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••• Speculation to the Death •••

such a foundation (Merrin, 2001: 103–4). In his defence, however, Baudrillard has
been concerned throughout his career both with the necessity of discovering such a
critical position and with the problems of its articulation. His reformulations of the
symbolic, from ‘symbolic exchange’ to ‘seduction’, the ‘fatal’, ‘evil’, ‘radical alterity’,
and ‘radical illusion’ to ‘singularity’ (see 1998b), and his search for those forces of
reversal against the system, all strengthen his work, though, ultimately, they do not
escape the limitations of such a position.
But all such negative critiques are based on a de-escalation, returning us to a prior
state and its accepted reality and morality and as such are poor responses to the gift
and challenge of Baudrillard’s work. Instead, if we want to move beyond him, we
should accept his own invitation – ‘please follow me’ (1983c: 86) – which enters us
into a different critical game entirely. To understand why we need first to understand
his methodology which is derived from the impossibility of developing an empirical
theory to reflect reality in a society dominated by simulation. Just as McLuhan
responded to our ‘rear-view mirror’ perception (Benedetti and Dehart, 1997: 186–7),
with his anticipatory ‘probes’, which aimed to push reality, to make our environment
visible at its limits (McLuhan and Zingrone, 1995: 236), so Baudrillard develops ‘one
strategy’ (1993a: 82): that of ‘theoretical violence’, a ‘speculation to the death whose
only method is the radicalisation of hypotheses’ (1993b: 5). Theory must itself
become an ‘extreme phenomenon’ in order to steal a march on the extreme phe-
nomena of this world (1996b: 66) and push them towards their collapse (1993b: 4–5).
Theory, therefore, is ‘both simulation and challenge’ (1993a: 126) – a Situationist,
paraphysical, and McLuhanist-inspired simulation and provocation and a Maussian
gift and symbolic challenge to the real (1994c; see also 1996b: 94–105). The result is
to advance ideas without believing in them, as a ‘conceptual weapon against reality’;
one that, if realized by the world, to become true, loses any critical force it once had
(1994c: 4).
The simulacrum was one such weapon, and, as a Japanese interviewer told Baudrillard,
now it is realized everywhere, ‘we no longer have any need of you’ (1996d: 7).
Ultimately the world escalates to disarm theory, reducing it to a passive reflection of
reality: everything ‘falls back unfailingly into truth’, Baudrillard says (1997: 8), negat-
ing all challenge. This is a reduction we collude in as all questioning of this reality
attracts either laughter (1994c: 1) or hostility, for, he says, ‘the fact is that attacks on
the reality principle itself constitute a graver offence than real life violence’ (1993c:
42). Baudrillard, however, still believes a ‘radical thought’ can operate against this,
using a theoretical violence, a strategic conceptual strike (1990b: 46; 1997: 34), to
remodel reality in its symbolic challenge (1998b: 69). Thought has to be ‘exceptional,
anticipatory, and at the margin’ to outpace ‘the hell of the real’ (1996b: 102). The
escalation and reversion which mark Baudrillard’s work, therefore, have to be under-
stood as both analytic tools to reflect the real and strategic weapons devoted to push-
ing this real, to imagining and contributing towards the end of the system he
describes (1998b: 23).
This is Baudrillard’s radical methodology and it introduces a paradox for our
reading of his work. In refusing to empirically mirror the real, Baudrillard rejects and

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