CTHEORY          THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE       VOL 26, NOS 1-2         *** Visit CTHEORY Online: http://www.ctheory.net ***   Article 129     03/05/20     Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker  __________________________________________________________   The Violence of the Global   ========================================================== 

~Jean Baudrillard~  (Translated by Francois Debrix)  Today’s terrorism is not the product of a traditional history of  anarchism, nihilism, or fanaticism. It is instead the contemporary  partner of globalization. To identify its main features, it is  necessary to perform a brief genealogy of globalization, particularly  of its relationship to the singular and the universal.  The analogy between the terms “global”[2] and “universal” is  misleading. Universalization has to do with human rights, liberty,  culture, and democracy. By contrast, globalization is about  technology, the market, tourism, and information. Globalization  appears to be irreversible whereas universalization is likely to be  on its way out. At least, it appears to be retreating as a value  system which developed in the context of Western modernity and was  unmatched by any other culture. Any culture that becomes universal  loses its singularity and dies. That’s what happened to all those  cultures we destroyed by forcefully assimilating them. But it is also  true of our own culture, despite its claim of being universally  valid. The only difference is that other cultures died because of  their singularity, which is a beautiful death. We are dying because  we are losing our own singularity and exterminating all our values.  And this is a much more ugly death.