Western Philosophy 20th-century philosophy 21st-century philosophy
Name:	Jean Baudrillard
Birth:	July 29, 1929(1929-07-29) Reims
Death:	March 6, 2007 (aged 77) Paris
School/tradition:	Postmodernism
Main interests:	Postmodernism, post-structuralism
Notable ideas:	Hyperreality, Simulacra
Influences:	Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss,Andy Warhol, Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Theodor Adorno, György Lukács, Guy Debord, Philip K Dick, Jorge Luis Borges
Influenced:	Wachowski brothers, Victor Pelevin, Slavoj Žižek

Jean Baudrillard (July 29, 1929 – March 6, 2007) (IPA pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ bo.dʀi.jaʀ]^[1]) was a French cultural theorist, philosopher, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism. It has been suggested that Contemporary philosophy be merged into this article or section. ... Living philosophers and academics of philosophy (and others important in the history of philosophy), listed alphabetically: (For philosophers who have recently passed away, see the companion list: List of philosophers born in the twentieth century. ... Image File history File linksMetadata No higher resolution available. ... is the 210th day of the year (211th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Reims (alternative English spelling Rheims; pronounced in French) is a city of the Champagne-Ardenne région of northern France, standing 144 km (89 miles) east-northeast of Paris. ... is the 65th day of the year (66th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... This article is about the capital of France. ... The term Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Pomo[1]) was a reaction to modernism (not post in the purely temporal sense of after). Largely influenced by the disillusionment induced by the Second World War, postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing... The term Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Pomo[1]) was a reaction to modernism (not post in the purely temporal sense of after). Largely influenced by the disillusionment induced by the Second World War, postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... In semiotics and postmodern philosophy, the term hyperreality characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures. ... A simulacrum is a Latin word originally meaning a material object representing something (such as an idol representing a deity, or a painted still-life of a bowl of fruit). ... Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a 19th century philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ... Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 - August 25, 1900) was a highly influential German philosopher. ... Sigmund Freud (IPA: ), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939), was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ... Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (IPA pronunciation ); born November 28, 1908) is a Jewish-French anthropologist who developed structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture. ... Marcel Mauss (May 10, 1872 – February 10, 1950) was a French sociologist best known for his role in elaborating on and securing the legacy of his uncle Émile Durkheim and the Année Sociologique. ... Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 — February 22, 1987) was an American artist who became a central figure in the movement known as pop art. ... Roland Barthes Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) (pronounced ) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and Jürgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg. ... György Lukács (April 13, 1885 – June 4, 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic. ... Guy Ernest Debord (December 28, 1931, in Paris – November 30, 1994, in Champot) was a writer, film maker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International (SI). ... Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982), often known by his initials PKD, or by the pen name Richard Phillips, was an American science fiction writer and novelist who changed the genre profoundly. ... Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899 – June 14, 1986) was an Argentine writer. ... Laurence Larry Wachowski (born June 21, 1965) and Andrew Andy Wachowski (born December 29, 1967) are American film directors and writers most famous for creating The Matrix series. ... Victor Pelevin (Russian: Виктор Олегович Пелевин, b. ... Slavoj Žižek (pronounced: ) (born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian sociologist, postmodern philosopher, and cultural critic. ... is the 210th day of the year (211th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 65th day of the year (66th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Culture theory is the branch of anthropology and other related social science disciplines (e. ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... The term Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Pomo[1]) was a reaction to modernism (not post in the purely temporal sense of after). Largely influenced by the disillusionment induced by the Second World War, postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...

Life

Jean Baudrillard was born to a peasant family in Reims, north-eastern France, on July 29, 1929. He became the first of his family to attend university when he moved to the Sorbonne University in Paris ^[2]. There he studied German language, which lead to him to begin teaching the subject at a provincial lycée, where he remained from 1958 until his departure in 1966. While he was teaching Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature, and translated the works of such authors as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht and Wilhelm Muhlmann^[3]. Reims (alternative English spelling Rheims; pronounced in French) is a city of the Champagne-Ardenne région of northern France, standing 144 km (89 miles) east-northeast of Paris. ... is the 210th day of the year (211th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: ) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganised as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ... This article is about the capital of France. ... In France, secondary education is divided into two schools: the collège (IPA: ) (somewhat comparable to U.S. junior high school) for the first four years directly following primary school; the lycée (IPA: ) (comparable to a U.S. high school) for the next three years. ... Peter Weiss (November 8, 1916 - May 10, 1982) was a German writer, painter and artist. ... Brecht redirects here. ...

Toward the end of his time as a German teacher Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology, eventually completing his doctoral thesis Le Système des objets (The System of Objects) under the tutelage of Henri Lefebvre. Subsequently, he began teaching the subject at the Université de Paris-X Nanterre, a politically radical institution (at the time) which would become heavily involved in the events of May 1968^[4]. At Nanterre he took up a position as Maître Assistant (Assistant Professor), then Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor), eventually becoming a professor after completing his habilitation, L'Autre par lui-même (The Other, by himself). Henri Lefebvre (16 June 1901-29 June 1991) was a French Marxist sociologist, intellectual and philosopher. ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: ) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganised as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ... A May 1968 poster: Be young and shut up, with stereotypical silhouette of General de Gaulle. ...

In 1986 he moved to IRIS (Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Économique) at the Université de Paris-IX Dauphine, where he spent the latter part of his teaching career. During this time he had begun to move away from sociology as a discipline (particularly in its 'classical' form), and, after ceasing to teach full time, he rarely identified himself with any particular discipline, although he remained linked to the academic world. During the 1980s and '90s his books had gained a wide audience, and in his last years he became, to an extent, an intellectual celebrity^[5], being published frequently in the French and English speaking popular press. He nonetheless continued supporting the Institut de Recherche sur l'Innovation Sociale at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and was Satrap at the Collège de Pataphysique. He also collaborated at the Canadian philosophical review Ctheory, where he was abundantly cited. He died of illness on March 6, 2007 at the age of 77. The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: ) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganised as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ... The Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) is the largest and most prominent public research organization in France. ... Look up satrap in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Pataphysics, an absurdist concept coined by the French writer Alfred Jarry, is the idea of a philosophy or science dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. ... CTheory is an electronic academic journal published since 1996. ... is the 65th day of the year (66th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...

Postmodernity (also called post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is a term used to describe the social and cultural implications of postmodernism. ... Postmodern philosophy is an eclectic and elusive movement characterized by its criticism of Western philosophy. ... 1000 de La Gauchetière, with ornamented and strongly defined top, middle and bottom. ... Postmodern art (sometimes called po-mo) is a term used to describe art which is thought to be after or in contradiction to some aspect of modernism. ... Postmodernist film describes the ideas of postmodernism in film. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Postmodern music is both a musical style and a musical condition. ... Postmodern theatre is a recent phenomenon in world theatre, coming as it does out of the postmodern philosophy that originated in Europe in the 1960s. ... In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory has two quite different meanings with different origins and histories, one originating in social theory and the other in literary criticism. ... A KFC franchise in Kuwait. ... Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. ... Minimalist music is an originally American genre of experimental or Downtown music named in the 1960s based mostly in consonant harmony, steady pulse (if not immobile drones), stasis and slow transformation, and often reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units such as figures, motifs, and cells. ... “Consumerist” redirects here. ...

Introduction to his work

Jean Baudrillard was a social theorist and critic best known for his analyses of the modes of mediation and of technological communication. His writing, although consistently interested in the way technological progress affects social change, covers diverse subjects – from consumerism to gender relations to the social understanding of history to journalistic commentaries about AIDS, cloning, the Rushdie affair, the (first) Gulf War and the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS or Aids) is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). ... For other uses, see clone. ... Salman Rushdie (born June 19, 1947, in Bombay, India) is an essayist and author of fiction, most of which is set on the Indian subcontinent. ... Jarred rocks!Yoa sucks!Iverson rocks! == Headline text == For other uses, see Iraq war (disambiguation). ... “WTC” redirects here. ...

His published work emerged as part of a generation of French thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan who all shared an interested in semiotics, and he is often seen as a part of the poststructuralist philosophical school^[6]. In common with many poststructuralists, his arguments consistently draw upon the notion that signification and meaning are both only understandable in terms of how particular words or 'signs' interrelate. Baudrillard thought, as many post-structuralists did, that meaning is brought about through systems of signs working together. Following on from the structuralist linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, Baudrillard argued that meaning is based upon an absence (so 'dog' means 'dog' not because of what the word says, as such, but because of what it does not say: 'cat', 'goat', 'tree' et cetera). In fact, he viewed meaning as near enough self-referential: objects, images of objects, words and signs are situated in a web of meaning; one object's meaning is only understandable through its relation to the meaning of other objects. One thing's prestigiousness relates to another's quotidianity. Gilles Deleuze (IPA: ), (January 18, 1925 – November 4, 1995) was a French philosopher of the late 20th century. ... Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was a French philosopher and literary theorist. ... Michel Foucault (IPA pronunciation: ) (October 15, 1926 – June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher and historian. ... Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French IPA: ) (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor. ... Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Structuralism as a term refers to various theories across the humanities, social sciences and economics many of which share the assumption that structural relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and that these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. ... Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (pronounced ) (November 26, 1857 – February 22, 1913) was a Geneva-born Swiss linguist whose ideas laid the foundation for many of the significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. ...

From this starting point Baudrillard constructed broad theories of human society based upon this kind of self-referentiality. His pictures of society portray societies always searching for a sense of meaning -- or a 'total' understanding of the world -- that remains consistently elusive. In contrast to poststructuralists such as Foucault, for whom the search for knowledge always created a relationship of power and dominance, Baudrillard developed theories in which the excessive, fruitless search for total knowledge lead almost inevitability to a kind of delusion. In Baudrillard's view, the (human) subject may try to understand the (non-human) object, but because the object can only be understood according to what it signifies (and because the process of signification immediately involves a web of other signs from which it is distinguished) this never produces the desired results. The subject, rather, becomes seduced (in the original latin sense, seducere, to lead away) by the object. He therefore argued that, in the last analysis, a complete understanding of the minutiae of human life is impossible, and when people are seduced into thinking otherwise they become drawn toward a 'simulated' version of reality, or, to use one of his neologisms, a state of 'hyperreality.' This is not to say that the world becomes unreal, but rather that the the faster and more comprehensively societies begin to bring reality together into one supposedly coherent picure, the more insecure and unstable it looks and the more fearful societies become^[7]. Reality, in this sense, 'dies out.'^[8]

Accordingly, Baudrillard argued that in late Twentieth Century 'global' society the excess of signs and of meaning had caused a (quite paradoxical) effacement of reality. In this world neither liberal or Marxist utopias are any longer believed in. We live, he argued, not in a 'global village,' to use Marshall McLuhan's phrase, but rather in a world that is ever more easily petrified by even the smallest event. Because the 'global' world operates at the level of the exchange of signs and commodities, it becomes ever more blind to symbolic acts such as, for example, terrorism. In Baudrillard's work the symbolic realm (which he develops a perspective on through the anthropological work of Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille) is seen as quite distinct from that of signs and signification. Signs can be exchanged like commodities; symbols, on the other hand, operate quite differently: they are exchanged, like gifts, sometimes violently as a form of potlatch. Baudrillard, particularly in his later work, saw the 'global' society as without this 'symbolic' element, and therefore symbolically (if not militarily) defenceless against acts such as the Rushdie Fatwa^[9] or, indeed, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States and its military establishment (see below). “McLuhan” redirects here. ... Anthropology (from Greek: ἀνθρωπος, anthropos, human being; and λόγος, logos, knowledge) is the study of humanity. ... Marcel Mauss (May 10, 1872 – February 10, 1950) was a French sociologist best known for his role in elaborating on and securing the legacy of his uncle Émile Durkheim and the Année Sociologique. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Kwakwakawakw continue the practice of potlatch. ...

The object value system

In his early books, such as The System of Objects, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, and The Consumer Society, Baudrillard's main focus is upon consumerism, and how different objects are consumed in different ways. At this time Baudrillard's political perspective was loosely associated with Marxism (and situationism), but in these books he differed from Marx in one significant way. For Baudrillard, it was consumption, rather than production which was the main drive in capitalist society. Marxism is both the theory and the political practice (that is, the praxis) derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ... This article or section is incomplete and may require expansion and/or cleanup. ... Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a 19th century philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ...

Baudrillard came to this conclusion by critiquing Marx's concept of 'use value.' Baudrillard thought that both Marx's and Adam Smith's economic thought accepted the idea of genuine needs relating to genuine uses too easily and too simply. He argued, drawing from Georges Bataille, that needs are constructed, rather than innate. Whereas Marx believed that genuine uses lay beneath capitalism's 'commodity fetishism,' Baudrillard thought that all purchases, because they always signify something socially, have their fetishistic side. Objects always, he wrote, drawing from Roland Barthes, 'say something' about their users. And this was, for him, why consumption was and remains more important than production: because the 'ideological genesis of needs'^[10] precedes the production of goods to meet those needs. Adam Smith FRSE (baptised June 5, 1723 O.S. / June 16 N.S. – July 17, 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneering political economist. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Roland Barthes Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) (pronounced ) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician. ...

He wrote that there are four ways of an object obtaining value. The four value-making processes are as follows^[11]:

1. The first is the functional value of an object; its instrumental purpose. A pen, for instance, writes; and a refrigerator cools. Marx's 'use-value' is very similar to this first type of value.
2. The second is the exchange value of an object; its economic value. One pen may be worth three pencils; and one refrigerator may be worth the salary earned by three months of work.
3. The third is the symbolic value of an object; a value that a subject assigns to an object in relation to another subject. A pen might symbolize a student's school graduation gift or a commencement speaker's gift; or a diamond may be a symbol of publicly declared marital love.
4. The last is the sign value of an object; its value within a system of objects. A particular pen may, whilst having no functional benefit, signify prestige relative to another pen; a diamond ring may have no function at all, but may confer particular social values, such as taste or class.

Baudrillard's earlier books were attempts to argue that the first two of these values are not simply associated, but are disrupted by the third and, particularly, the fourth. Later, Baudrillard rejected Marxism totally (The Mirror of Production and Symbolic Exchange and Death). But the focus on the difference between sign value (which relates to commodity exchange) and symbolic value (which relates to Maussian gift exchange) remained in his work up until his death. Indeed it came to play a more and more important role, particularly in his writings on world events. Marcel Mauss (May 10, 1872 – February 10, 1950) was a French sociologist best known for his role in elaborating on and securing the legacy of his uncle Émile Durkheim and the Année Sociologique. ...

Simulacra and Simulation

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Simulacra and Simulation. (Discuss)

Main article: Simulacra and Simulation

As he developed his work throughout the 1980s, he moved from economically-based theory to the consideration of mediation and mass communications. Although retaining his interest in Saussurean semiotics and the logic of symbolic exchange (as influenced by anthropologist Marcel Mauss) Baudrillard turned his attention to Marshall McLuhan, developing ideas about how the nature of social relations is determined by the forms of communication that a society employs. In so doing, Baudrillard progressed beyond both Saussure's and Roland Barthes's formal semiology to consider the implications of an historically-understood (and thus formless), version of structural semiology. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Simulacra and Simulation (Simulacres et Simulation in French), published in 1981, is a philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard. ... Simulacra and Simulation (Simulacres et Simulation in French), published in 1981, is a philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard. ... Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (pronounced ) (November 26, 1857 – February 22, 1913) was a Geneva-born Swiss linguist whose ideas laid the foundation for many of the significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. ... Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. ... Marcel Mauss (May 10, 1872 – February 10, 1950) was a French sociologist best known for his role in elaborating on and securing the legacy of his uncle Émile Durkheim and the Année Sociologique. ... “McLuhan” redirects here. ... Roland Barthes Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) (pronounced ) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician. ...

Most famously, he argued —in Symbolic Exchange and Death— that Western societies have undergone a "precession of simulacra".^[12] This precession is in the form of "orders of simulacra", from:

• the era of the original
• to the counterfeit
• to the produced, mechanical copy, and through
• to the simulated "third order of simulacra", whereby the copy has replaced the original.

Referring to "On Exactitude in Science", a fable written by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, he argued that just as for contemporary society the simulated copy had superseded the original object, so, too, the map had come to precede the geographic territory (c.f. map and territory relation), e.g. the first Gulf War (see below): the image of war preceded real war. On Exactitude in Science or On Rigor in Science (the original Spanish-language title is Del rigor en la ciencia) is a one-paragraph short story by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, written in the form of a literary forgery. ... Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899 – June 14, 1986) was an Argentine writer who is considered to be one of the foremost writers of the 20th century. ... Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 18, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer. ... See also: 2003 invasion of Iraq and Gulf War (disambiguation) C Company, 1st Battalion, The Staffordshire Regiment, 1st UK Armoured Division The Persian Gulf War was a conflict between Iraq and a coalition force of 34 nations led by the United States. ...

With such reasoning, he characterised the present age —following Ludwig Feuerbach and Guy Debord— as one of 'hyperreality' where the real object has been effaced or superseded, by the signs of its existence. Such an assertion —the one for which he is most criticised— is typical of his "fatal strategy" of attempting to push his theories of society beyond themselves. Rather than saying, that our hysteria surrounding pedophilia is such that we no longer really understand what childhood is anymore, Baudrillard argued that "the Child no longer exists".^[13] Similarly, rather than arguing —as did Susan Sontag in her book On Photography— that the notion of reality has been complicated by the profusion of images of it, Baudrillard asserted: "the real no longer exists". In so saying, he characterised his philosophical challenge as no longer being the Leibnizian question of: "Why is there something, rather than nothing?", but, instead: "Why is there nothing, rather than something?"^[14] Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (July 28, 1804 - September 13, 1872), German philosopher, fourth son of the eminent jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, was born in Landshut, Bavaria and died in Rechenberg (since 1899 a district of Nuremberg). ... Guy Ernest Debord (December 28, 1931, in Paris – November 30, 1994, in Champot) was a writer, film maker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International (SI). ... In semiotics and postmodern philosophy, the term hyperreality characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures. ... Pedophilia or pædophilia (see spelling differences) is a mental state in which an adult has a preferential sexual attraction to prepubescent and in some definitions, preadolescent children. ... Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was a well-known American essayist, novelist, intellectual, filmmaker, and activist. ... On Photography (ISBN 0385267061) is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. ... There is no universally accepted theory of what the word existence means. ... Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (July 1, 1646 in Leipzig - November 14, 1716 in Hannover) was a German philosopher, scientist, mathematician, diplomat, librarian, and lawyer of Sorb descent. ...

The end of history and meaning

Throughout the 1980s and '90s, one of Baudrillard's most common themes was historicity, or, more specifically, how present day societies utilise the notions of progress and modernity in their political choices. He argued, much like the political theorist Francis Fukuyama, that history had ended or 'vanished' with the spread of globalization; but, unlike Fukuyama, Baudrillard averred that this end should not be understood as the culmination of history's progress, but as the collapse of the very idea of historical progress. For Baudrillard, the end of the Cold War was not caused by one ideology's victory over the other, but the disappearance of the utopian visions that both the political Right and Left shared. Giving further evidence of his opposition toward Marxist visions of global communism and liberal visions of global civil society, Baudrillard contended that the ends they hoped for had always been illusions; indeed, as his book The Illusion of the End argued, he thought the idea of an end itself was nothing more than a misguided dream: Historicity in philosophy is the underlying concept of history, or the intersection of teleology (the concept and study of progress and purpose) and temporality (the concept of time). ... Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (b. ... For other uses, see Cold War (disambiguation). ...

The end of history is, alas, also the end of the dustbins of history. There are no longer any dustbins for disposing of old ideologies, old regimes, old values. Where are we going to throw Marxism, which actually invented the dustbins of history? (Yet there is some justice here since the very people who invented them have fallen in.) Conclusion: if there are no more dustbins of history, this is because History itself has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.^[15]

Within a society subject to and ruled by fast-paced electronic communication and global information networks the collapse of this facade was always going to be, he thought, inevitable. Employing a quasi-scientific vocabulary which attracted the ire of the physicist Alan Sokal, Baudrillard wrote that the speed society moved at had destabilized the linearity of history: "we have the particle accelerator that has smashed the referential orbit of things once and for all."^[16] Alan David Sokal (born 1955) is a physicist at New York University. ...

In making this argument Baudrillard found some affinity with the postmodern philosophy of Jean-Francois Lyotard, who famously argued that in the late Twentieth Century there was no longer any room for 'metanarratives.' (The triumph of a coming communism being one such metanarrative.) But, in addition to simply lamenting this collapse of history, Baudrillard also went beyond Lyotard and attempted to analyse how the idea of forward progress was being employed in spite of the notion's declining validity. Baudrillard argued that although genuine belief in a universal endpoint of history, wherein all conflicts would find their resolution, had been deemed redundant, universality was still a notion utilised in world politics as an excuse for actions. Universal values which, according to him, no-one any longer believed universal were and are still rhetorically employed to justify otherwise unjustifiable choices. The means, he wrote, are there even though the ends are no longer believed in, and are employed in order to hide the present's harsh realities (or, as he would have put it, unrealities). "In the Enlightenment, universalization was viewed as unlimited growth and forward progress. Today, by contrast, universalization is expressed as a forward escape."^[17] The term Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Pomo[1]) was a reaction to modernism (not post in the purely temporal sense of after). Largely influenced by the disillusionment induced by the Second World War, postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing... Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was a French philosopher and literary theorist. ...

On the Gulf War

Part of Baudrillard's public profile, as both an academic and a political commentator, comes from his deliberately provocative claim, in 1991, that the first Gulf War 'did not take place'. His argument described the Gulf War as the inverse of the Clausewitzian formula: it was not 'the continuation of politics by other means', but 'the continuation of the absence of politics by other means'. Accordingly, Saddam Hussein was not fighting the Allied Forces, but using the lives of his soldiers as a form of sacrifice to preserve his power (p. 72, 2004 edition). The Allied Forces fighting the Iraqi military forces were merely dropping 10,000 tonnes of bombs daily, as if proving to themselves that there was an enemy to fight (p. 61). So, too, were the Western media complicit, presenting the war in real time, by recycling images of war to propagate the notion that the two enemies, the US (and allies) were actually fighting the Iraqi Army, but, such was not the case: Saddam Hussein did not use his military capacity (the Iraqi Air Force), his politico-military power was not weakened (he suppressed the Kurdish insurgency against Iraq at war's end), so, concluding that politically little had changed in Iraq: the enemy went undefeated, the victors were not victorious, ergo, there was no war: the Gulf War did not occur. Jarred rocks!Yoa sucks!Iverson rocks! == Headline text == For other uses, see Iraq war (disambiguation). ... Carl Phillip Gottlieb von Clausewitz (June 1, 1780 _ November 16, 1831) was a Prussian military thinker. ... Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq and Chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council from 1979 until his overthrow by US forces in 2003. ...

Much of the repute that Baudrillard found as a result of the book- (originally a series of articles in the British newspaper The Guardian and the French newspaper Libération/Libération in three parts: 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".) - was based on his critique that the Gulf War was not ineffectual, as Baudrillard portrayed it: people died, the political map was altered, and Saddam Hussein's regime was harmed. Some critics accuse Baudrillard of instant revisionism; a denial of the physical occurrence of the conflict (part of his denial of reality, in general). Consequently, Baudrillard was accused of lazy amoralism, encompassing cynical scepticism, and Berkelian idealism. Sympathetic commentators (such as William Merrin, in his book Baudrillard and the Media) have argued that Baudrillard was more concerned with the West's technological and political dominance and the globalization of its commercial interests, and what it means for the present possibility of war. Merrin has averred that Baudrillard did not deny that something occurred, but merely denied that that something was a war; rather it was 'an atrocity masquerading as a war'. Merrin's book viewed the accusations of amorality as redundant and based upon misreading; Baudrillard's own position was more nuanced. To put it in Baudrillard's own words (p. 71-72): George Berkeley (IPA: , Bark-Lee) (12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753), also known as Bishop Berkeley, was an influential Irish philosopher whose primary philosophical achievement is the advancement of a theory he called immaterialism (later referred to as subjective idealism by others). ...

Saddam liquidates the communists, Moscow flirts even more with him; he gases the Kurds, it is not held against him; he eliminates the religious cadres, the whole of Islam makes peace with him.... Even ... the 100,000 dead will only have been the final decoy that Saddam will have sacrificed, the blood money paid in forfeit according to a calculated equivalence, in order to conserve his power. What is worse is that these dead still serve as an alibi for those who do not want to have been excited for nothing: at least these dead will prove this war was indeed a war and not a shameful and pointless hoax....

On the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks

In contrast to the 'non-event' of the Gulf War, in the essay The Spirit of Terrorism he characterised the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City as the 'absolute event.' Seeking to understand them as an (ab)reaction to the technological and political expansion of capitalist globalization, rather than as a war of religiously-based or civilization-based warfare, he termed the absolute event, and its consequences, as follows (p. 11 in the 2002 version): A non-event is an event that is anticlimactic to the point at which it becomes easy to argue that it barely happened at all. ...

This is not a clash of civilisations or religions, and it reaches far beyond Islam and America, on which efforts are being made to focus the conflict in order to create the delusion of a visible confrontation and a solution based upon force. There is indeed a fundamental antagonism here, but one that points past the spectre of America (which is perhaps the epicentre, but in no sense the sole embodiment, of globalisation) and the spectre of Islam (which is not the embodiment of terrorism either) to triumphant globalisation battling against itself.

Baudrillard thus placed the attacks – as befits his theory of society – in context as a symbolic reaction to the continued expansion of a world based solely upon commodity exchange. This stance was criticised on two counts. First, authors disagreed on whether the attacks were deserved. Richard Wolin (in The Seduction of Unreason) forcefully accused Baudrillard and Slavoj Zizek, of all but celebrating the terrorist attacks, essentially claiming that the United States of America received what it deserved. Zizek, however, countered that accusation to Wolin's analysis as a form of intellectual barbarism in the journal Critical Inquiry, saying that Wolin fails to see the difference between fantasising about an event and stating that one is deserving of that event. Merrin (in Baudrillard and the Media) argued that Baudrillard's position affords the terrorists a type of moral superiority. In the journal Economy and Society, Merrin further noted that Baudrillard gives the symbolic facets of society unfair privilege above semiotic concerns. Second, authors questioned whether the attacks were unavoidable. Bruno Latour, in Critical Inquiry argued that Baudrillard believed that their destruction was forced by the society that created them, alluding the Towers were 'brought down by their own weight'. In Latour's view, this was because Baudrillard conceived only of society in terms of a symbolic and semiotic dualism. Richard Wolin is an intellectual historian. ... Slavoj Žižek. ... Critical Inquiry is a peer-reviewed journal in the humanities published out of the University of Chicago. ... Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (born June 1947, Beaune, France) is a French sociologist of science best known for his books We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, and Science in Action, describing the process of scientific research from the perspective of social construction based on field observations of working scientists. ...

Critiques of Baudrillard

Baudrillard's writing, and his uncompromising positions, has led to his being criticised with an almost unprecedented ferocity (possibly only Jacques Lacan has been the subject of so many hostile critiques^{[citation needed]}). Only one of the two major confrontational books on Baudrillard's thought — Christopher Norris's Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War (ISBN 0-87023-817-5) — however seeks to reject his media theory and position on 'the real' out of hand. The other — Douglas Kellner's Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond (ISBN 0-8047-1757-5) — seeks rather to analyse Baudrillard's relation to postmodernism (a concept with which Baudrillard has had a continued, if uneasy and rarely explicit relationship) and to present a Marxist counter. Regarding the former, William Merrin (as discussed above) has published more than one denunciation of Norris's position. The latter Baudrillard himself characterised as reductive (in Nicholas Zurbrugg's Jean Baudrillard: Art and Artefact). Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French IPA: ) (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor. ... Christopher (Charles) Norris (born November 6, 1947)[1] is a British literary critic and theorist. ... Douglas Kellner, born in 1943, is one of the most important “third generation” critical theorists in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School. ...

Willam Merrin's work has presented a more sympathetic critique, which attempts to 'place Baudrillard in opposition to himself.' Thereby Merrin has argued that Baudrillard's position on semiotic analysis of meaning denies himself his own position on symbolic exchange. Merrin thus alludes to the common criticism of post-structuralist work (a criticism not dissimilar in either Baudrillard, Foucault or Deleuze) that emphasising interrelation as the basis for subjectivity denies the human agency from which social structures necessarily arise. (Alain Badiou and Michel de Certeau have made this point generally, and Barry Sandywell has argued as much in Baudrillard's specific case). Semiotics (also spelled Semeiotics) is the study of signs and sign systems. ... Gilles Deleuze (January 18, 1925 - November 4, 1995) was a major French philosopher of the late 20th century. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Michel de Certeau (Chambéry, 1925- Paris, 9 January 1986) was a French Jesuit and scholar whose work combined psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences. ...

Finally Mark Poster, Baudrillard's main editor and one of a number of present day academics who argue for his contemporary relevance, has remarked (p. 8 of Poster's 2nd ed. of Selected Writings):

Baudrillard's writing up to the mid-1980s is open to several criticisms. He fails to define key terms, such as the code; his writing style is hyperbolic and declarative, often lacking sustained, systematic analysis when it is appropriate; he totalizes his insights, refusing to qualify or delimit his claims. He writes about particular experiences, television images, as if nothing else in society mattered, extrapolating a bleak view of the world from that limited base. He ignores contradictory evidence such as the many benefits afforded by the new media....

Nonetheless Poster is keen to refute the most extreme of Baudrillard's critics, the likes of Alan Sokal and Norris who see him as a purveyor of a form of reality-denying irrationalism (ibid p. 7): Alan David Sokal (born 1955) is a physicist at New York University. ...

Baudrillard is not disputing the trivial issue that reason remains operative in some actions, that if I want to arrive at the next block, for example, I can assume a Newtonian universe (common sense), plan a course of action (to walk straight for X meters, carry out the action, and finally fulfil my goal by arriving at the point in question). What is in doubt is that this sort of thinking enables a historically informed grasp of the present in general. According to Baudrillard, it does not. The concurrent spread of the hyperreal through the media and the collapse of liberal and Marxist politics as the master narratives, deprives the rational subject of its privileged access to truth. In an important sense individuals are no longer citizens, eager to maximise their civil rights, nor proletarians, anticipating the onset of communism. They are rather consumers, and hence the prey of objects as defined by the code.

Denis Dutton, founder of Philosophy & Literature's "Bad Writing Contest" - which listed examples of the kind of willfully obscurantist prose for which Baudrillard was frequently criticised - had the following to say:

Some writers in their manner and stance intentionally provoke challenge and criticism from their readers. Others just invite you to think. Baudrillard’s hyperprose demands only that you grunt wide-eyed or bewildered assent. He yearns to have intellectual influence, but must fend off any serious analysis of his own writing, remaining free to leap from one bombastic assertion to the next, no matter how brazen. Your place is simply to buy his books, adopt his jargon, and drop his name wherever possible.^[18]

Representations of and references to Baudrillard

• Native American (Anishinaabe) writer Gerald Vizenor, who has made extensive use of Baudrillard's concepts of simulation in his critical work,^[19] features Baudrillard as a character in a "debwe heart dance" in his 1996 novel Hotline Healers^[20]
• The Matrix, a (1999) film by the Wachowski brothers, purports to be influenced by Baudrillard's thought. One critic went so far as to claim that if "Baudrillard... has not yet embraced the film it may be because he is thinking of suing for a screen credit. ^[21]. Baudrillard himself stated in interviews that The Matrix has nothing to do with his work, and is at best a misreading of his ideas.[3]
• The Economist of London published a kind and humorous obituary on 15 March 2007.^[22] It referred to his description of the U.S.A. as the "last primitive society" and readers commented further in the style of Baudrillard on 29 March.

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska. ... Anishinaabe or more properly Anishinaabeg or Anishinabek (which is the plural form of the word) is a self-description often used by people belonging to the indigenous Odawa, Ojibwe, and Algonkin peoples of North America, who share closely related Algonquian languages. ... Gerald Vizenor (born 1934) is a Native American (Chippewa) writer. ... The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano and Hugo Weaving. ... Laurence Larry Wachowski (born June 21, 1965) and Andrew Andy Wachowski (born December 29, 1967) are American film directors and writers most famous for creating The Matrix series. ... The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London, UK. It has been in continuous publication since September 1843. ... is the 74th day of the year (75th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 88th day of the year (89th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

Bibliography

Books

• The System of Objects (1968)
• The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures (1970)
• For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1972)
• The Mirror of Production (1973)
• Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976)
• Forget Foucault (1977)
• Seduction (1979)
• Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
• In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (1982)
• Fatal Strategies (1983)
• America (1986)
• Cool Memories (1987)
• The Ecstasy of Communication (1987)
• The Transparency of Evil (1990)
• The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991)
• The Illusion of the End (1992)
• Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews (Edited by Mike Gane) (1993)
• The Perfect Crime (1995)
• Paroxysm: Interviews with Philippe Petit (1998)
• Impossible Exchange (1999)
• Passwords (2000)
• The Singular Objects of Architecture (2000)
• The Vital Illusion (2000)
• Au royaume des aveugles (2002)
• The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers (2002)
• Fragments (interviews with François L'Yvonnet) (2003)
• The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact (2005)
• The Conspiracy of Art (2005)
• Les exilés du dialogue, Jean Baudrillard and Enrique Valiente Noailles (2005)
• Utopia Deferred: Writings for Utopie (1967-1978) (2006)

The Mirror of Production is a 1973 book by Jean Baudrillard. ... Simulacra and Simulation (Simulacres et Simulation in French), published in 1981, is a philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard. ... The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, a book by Jean Baudrillard, is a translation of 3 essays published in Liberation between January and March 1991. ...

Audio-CDs

• Die Illusion des Endes - Das Ende der Illusion (Jean Baudrillard & Boris Groys), 58 minutes + booklet. Cologne: supposé 1997. ISBN 3-932513-01-0
• Die Macht der Verführung, 55 minutes. Cologne: supposé 2006. ISBN 978-3-932513-67-1

References

1. ^ See How to pronounce Jean Baudrillard.
2. ^ Guardian Obituary
3. ^ Chris Turner's introduction to The Intelligence of Evil, Berg (2005), p. 1
4. ^ Chris Turner's introduction to The Intelligence of Evil, Berg (2005), p. 2
5. ^ cf. Barry Sandywell's article "Forget Baudrillard", in Theory, Culture and Society (1995, issue 12)
6. ^ Peter Pericles Trifonas, Barthes and the Empire of Signs, Icon (2001)
7. ^ see here Baudrillard's final major publication in English, The Intelligence of Evil, where he discussed the political fallout of what he calls 'Integral Reality'
8. ^ as he argued in the book The Perfect Crime, Verso (1995) for instance
9. ^ see here The Transparency of Evil, Verso (1993)
10. ^ p. 63 in For a Critique.... (1983)
11. ^ as set out in For a Critique.... (1983)
12. ^ the simulacrum being that "truth which hides the fact there is none" —a term roughly comparable to the word idol, as in hevel (vapor, idol, vanity, or absurdity, per biblical scholar Michael V. Fox) in the Biblical Ecclesiastes
13. ^ In the essay 'The Dark Continent of Childhood' in the essay collection Screened Out, 2002.
14. ^ In The Perfect Crime.
15. ^ The Illusion of the End, or Selected Writings, p. 263.
16. ^ The Illusion of the End, p. 2.
17. ^ taken from the essay The Violence of the Global, in the journal Critical Theory
18. ^ Dutton, Denis, "Jean Baudrillard", Philosophy and Literature 14 (1990) 234-38.
19. ^ Review of Postindian Conversations by Gerald Vizenor and A. Robert Lee [1]
20. ^ Gerald Vizenor, Hotline Healers (1996), Chapter 5.
21. ^ Adam Gopnik, "The Unreal Thing", The New Yorker 19 May 2003 [2]
22. ^ http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RRQRNJD

The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes reportage, criticism, essays, cartoons, poetry and fiction. ...

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Jean Baudrillard

• "The Mask of War" (on 9/11 and terror) by Baudrillard
• "Divine Europe" by Baudrillard
• "Pataphysics" by Baudrillard
• 'Disneyworld Company' by Baudrillard
• 'The Violence of the Global' by Baudrillard
• Welcome to the World of Baudrillard
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
• International Journal of Baudrillard Studies
• Baudrillard and Susan Sontag
• Baudrillard Interview With Der Spiegel Magazine After 9/11
• Baudrillard On American Abuse of Prisoners at Abu Ghraib
• Reversibility: Baudrillard's One Great Thought
• Jean Baudrillard's Weaknesses
• Reality Of Simulation
• The world of Jean Baudrillard