Twists & turns: Jerker Virdborgs nyligt fra-svensk-til-norsk-oversatte roman Svart krabbe lader sig faktisk fint läse i kombination med Jean Baudrillards The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1995) -- Her er en lille historie som måske väkker et ekko fra visse norske mediers rundtossede simulakrum af en krig mod postmodernismen:

This is a true story. Only the names have been changed -- to protect the guilty. I'm in a bar in Fremantle talking to a couple of humanities academics. I caually mention that I'm reading Paul Patton's translation of Jean Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. One of my colleagues launches into a tirade about how immoral it is for Baudrillard to claim the war did not 'take place' when so many people got killed there. The other attacks Baudrillard for talking about 'simularca', as if war had disappeared into a virtual realm when clearly war is proof positive that real things still happen in the real world.

But when I ask these earnest defenders of the moral and real whether they had read the original French or in Paul Patton's excellent English translation, the answer was -- neither. They were talking about a simulacrum of Baudrillard's book, not the 'real thing'. Neither had read it -- but they seemed as sure of what 'takes place' in its pages as they were of the reality of the beer they quaffed or the war they watched -- on television. It is precisely this mystery, of how signs float free from things and lose their anchorings in the certainty of reference, that is Baudrillard's obsession.

Mere Baudrillard her og her.