Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard (UK: /ˈboʊdrɪjɑːr/ BOHD-rih-yar,[17] US: /ˌboʊdriˈɑːr/ BOHD-ree-AR, French: [ʒɑ̃ bodʁijaʁ]; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet,[18] with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as hyperreality. Baudrillard wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, critique of economy, social history, aesthetics, Western foreign policy, and popular culture. Among his most well-known works are Seduction (1978), Simulacra and Simulation (1981), America (1986), and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991). His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism.[19][20] Nevertheless, Baudrillard had also opposed post-structuralism,[21][22] and had distanced himself from postmodernism.[23][24]
Jean Baudrillard
6 March 2007
Le système des objets (1968)
- Philosophy of language
- Philosophy of death[6][7]
- Philosophy of war
- Philosophy of architecture
- Philosophy of information
- Philosophy of art
- Philosophy of social science
- Philosophy of history
- critique of economy
- Social philosophy
- Sociology (early)
- anthropology
- 'Pataphysics
- photography
- semiotics
- Terrorism studies
- social history
- Western foreign policy
- popular culture
- Hyperreality
- sign value
- desert of the real
- transpolitics[8]: 87 [9]
- transaesthetics[10][9]
- raw phenomenology[11]
- transfinite[12][13][14][15]
- theory-fiction[16]
Political commentary[edit]
On the Bosnian War[edit]
Baudrillard reacted to the West's indifference to the Bosnian War in writings, mostly in essays in his column for Libération. More specifically, he expressed his view on Europe's unwillingness to respond to "aggression and genocide in Bosnia", in which "New Europe" revealed itself to be a "sham." He criticized the Western media and intellectuals for their passivity, and for taking the role of bystanders, engaging in ineffective, hypocritical and self-serving action, and the public for its inability to distinguish simulacra from real world happenings, in which real death and destruction in Bosnia seemed unreal. He was determined in his columns to openly name the perpetrators, Serbs, and call their actions in Bosnia aggression and genocide.[50]
Baudrillard heavily criticized Susan Sontag for directing a production of Waiting for Godot in war-torn Sarajevo during the siege.[51][26][52][53][a][b]
On the Persian Gulf War[edit]
Baudrillard's provocative 1991 book, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place,[56] raised his public profile as an academic and political commentator. He argued that the first Gulf War was the inverse of the Clausewitzian formula: 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 Coalition, but using the lives of his soldiers as a form of sacrifice to preserve his power.[56]: 72 The Coalition fighting the Iraqi military was merely dropping 10,000 tonnes of bombs daily, as if proving to themselves that there was an enemy to fight.[56]: 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 U.S.-led 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 power was not weakened, evinced by his easy suppression of the 1991 internal uprisings that followed afterwards. Over all, little had changed. Saddam remained undefeated, the "victors" were not victorious, and thus there was no war—i.e., the Gulf War did not occur.
The book was originally a series of articles in the British newspaper The Guardian and the French newspaper Libération, published in three parts: "The Gulf War Will Not Take Place," published during the American military and rhetorical buildup; "The Gulf War Is Not Taking Place," published during military action; and "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place" published afterwards.
Some critics, like Christopher Norris[57] accused Baudrillard of instant revisionism; a denial of the physical action of the conflict (which was related to his denial of reality in general[57]). Consequently, Baudrillard was accused of lazy amoralism, cynical scepticism, and Berkelian subjective 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 that means for the present possibility of war. Merrin argued that Baudrillard was not denying that something had happened, but merely questioning whether that something was in fact war or a bilateral "atrocity masquerading as a war". Merrin viewed the accusations of amorality as redundant and based on a misreading. In Baudrillard's own words:[56]: 71–2