In the section entitled "Ramses, or Rose-Coloured Resurrection" of his Precession of Simulacra, Baudrillard describes the scientific methodology and its relation to the simulacra. A year or so ago, I stumbled across "Ant Superhighway," a YouTube clip showing a group of archaeologists excavating what *was* the largest living ant colony on Earth at 50 square meters in area, and 8 meters in depth. In relative terms, the colony was essentially a subterranean city on part with one of our Wonders of the World.
To discover the structure of the colony, the archaologists pumped approximately 40 tons of cement into the entrance, filling every tunnel and pathway. They then painstakingly excavated the underground city by digging and brushing away the dirt around the (now dried) cement.
When Baudrillard talked about science, he talked about it in terms of its motivations, rather than its social effects. "The logical evolution of a science," he says, "is to distance itself ever further from its object until it dispenses with it entirely" (1561). We see this pretty clearly in the video; I mean, it is ants that we're dealing with here, and not higher-level mammals, but still, I did feel weirdly uncomfortable at the thought of ant-genocide in the name of science. The archaeologists didn't seem particularly bummed about it; maybe I'm just sentimental. But in any case, Baudrillard's claim makes a lot of sense here. Indeed, he goes further to say that specimen "mean nothing to us: only the mummy is of inestimable worth since it is what guarantees that accumulation means something." In other words, "we all become living speciments under the spectral light of ethonology" (1562).
At some point, this sort of knowledge-accumulation becomes absurd. This excavation was certainly an interesting stunt, and perhaps it will somehow deepen our knowledge of ant-architecture, but honestly, I couldn't help thinking that there must have been a better way to go about discovering and "preserving" (in the loosest sense of the word) these sorts of colonies. In "preserving" the ant colony (for study, at least), the archaeologists have just destroyed it, which drives home Baudrillard's claim that "for ethnology to live, its object must die" (1562). I couldn't shake the sense that the whole ordeal was interesting, but at the same time, irrelevant to an almost embarrassing extent.
I would agree entirely with your point that sometimes "knowledge-accumulation becomes absurd." There is just some knowledge that we can literally do nothing with, or at the very most, it becomes a Discovery channel documentary that spreads the useless knowledge around. Or ends up in a random fact book. Sure, it might be interesting, but on the whole, it isn't doing anything for anyone. I think you have an interesting reading of Baudrillard here. The "logical evolution of science" has not only distanced itself from the object, it has distanced itself from one of the main purposes of science in general: to understand the world so that we can better function within it. I fail to see how studying ant dwellings is really going to help mankind. And I think we've now hit the point where science is just for science's sake, and there is really no hope of there actually being something beneficial that comes out of it. A surplus of knowledge that took tedious work to acquire and later does nothing.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting example of how something has to die in order to be analyzed. I too, felt rather uncomfortable as you began describing how the archaelogists "preserved" the ant-city. It's interesting that it's okay for us to do that to a city of live ants, but we refuse to dig up the statue warriors in China until we have the technology to preserve their color. Apparently dead humans are more important than live ants? That might be true, but the concept is disturbing.
ReplyDeleteBridger,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great and horrible example of what science does. It's so weird to think of it as a "wonder of the world" and then to turn it into concrete. Caitlin's right. It's odd to think of science as "preserving" the city.