction—takes place in a “spirit of purity”. This idea of the ‘purity’ of an extreme value can also be found in the discourse surrounding Trump’s language and dance.

Trump’s dance has been interpreted as the perfection or even the unveiling of his own way of speaking, which tends towards ‘pure sound’ or ‘noise’ (or, as Trump himself says, ‘music’), suggesting that such emanations are no longer language at all. On October 15, 2024, the news magazine Der Spiegel wrote online: “Donald Trump is a peculiar campaign speaker. He strings together unconnected sentences and jumps from stick to stick as if his aim is not to convey information but to create a sound. Basically, Donald Trump’s appearances are concerts. So it is only logical that” on October 15, 2024, “Trump simply stopped talking and switched to music entirely. [...] Perhaps on this Monday, Trump’s election campaign found its purest form, the unadulterated sound without distracting mental effort.”³⁸ What is being said here? While language actually by definition (also) serves to convey information and thoughts, Trump’s language is “[disturbed]” and “falsified” precisely by this linguistic function. Only when ‘cleansed’ of information and thoughts—in Danto’s words: “reduce[d], in a spirit of purity [...] to zero”—does Trump’s language find its “purest form”.

The Spiegel article quoted here not only echoes Danto’s purification theorem, but also one of the most popular theorems of postmodernism, namely simulacricity, as described by Jean Baudrillard for the age of “Simulacra and Simulation”. In the age of simulation, according to Baudrillard, there is no more “truth, reference, objective cause”, a “gigantic simulacrum” no longer refers anywhere to a “real”, actually existing thing, presenting itself as “an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.” In Baudrillard’s words: “By crossing into a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor that of truth, the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials – worse: with their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs, a material more malleable than meaning […]”.³⁹ This reads like a prophetic commentary on social media, bots and AI-generated influencers. At the same time, however, Baudrillard’s diagnosis is part of a broader intellectual-historical context, namely the widespread discussion of a so-called “crisis of representation”. One of its most important key figures is Michel Foucault, who in his book The Order of Things described the “crisis of representation” as a signature of modernity, embodied in Cervantes’ hero Don Quixote.⁴⁰

Notes

1. ³⁶Arthur Danto: Foreword, in: Alan Tormey: The Concept of Expression. A Study in Philosophical Psychology and Aesthetics, Princeton 1971, pp. vii-xiii, pp. x and xi.
2. ³⁷Cf. Footnote 25.
3. ³⁸“Donald Trump ist ein eigentümlicher Wahlkampfredner. Er reiht unverbundene Sätze aneinander und kommt vom Hölzchen aufs Stöckchen, als ginge es ihm gar nicht darum, Informationen zu übermitteln, sondern einen Sound zu erzeugen. Im Grunde sind Donald Trumps Auftritte Konzerte. Da ist es nur konsequent, dass Trump” on October 15, 2024 “das Reden schlicht eingestellt hat und ganz zur Musik gewechselt ist. […] [V]ielleicht hat an diesem Montag Trumps Wahlkampf zu seiner reinsten Form gefunden, dem unverfälschten Sound ohne störende gedankliche Anstrengung.” Christian Esch: Und plötzlich macht Trump die Wahlkampfkundgebung zum Konzert, www.spiegel.de/ausland/trump-wahlkampfauftritt-in-oaks-in-pennsylvania-musik-statt-politischer-argumente-a-d65cee18-f2bf-40ab-89a4-df6506c17da8 (6/6/2025).
4. ³⁹Jean Baudrillard: The Precession of Simulacra, in: Jean Baudrillard: Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser, Ann Arbor 1994, pp. 1–42, pp. 455, 456 and 454.
5. ⁴⁰“Don Quixote is the first modern work of literature, because in it we see the cruel reason of identities and differences [...] make endless sport of signs and similitudes; because in it, language breaks off its old kinship with things and enters into that lonely sovereignty from which it will reappear, in its separated state, only as literature.” Michel Foucault: The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York: Vintage Books, 1970, pp. 48-49.