Baudrillard’s binaries: a politics of antagonism
Baudrillard’s binaries: a politics of antagonism

Summary/Abstract: In1998, near the midnight of Jean Baudrillard’s philosophical career, AntoonVan den Braembussche asked him how he—a self-proclaimed radical thinker—could rely on the “binary logic of dialectics?” (2017: 274). To this charge,Baudrillard replied by way of a distinction: a distinction between the “binarylogic” he was accused of administering, and the principles of “challenge, ofantagonism” (2017: 274). This essay explores this distinction that Baudrillardprovides, exhuming the respective roles that binarism and antagonism play inBaudrillard’s philosophical imaginary. I argue that it is not necessary tocompletely eschew binarism when considering Baudrillard’s work because muchof it rests on the antagonism produced by two or more separate and autonomouspoles. In fact, the antagonism produced by the collision of separate poles sets thestage for what is properly understood as ‘reality,’ in its benevolentmanifestation. This is opposed to reality as a galvanizing force, a harbinger ofscientism and objectivism, that strives to purge the world of all negativity, theapotheosis of the simulacrum— “integral reality.” To make this case, I illustratethe possible manifestations of benevolent and malevolent antagonism and whatpurpose the acts of acceptance and refusal serve in them. These distinctionsdisentangle some of the antinomies found in Baudrillard’s work while setting thestage for a politics of antagonism that may shed light on our present globalsituation.

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