Design Office with Kim Gordon - Since 1980
I think Baudrillard was right to carefully draw a distinction between traditional types of domination - characterized by the master/slave relationship - and what he terms hegemony; the latter being the terminal phase of the former in which there are neither masters nor slaves, just cybernetic organisms who have internalized the operational rules of the New World Order and mistake this for their freedom and happiness:
"Caught in a vast Stockholm syndrome, the alienated, the oppressed, and the colonized are siding with the system that holds them hostage. They are now 'annexed', in the literal sense, prisoners of the nexus, of the network, connected for better or for worse."
Whereas classical forms of domination imposed a system of values, hegemony relies on the liquidation of all values, including the principle of the real; it is a virtual masquerade and a parody of power. As such, it is beyond criticism. But this doesn't mean we should just accept it. We can still offer what Baudrillard calls a double refusal - i.e. a form of resistance based upon the intelligence of evil. This doesn't involve class struggle or a fight for liberation, it is rather a new type of confrontation specific to the era of hegemony:
"In other words, a confrontation that is no longer precisely political but metaphysical and symbolic in the strong sense. It is a confrontation, a divide that exists not only at the heart of the dominant power, but at the heart of our individual existence."
See: Jean Baudrillard, 'From Domination to Hegemony', in The Agony of Power, trans. Ames Hodges, (Semiotext(e), 2010), pp. 37, 56.
