02lv4

Poetic language is the form of symbolic exchange within language. This is because it is not reducible to the expression of the code. It renders language open to being broken down into its particular components – like in Freirean education. It is therefore opposed to language as value, and to identity. According to Baudrillard, in the dominant language, elements are accumulated as dead weight because they are never symbolically destroyed.

Poetic language creates a kind of vertigo, leaving the place of the signified empty. It is the force which destroys the code. Baudrillard thus sees poetic language as non-representational. It implies reversibility. It escapes the fate of language to silence and separate, allowing ambiguity. This view is advanced against the idea of poetry as simply a loosening of fixed meanings (the position taken by most poststructuralists). In Baudrillard’s discussions of poetry, a special place is reserved for Baudelaire. Baudelaire’s art is praised as enchanted, ironic, ecstatic, repeating and exceeding the logic of the system. Irony is seen as an expression of the indifference of the object.