Baudrillard – ‘Violence of the Virtual and Integral Reality’

“What happens to the world when it is freed from truth and appearances? It becomes the real universe, the universe of integral reality. Not truth, nor appearance but integral reality. If the world in the past leaned toward transcendence, if it fell on occasion into other rear-worlds (arrières-mondes), today it is falling into reality. From one transcendence in the heights to another one, this time in the depths. It is as it were the second fall of man that Heidegger talks about: the fall into banality – this time though, no redemption is possible. According to Nietzsche, once the true world and the world of appearances are lost, the universe becomes a factual, positive universe, such that it does not even need to be true. This world is as factual as a ready-made. Duchamp’s “fountain” is the emblem of our modern hyperreality. It results from the violent counter-transfer of every poetic illusion into pure reality, the object transferred onto oneself, every possible metaphor cut short.” – International Journal of Baudrillard Studies.