Jean Baudrillard

1929-2007 · French · Cultural Theory, Sociology, Philosophy of Media, Postmodern Theory, Political Philosophy

We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.

Jean Baudrillard taught sociology at Nanterre through the upheavals of May 1968, trained first in German philology, and broke publicly with Marxism in the early 1970s — not because he abandoned politics, but because he decided Marx and capitalism shared the same deeper error: treating production, labor, and use as the bedrock of human reality. Against that, he set what he called symbolic exchange, the older order of the gift and counter-gift, of reversibility without equivalence, that modern systems repress.

Topics Jean Baudrillard addresses

• simulation and simulacra
• hyperreality
• symbolic exchange
• the precession of simulacra
• seduction
• reversibility
• the four orders of simulation
• sign value
• the system of objects
• the integral reality
• the perfect crime
• the ecstasy of communication
• fatal strategies
• the non-event
• the death of the real
• the critique of productivism
• the consumer society
• the code of differences
• the silent majorities
• the masses
• symbolic value vs exchange value
• the mirror of production
• use value as myth
• the terrorism of the code

Questions to put to Jean Baudrillard

Simulation and the Precession of Simulacra

• What do you mean by hyperreality?
• How does the model precede the territory in simulation?
• Can you walk me through the four orders of simulacra?
• Why do you say Disneyland exists to make the rest of America seem real?
• What's the difference between a copy and a simulacrum?

Symbolic Exchange and the Critique of Production

• What's wrong with Marx's focus on production?
• What do you mean by symbolic exchange?
• How is use value itself a myth?
• What does the gift reveal that commodity exchange doesn't?
• Why did you break with Marxism in 1972?

Seduction and Reversibility

• What do you mean by seduction as a principle?
• How does seduction differ from production?
• What's the argument behind calling the feminine a principle rather than a biological category?
• Why do you think some feminists have accepted the production-paradigm?
• How does appearance overtake depth in your account?

The Gulf War and the Non-Event

• How can you say the Gulf War did not take place when people died?
• What makes something a non-event rather than an event?
• How was the 1991 Gulf operation different from a real war?
• What's at stake for you in the claim about the Gulf War?
• How do you see 9/11 differently from the Gulf War?

Integral Reality and the Perfect Crime

• What do you mean by integral reality?
• What's the perfect crime you're diagnosing?
• How has reality been murdered by its own perfection?
• Why is total transparency a problem rather than progress?
• What happens when everything becomes operational and visible?

The Silent Majorities and the Absorption of the Social

• What do you mean by the silent majorities?
• How is the masses' silence a strategy rather than passivity?
• What has happened to the social in your account?
• Why don't opinion polls measure what they claim to measure?
• How do you see the relationship between the masses and political representation?

Converse with Jean Baudrillard on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Jean Baudrillard's own writing, cited to the page.