Jean Baudrillard (ʒɑ̃ bodʁijaʁ) was a
FrenchThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
sociologist, philosopher,
cultural theoristCulture theory is the branch of anthropology and semiotics that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture in operational and/or scientific terms....
, political commentator, and
photographer. His work is frequently associated with
postmodernismPostmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
and
post-structuralismPost-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
.
Life
Baudrillard was born in
ReimsReims , a city in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, lies east-northeast of Paris. Founded by the Gauls, it became a major city during the period of the Roman Empire....
, northeastern France, on July 27, 1929. He told interviewers that his grandparents were peasants and his parents were civil servants. During his high school studies at the Reims Lycée, he came into contact with pataphysics (via the philosophy professor Emmanuel Peillet), which is said to be crucial for understanding Baudrillard's later thought. He became the first of his family to attend university when he moved to
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to attend
SorbonneThe University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
University. There he studied
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
language and literature, which led to him to begin teaching the subject at several different lycées, both Parisian and provincial, from 1960 until 1966. While teaching, Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature and translated the works of such authors as
Peter WeissPeter Ulrich Weiss was a German writer, painter, and artist of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays Marat/Sade and The Investigation and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance....
,
Bertolt BrechtBertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
,
Karl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
,
Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, and Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann.
During his time as a teacher of German language and literature, Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology, eventually completing his doctoral thesis
Le Système des objets (
The System of Objects) under the dissertation committee of
Henri LefebvreHenri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and space.-Biography:...
,
Roland BarthesRoland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
, and
Pierre BourdieuPierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
. Subsequently, he began teaching sociology at the
Université de Paris-X NanterreThe University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
, a university campus just outside of Paris which would become heavily involved in the events of May 1968. During this time, Baudrillard worked closely with Philosopher Humphrey De Battenburge, who described Baudrillard as a "visionary". 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 accreditation,
L'Autre par lui-même (
The Other by Himself).
In 1970, Baudrillard made the first of his many trips to the USA (Aspen), and in 1973, the first of several trips to Japan (Kyoto). He was given his first camera in 1981 in Japan, which led to his becoming a photographer.
In 1986 he moved to IRIS (Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Économique) at the
Université de Paris-IX DauphineThe University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
, 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 1990s his books had gained a wide audience, and in his last years he became, to an extent, an intellectual celebrity, being published often 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 ScientifiqueThe National Center of Scientific Research is the largest governmental research organization in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe....
and was
SatrapSatrap was the name given to the governors of the provinces of the ancient Median and Achaemenid Empires and in several of their successors, such as the Sassanid Empire and the Hellenistic empires....
at the Collège de Pataphysique. Baudrillard taught at the
European Graduate SchoolThe European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland is a privately funded graduate school founded by the non-profit European Foundation of Interdisciplinary Studies. Its German name is Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien...
in Saas-Fee and collaborated at the Canadian theory, culture and technology review
CtheoryCTheory is a peer-reviewed academic journal published since 1996. It focuses on technology, media theory, and culture, publishing articles, interviews, book reviews and "event-scenes." It is edited by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker. The journal is published by the University of Victoria, BC, Canada....
, where he was abundantly cited. In 1999-2000, his photographs were exhibited at the
Maison européenne de la photographieThe Maison Européenne de la Photographie, situated in the historic heart of Paris, is a major centre for contemporary photographic art. Since February 1996 it has housed an exhibition centre, a large library, an auditorium, and a video viewing facility with a wide selection of films...
in Paris. In 2004, Baudrillard attended the major conference on his work, "Baudrillard and the Arts," at the
Center for Art and Media KarlsruheThe Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany is an interdisciplinary art museum and research institution focusing on new media....
in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Core ideas
Baudrillard was a social theorist and critic best known for his analyses of the modes of mediation and technological communication. His writing, though mostly concerned with the way technological progress affects social change, covers diverse subjects — including
consumerismConsumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...
, gender relations, the social understanding of history, journalistic commentaries about
AIDSAcquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
,
cloningCloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...
, the
RushdieThe Satanic Verses controversy was the heated and sometimes violent Muslim reaction to the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. Many Muslims accused Rushdie of blasphemy or unbelief and in 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie...
affair, the first
Gulf WarThe Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
and the attacks on the
World Trade CenterThe original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
in New York City.
His published work emerged as part of a generation of French thinkers including
Gilles DeleuzeGilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
,
Jean-François LyotardJean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition...
,
Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
,
Jacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
and
Jacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
who all shared an interest in
semioticsSemiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
, and he is often seen as a part of the
poststructuralistPost-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
philosophical school. 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, that meaning is brought about through
systems of signs working together. Following on from the
structuralistStructuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
linguistLinguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
Ferdinand de SaussureFerdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
, Baudrillard argued that meaning (value) is created through difference - through what something is not (so "dog" means "dog" because it is not-"cat", not-"goat", not-"tree", etc.). 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; in other words, one thing's prestige relates to another's mundanity.
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 formations of knowledge emerge only as the result of relations of power, Baudrillard developed theories in which the excessive, fruitless search for total knowledge lead almost inevitably 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 faster and more comprehensively societies begin to bring reality together into one supposedly coherent picture, the more insecure and unstable it looks and the more fearful societies become. Reality, in this sense, "dies out."
Accordingly, Baudrillard argued that the excess of signs and of meaning in late 20th century "global" society had caused (quite paradoxically) an effacement of reality. In this world neither liberal nor Marxist utopias are any longer believed in. We live, he argued, not in a "global village," to use
Marshall McLuhanHerbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
'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
anthropologicalAnthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
work of
Marcel MaussMarcel Mauss was a French sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss' academic work traversed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology...
and
Georges BatailleGeorges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...
) 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
potlatchA potlatch is a gift-giving festival and primary economic system practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and United States. This includes Heiltsuk Nation, Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Makah, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Coast Salish cultures...
. Baudrillard, particularly in his later work, saw the "global" society as without this "symbolic" element, and therefore symbolically (if not militarily) defenseless against acts such as the Rushdie Fatwa or, indeed, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States and its military establishment (see below).
In 2004, the
International Journal of Baudrillard StudiesThe International Journal of Baudrillard Studies is an international, peer-reviewed, open access, non-profit, transdisciplinary publication dedicated to engaging the thought and writing of Jean Baudrillard...
was launched.
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 outlook was loosely associated with
MarxismMarxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
(and situationism), but in these books he differed from
MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
in one significant way. For Baudrillard, it was
consumption, rather than production, which was the main drive in capitalist society.
Baudrillard came to this conclusion by criticising Marx's concept of "use-value." Baudrillard thought that both Marx's and
Adam SmithAdam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
's economic thought accepted the idea of genuine needs relating to genuine uses too easily and too simply—despite the fact that Marx did not use the term 'genuine' in relation to needs or use-values. Baudrillard argued, drawing from
Georges BatailleGeorges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...
, that needs are constructed, rather than innate. He stressed that all purchases, because they always signify something
socially, have their fetishistic side. Objects always, drawing from
Roland BarthesRoland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
, "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" precedes the production of goods to meet those needs.
He wrote that there are four ways of an object obtaining value. The four value-making processes are as follows:
- The first is the functional value of an object; its instrumental purpose. A pen, for instance, writes; and a refrigerator cools.
- 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.
- 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.
- The last is the sign value of an object; its value within a system of objects. A particular pen may, while having no added functional benefit, signify prestige relative to another pen; a diamond ring may have no function at all, but may suggest 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
MaussianMarcel Mauss was a French sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss' academic work traversed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology...
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.
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
SaussureanFerdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
semioticsSemiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
and the logic of symbolic exchange (as influenced by anthropologist
Marcel MaussMarcel Mauss was a French sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss' academic work traversed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology...
), Baudrillard turned his attention to
Marshall McLuhanHerbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
, 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 BarthesRoland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
' formal semiology to consider the implications of a historically understood (and thus formless) version of structural semiology. The concept of Simulacra ' also involves a negation of the concept of reality as we usually understand it. Baudrillard argues that today there is no such thing as reality.
Simulation, Baudrillard claims, is the current stage of the simulacrum: All is composed of references with no referents, a hyperreality. Progressing historically from the Renaissance, in which the dominant simulacrum was in the form of the counterfeit—mostly people or objects appearing to stand for a real referent (for instance, royalty, nobility, holiness, etc.) that does not exist, in other words, in the spirit of pretense, in dissimulating others that a person or a thing does not really "have it" -- to the industrial revolution, in which the dominant simulacrum is the product, the series, which can be propagated on an endless production line; and finally to current times, in which the dominant simulacrum is the model, which by its nature already stands for endless reproducibility, and is itself already reproduced.
Some examples Baudrillard brings up of the simulacrum of the model are: 1) the development of nuclear weapons as deterrents—useful only in the hyperreal sense, a reference with no real referent, since they are always meant to be reproducible but are never intended to be used—2) the (former) Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, which replaced a New York of constantly competing, distinct heights with a singular model of the ultimate New York building: already doubled, already reproduced, itself a reproduction, a singular model for all conceivable development, and 3) a menage-a-trois with identical twins where the fantasy comprises having perfection reproduced in front of your eyes, though the reality behind this reproduction is nil and impossible to comprehend otherwise, since the twins are still just people. The very act of perceiving these, Baudrillard insists, is in the tactile sense, since we already assume the reproducibility of everything, since it is not the reality of these simulations that we imagine (in fact, we no longer "imagine" in the same sense as before; both the imagined and the real are equally hyperreal, equally both reproducible and already reproductions themselves), but the reproducibility thereof. We do not imagine them reproduced for us, since the original image is itself a reproduction—rather, we perceive the model, the simulation.
The end of history and meaning
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, one of Baudrillard's most common themes was
historicityHistoricity in philosophy is the underlying concept of history, or the intersection of teleology , temporality , and historiography...
, 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 FukuyamaYoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford. Before that he served as a professor and director of the International Development program at the School of...
, 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 WarThe Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
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:
- 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.
Within a society subject to and ruled by fast-paced electronic communication and global information networks the collapse of this façade was always going to be, he thought, inevitable. Employing a quasi-scientific vocabulary that attracted the ire of the physicist
Alan SokalAlan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
, 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."
In making this argument Baudrillard found some affinity with the
postmodernPostmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
philosophy of
Jean-François LyotardJean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition...
, who famously argued that in the late Twentieth Century there was no longer any room for "
metanarrativeA metanarrative , in critical theory and particularly postmodernism, is an abstract idea that is thought to be a comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge. According to John Stephens, it "is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge...
s." (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."
On the Gulf War
Part of Baudrillard's public profile, as both an academic and a political commentator, comes from his 1991 book, titled for its provocative main thesis, "
The Gulf War Did Not Take PlaceThe Gulf War Did Not Take Place, a book by Jean Baudrillard, is a collection of three short essays published in the French newspaper Libération as well as British paper the Guardian between January and March 1991....
". His argument described the first 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 HusseinSaddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
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 US coalition and the Iraqi government were actually fighting, 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, since he suppressed
internal uprisingsThe 1991 uprisings in Iraq were a series of anti-governmental rebellions in southern and northern Iraq during the aftermath of the Gulf War. The revolt was fueled by the perception that the power of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was vulnerable at the time; as well as by heavily fueled anger at...
after the war. Overall, little had changed politically in Iraq, Saddam remained undefeated, and the "victors" were not victorious. Therefore, there was no war; the Gulf War did not occur.
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
LibérationLibération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
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 action of the conflict (part of his denial of reality, in general). Consequently, Baudrillard was accused of lazy amoralism, encompassing cynical scepticism, and
BerkelianGeorge Berkeley , also known as Bishop Berkeley , was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism"...
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 asserted that Baudrillard did not deny that something happened, but merely questioned 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. In Baudrillard's own words (p. 71-72):
- 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 September 11
In contrast to the "
non-eventA non-event is an anticipated or highly publicized event that either does not occur or turns out to be anticlimactic, boring, or a hoax. Non-events are disappointing because they are often hyped prior to their occurrence.Notable non-events include:...
" 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):
- 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 accords with 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.
Richard WolinRichard Wolin is an intellectual historian.He is Distinguished Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he has worked since 2000...
(in
The Seduction of Unreason) forcefully accused Baudrillard and
Slavoj ŽižekSlavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
of all but celebrating the terrorist attacks, essentially claiming that the United States of America received what it deserved. Žižek, however, countered that accusation to Wolin's analysis as a form of intellectual barbarism in the journal
Critical InquiryCritical Inquiry is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the humanities published by the University of Chicago Press. It is considered a leading journal within literary studies, and particularly in the field of critical theory....
, saying that Wolin failed 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 LatourBruno Latour is a French sociologist of science and anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies...
, 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.
Reception
Critics have found fault with some of Baudrillard's writing, ideas or positions.
For example
Denis DuttonDenis Dutton was an academic, web entrepreneur and libertarian media commentator/activist. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand...
, founder of
Philosophy & Literatures "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.
However 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) — seeks to reject his media theory and position on "the real" out of hand. The other — Douglas KellnerDouglas Kellner is a “third generation” critical theorist in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School. Kellner was an early theorist of the field of critical media literacy and has been a leading theorist of media culture generally...
'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).
Willam Merrin's work has presented a more sympathetic account, 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 Structuralist and 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 BadiouAlain Badiou is a French philosopher, professor at European Graduate School, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure . Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy...
and
Michel de CerteauMichel de Certeau was a French Jesuit and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences.-Education:...
have made this point generally, and Barry Sandywell has argued as much in Baudrillard's specific case).
Finally,
Mark PosterMark Poster is a Professor Emeritus of History, Film and Media Studies, and the Critical Theory Emphasis at UC Irvine. He received his Ph.D...
, Baudrillard's 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 SokalAlan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
and Norris who see him as a purveyor of a form of reality-denying irrationalism (ibid
p. 7):
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.
In popular culture
- Native American
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
(AnishinaabeAnishinaabe or Anishinabe—or more properly Anishinaabeg or Anishinabek, which is the plural form of the word—is the autonym often used by the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Algonquin peoples. They all speak closely related Anishinaabemowin/Anishinaabe languages, of the Algonquian language family.The meaning...
) writer Gerald VizenorGerald Robert Vizenor is a Native American writer, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. One of the most prolific Native American writers, with over 30 books to his name, Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where...
, who has made extensive use of Baudrillard's concepts of simulation in his critical work, features Baudrillard as a character in a "
debwe
heart dance" in his 1996 novel Hotline Healers
.
The MatrixThe Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
, a (1999) film by the Wachowski brothers, names Baudrillard's thought, especially Simulacra and Simulation
, as an influence. While 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," Baudrillard himself disclaimed any connection between his work and The Matrix
, calling it at best a misreading of his ideas. Carl Colpaert's film Delusion was inspired by his book America.
Newcastle based band Maxïmo ParkMaxïmo Park are a British alternative rock band, formed in 2000. They are signed to Warp Records. The band consists of Paul Smith , Duncan Lloyd , Archis Tiku , Lukas Wooller and Tom English...
wrote a song about Baudrillard which featured as a b-side to "Karaoke Plays"Karaoke Plays" is a song by Newcastle-upon-Tyne band Maxïmo Park. It is the fourth single released from their second studio album, Our Earthly Pleasures...
" from their 2007 album Our Earthly PleasuresOur Earthly Pleasures is the second album by Newcastle-based Alternative rock band Maxïmo Park. It was released on 2 April 2007 in the UK , being preceded by the single "Our Velocity", released two weeks previously, on 19 March 2007.-Album information:Album details, including track listing, were...
.
Apollo 440Apollo 440 are an English band formed in Liverpool in 1990. Apollo 440 have written, recorded and produced four albums, collaborated with and produced other artists, remixed as Apollo 440 and as ambient cinematic alter-ego Stealth Sonic Orchestra, and created music for film, television,...
paid tribute to Baudrillard via direct quotes in lyrics and song titles
Baudrillard's Blender Symbolic Exchange and the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election.
Amanda PalmerAmanda MacKinnon Gaiman Palmer , sometimes known as Amanda Fucking Palmer, is an American performer who first rose to prominence as the lead singer, pianist, and lyricist/composer of the duo The Dresden Dolls...
, American performer uses Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation" to deconstruct Lady GagaStefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta , better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American singer and songwriter. Born and raised in New York City, she primarily studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and briefly attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts before withdrawing to...
's music.
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 ProductionThe Mirror of Production is a 1973 book by Jean Baudrillard. It is a systematic critique of Marxism. Baudrillard's thesis is that Marx’s theory of historical materialism is too rooted in assumptions and values of political economy to provide a framework for radical action...
(1973)
Symbolic Exchange and Death
(1976)
Forget Foucault
(1977)
Seduction (book)|Seduction
(1979)
Simulacra and SimulationSimulacra and Simulation is a philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard seeking to interrogate the relationship among reality, symbols, and society.-Overview:...
(1981)
In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities
(1982)
Fatal Strategies
(1983)
Simulations
(1983)
America
(1986)
Cool Memories
(1987)
The Ecstasy of Communication
(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 (book)|Impossible Exchange
(1999)
Passwords (book)|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)
Pataphysics (2007)
Radical Alterity (2008)
Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? (2009)
Carnival and Cannibal, or the Play of Global Antagonisms (2010)
The Agony of Power (2010)
Articles
- “The Spirit of Terrorism”. Telos No. 121 (Fall 2001). New York: Telos Press.
- "Divine Europe". Telos No. 131 (Summer 2005). New York: Telos Press.
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
External links