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| Author | Jean Baudrillard |
|---|---|
| Original title | La Guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu lieu |
| Translator | Paul Patton |
| Language | French |
| Subject | Gulf War |
Publication date | 1991 |
| Publication place | France |
Published in English | 1995 |
| Media type | |
The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (French:La Guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu lieu) is a collection of three short essays byJean Baudrillard published in the French newspaperLibération and British paperThe Guardian between January and March 1991.
While the author acknowledges that the events and violence of what has been called theGulf War took place, he asks if the events that took place were really as they were presented, and whether they could be called a war. The title is a reference to the playThe Trojan War Will Not Take Place byJean Giraudoux (in which characters attempt to prevent what the audience knows is inevitable).
The essays inLibération andThe Guardian were published before, during and after the Gulf War and they were titled accordingly: during the American military and rhetorical buildup as "The Gulf War Will Not Take Place"; during military action as "The Gulf War Is Not Taking Place", and after action was over, "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place". A book of elongated versions of the truncated original articles in French was published in May 1991. The English translation was published in early 1995 translated by Paul Patton.
Baudrillard argued the Gulf War was not really a war, but rather an atrocity whichmasqueraded as a war.[1] Using overwhelming airpower, the American military for the most part did not directly engage in combat with theIraqi army, and suffered few casualties. Almost nothing was made known about Iraqi deaths. Thus, the fighting "did not really take place" from the point of view of the West. Moreover, all that spectators got to know about the war was in the form of propaganda imagery. The closely watched media presentations made it impossible to distinguish between the experience of what truly happened in the conflict, and its stylized, selective misrepresentation throughsimulacra.[2]
Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature atColumbia University, wrote a comment about theNovember 2015 Paris attacks onAljazeera.com entitledThe Paris attacks did not take place, in which he criticized how global media outlets likeBBC had made up ahyperreal simulacrum of Paris. He believes that after the bombardment of Arabian countries by the West, refugees had flooded into Europe, changing its geography. While what used to happen in the East was eventually experienced in the West, shattering the imaginary "West-East" dichotomy, the global media outlets, however, focused overwhelmingly on Paris itself, as though it was independent of the rest of the world. He believes that the terrorist attacks did happen, but not in the hyperreal way depicted by the media like BBC.[3]
Jarryd Bartle, a lecturer of social context, and Kong Degang, a literature and art scholar, cited Baudrillard's argument that "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place" and compared it to the ongoingRussian attack on Ukraine.
Jarryd Bartle published his essay onUnHerd. He said that Baudrillard's opinion, once too postmodern to be accepted, was more relevant than ever in the Russo-Ukrainian war. Amidst the "spectacle" (as inThe Society of the Spectacle) of the newsfeeds, people consumed information by piecing them up and fabricating their own virtual perspectives. Some even started imagining an outbreak of "World War III". He pointed out that while many commentators criticized the spread ofmisinformation, most lost sight of the harm ofinformation overload and virtualisation.[4]
Kong Degang, a Chinese scholar, compared thedefense of Sihang Warehouse as featured in the Chinese filmThe Eight Hundred, the Gulf War as written about by Baudrillard, to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. He analyzed that inThe Eight Hundred, the battle against the Japanese invaders was depicted as a "performance" intended to be watched by Shanghai citizens and the international community. From the audience's perspective, the Japanese invaders won the battle but lost thewar in the "performance" due to their unrighteousness. Yet this was not the exact historical truth since no one witnessing it could predict the war's outcome merely by a battle. The Russo-Ukrainian war, on the other hand, unfolded quite differently from both the defense of Sihang Warehouse and the Gulf War. The latest media technologies generate real-time simulacra dwarfing those of the Gulf War in realism and virtuality, leading toinformation overload. Unable to (in)validate the war updates, many dismiss the war's reality—as if it "did not take place"—yet eagerly fight in a "cyber simulacra war" that is "constantly taking place". Both sides perform their "justness" and declare their victories. Meanwhile, the real casualties—civilians in Ukraine and Russia, and even the forgotten warzones like Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan—remain overlooked by the international community.[5]
In November 2023, writer Kubra Solmaz argued that Baudrillard's writing about the creation of ahyper-reality through the replacement of the real situation in the Gulf War with representations that do not show the reality could also be applied to theGaza war, which had started the month prior.[6] She argues that the media reality around the war is fundamentally different from the material reality, using the dissonance between the media produced by Western media outlets, and that produced by thePalestinians withinGaza as the chief example.[6]