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The last sentence of the second paragraph in the 'Introduction to work' section -- "The first Gulf War served as a crisis point determining whether or not war was still possible in the post-industrial age." -- stands a little too much on it's own. How so was it a crisis point, and how does that relate to the previous sentences in the paragraph? Perhaps an expansion of the reasoning would be appropriate. lennarth, around lunchtime, 02 May 2005 (UTC)

British spelling

Note: globalisation is a perfectly valid British spelling. Buffyg 21:48, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

fair enough, but "globaltisation" or something - which was what was there before - isn't :) --csloat 22:00, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Indeed it was "globalsitation." "Globaltisation," however, would have had a certain irony to the mispelling. ;-> Buffyg 22:06, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Baudrillard and anti-Americanism

"Recently, many have criticized Baudrillard's comments following the September 11th attacks on the United States, in which he seemed to approve or legitimate them: "In the end it was they who did it but we who wished it." These critics have pointed to the consistent anti-American tone of his previous works ("America") as proof of anti-Americanism."

I'm not sure why we're talking about "many" here as though this is a prevalent opinion among people who've spent any time with Baudrillard's work. Baudrillard has been quoted as offering the following clarification:

I do not praise murderous attacks — that would be idiotic. Terrorism is not a contemporary form of revolution against oppression and capitalism. No ideology, no struggle for an objective, not even Islamic fundamentalism, can explain it. …I have glorified nothing, accused nobody, justified nothing. One should not confuse the messenger with his message. I have endeavored to analyze the process through which the unbounded expansion of globalization creates the conditions for its own destruction.

One has to ask about the extent to which the same quote was turned over several times in the same rush that created "Freedom Fries" and remarks that most of the gears in French tanks are those used in retreat. One might as easily remark that Baudrillard's remarks were so received in a time of occasionally blind Francophobia, but that would still only bring us a small part of the way toward clarity. I do not accept the attribution of this remark as adequate, nor do I believe that one can carelessly remark on "the consistent (consistently?) anti-American tone of his previous works". In any case, it is a violation of NPOV to make this remark without noting contrary opinions, including Baudrillard's remark. This isn't a clear case of sympathy for the devil or Whit Stillman's AFL-CIA. Buffyg 02:38, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Baudrillard's critique of the US is rather consistent, and this is not just a position taken by American right but by recent French criticism. "Americans may have no identitiy, but they certainly have great teeth", or to paraphrase, Disneyland's purpose is to promote the illusion that the rest of America is 'real'. He's come up in such works as Phillipe Roger's "L'enemie americain". Moreover, what an author says about their own work or remarks can never be considered "authoritative" -- you should know that! Baudrillard considers terrorism to be the result of globalization. Many consider this "Anti-globalism" a type of anti-American critique. (No one in France was anti-global when French was the lingua franca, for instance.) He may be right, or he may be wrong, and we can't really know his intentions, but the controversy remains. Censoring out the controversy is not an ideal solution. Why not include the countercriticism? I'm going to reinsert the remarks and include his defense Hopefully we can compromise.217.184.88.157 08:28, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

This is kind of silly. If anything, Baudrillard has been criticized for being too pro-American, or at least of appearing to celebrate American consumerism and of being supportive of the 1991 war in the gulf (see Christopher Norris, e.g.). Both readings are ridiculous. Have you actually read his book America? Don't tell me he's "come up" in Roger's book -- is he actually accused there of being "anti-American"? Can we have evidence of this claim on the article itself, especially if we're pretending it is some kind of frequently made claim about Baudrillard? I'm not really aware that it's even something people talk about -- the idea of criticizing someone for being "anti-American" is really not an important part of philosophical discussions like this, IMHO.--csloat 00:05, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Pro-American? Who views him that way? Yes, indeed, Philippe Roger includes him in a long list of anti-US intellectuals, and cites several caustic remarks from him. I feel that you do not know the current discussion in France itself, which has belatedly acknowledged anti-Americanism as a discourse. Le Monde and others praised Roger's book, by the way. So it may not be important to "Commoder Sloat", but many others, like BHL, include it as intellectually important. Baudrillard himself obviously felt the topic of America was important enough to title a book and repeatedly broach the topic. (And if you can find *any* source that believes him to be too "pro-American", please do.)

This is from the prestiges Sciences-Po: Denis Lacorne - Anti-Americanism and Americanophobia : A French Perspective - March 2005 http://www.ceri-sciences-po.org In its most extreme form, Americanophobia today expresses itself in a morbid desire for the military defeat of America, or even for the destruction of America. To sweeten his deadly pill, Dr Baudrillard thus claimed, a few days after the trauma of 9/11 that each of us, French, secretly wished the death of America. This was our schadenfreude, our secret joy at the suffering of others – a suffering that is necessary and justified because Americans well deserved it! Our jubilation, according to Baudrillard, was proportional to our “terrorist imagination,” supposedly shared by all well-meaning men and women. The “sacrificial” nature of the attack was beyond description. It displayed violence at its best – a strange mixture of “the white magic of cinema, and the black magic of terrorism.” The destruction of the twin towers ultimately fulfilled the dream of the West: “our aversion to any final or permanent world order.”

• Jean Baudrillard, “L’esprit du terrorisme,” my italics, Le Monde, 2 November 2001. For François Guery, there is

an obvious and direct connection between Duhamel and Baudrillard. When young students read the Scènes de la vie future, writes Guery, they think “it’s Baudrillard talking about America. They haven’t heard of Duhamel. But Duhamel is nothing but Baudrillard.” F. Guery, “L’Amérique impensable?,” Philosophie Politique, n° 7, December 1995, p. 14-15.

Roger, Guery, Lacorne ... it seems that I am not alone in citing systematic anti-Americanism from M. Baudrillard. Willowx 09:07, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't suppose you've seen the article "Holy Europe" in the latest New Left Review, where Baudrillard discusses the defeat of the constitutional referendum in France under a logic remarkably like what is discussed in terms of American hegemony over globalism? The diagnosis of hegemony and its auto-immune failure is strikingly familiar — are you prepared to claim that an argument of this form is evidence of Baudrillard being anti-European, anti-EU, or anti-EU constitution?

As for Lacorne... seriously, how does one support the claim that it is the French who wished "the death of America" (I don't see any evidence available that Baudrillard is talking about this fantasy or that "we" are the French). You can claim if you like that "we" did not harbour any fantasies of such an event, but I don't suppose you saw Fight Club, with its fantasy of the simultaneous destruction of so many towers of unmistakeably American financial power to remake the world in the leveling of so many credits and debts? I do believe that David Fincher, Jim Uhls, and Chuck Palahniuk are counted among "us", but I wouldn't confuse the shocking realisation of a fantasy (as film or as 9/11) for just deserts. If there was anything like Schadenfreude, it was before the fact and not after. Sitting in front of a TV in Midtown Manhattan and watching the towers collapse, I didn't think at the time or since that this was a case of "violence at its best" (nor do I believe anyone can produce any textual support indicating that Baudrillard did) but, as someone who spent a lot of time in meetings in the preceeding year talking about how to recover from large office buildings being blown up, I thought quite a lot about Fight Club as our fantasy of such a shock and recognised in the real event some mixture of “the white magic of cinema, and the black magic of terrorism.”

Perhaps the French are asking some questions about why they believe what they do about America. I see increasing evidence of utter misdiagnosis in the case of Baudrillard, while I find even less compelling a footnoted reference to an observation that students misrecognise a novel from 1930 as Baudrillard's work (maybe that's enough for François Guery; unfortunately I don't have access to a library that would allow me to consult that source, although I would assume you've checked it if it's on your list). What would be helpful would be someone who manages a competent or otherwise supportable reading of Baudrillard rather than an annexation of poorly interpreted quotations to arguments that may find more compelling evidence in the work of other authors. Buffyg 01:52, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Just to clarify (and to agree with Buffyg's comments above) -- I did not say that Baudrillard did not have something to say about America, but to read his book America as some kind of anti-American manifesto is just bizarre. Have you read the book? Can you cite what is anti-American about it? It has been many years since I read it when it was first translated into English, but "anti-American" does not at all appear fair. You're right I am not closely watching the discourse in France about this issue but I am aware that some public intellectuals are speaking of France's "anti-American" problem though I am not aware that Philippe Roger and Jean-Francois Revel (hardly philosophers of the political mainstream) have much acceptance in philosophical circles about this notion. I was not aware that this discourse targeted Baudrillard specifically, though I should not be surprised, and I stand corrected there. But as Buffy points out above, Baudrillard's notion that we have fantasized about this event (9-11) is not that controversial at all once you understand "we" to be the audience of the American mediascape of which Baudrillard very much considers himself a part, rather than something like "the french."

You asked me to cite sources where Baudrillard is portrayed as too American - perhaps that is too strong a characterization but read Norris' critique of his Gulf War essays, which I have already cited, or Kellner's critique of Baudrillard in his book Jean Baudrillard from Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond, both of which portray Baudrillard (unfairly imho) as a postmodern apologist for American imperialism and relentless capitalist expansion. I think Callinicos could fit into this frame as well. Of course these critiques appear in the Anglo-American context, rather than the French. --csloat 05:10, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

We've already indicated that Lacorne's reading of Baudrillard seems inept at best. Perhaps Willowx might provide further argument on the account of Baudrillard as seen by Roger, Guery, and Revel so that we might decide whether their views are well-represented here and distinguished one from the other, particularly given the concerns already expressed about correcting the imprecision of attribution? Buffyg 01:07, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

It has been more than a month since I posted the above. I have in good faith attempted to contact Willowx to express my concerns and ask for further clarification on other sources named and claims made without further citation or reference, but there has been no reply in a little more than two weeks. It is my belief that the section on anti-Americanism represents the views of a negligible minority and that the scholarship produced thus far to substantiate both the significance and validity of these views is risible and, needless to say, does not merit inclusion here (see, for example, WP:NPOV#Undue_Weight). Not having any reply that would allow discussion to determine if improvements are possible based on other sources, I am deleting the entire section on these criticisms. Buffyg 13:15, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure why these were deleted. The point of Misplaced Pages is not to engage in original research over the merits of Baudrillard or his critics, but to summarize what he and other people say. Since Baudrillard himself thought it necessary to respond to critics who accused him of supporting terrorism, it seems that those accusations reach the level of notability (were they just random non-notable people, presumably he would not have bothered to respond). --Delirium 05:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

pronunciation?

How do you pronounce his last name (don't tell me in IPA, I can't read it). 63.162.73.158 20:34, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Baudrillard Journal

See www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies for International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (On The Internet)

Apparently "bō-drē-yär". If someone can convert that to IPA, it'd be a nice thing to note. Sarge Baldy 23:54, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

don't know IPA, but you'd say it bored-ree-are, give or take --212.95.227.168 10:44, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Bored-we-are? After studying the guy for a semester that kind of seems accurate. :-) --Jim (Talk) 12:56, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Incomparable Baudrillard??

Can someone explain why in this article there is a section called 'Incomparable Baudrillard' which contains links to sundry pages. The name of the heading also sounds like an endorsement and none-too NPOV. These links could surely be placed in External links, because they are worthwhile links. For instance, one could write about his objurgation of Sontag's visit to Sarajevo 1994 and his intellectual disagreement with her, then use the article as a reference.--Knucmo2 11:28, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Gulf war

I put in a quote at the end of the first paragraph of the Gulf War bit that I think sums up his views quite well. If anyone wants to footnote it (because I'm unsure of how to) I got it from Introducing Postmodernism by Richard Appignanesi and Chris Garratt. However I'm sure it could be referenced better from somewhere else. --Horses In The Sky 20:02, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

'Pataphysics?

The article on 'pataphysics says: "Philosopher Jean Baudrillard is often described as a pataphysician and did consider himself as such for some part of his life.". I don't see any mention of that here; if true, it seems like it'd be useful to include some information on that in his biography. --Delirium 04:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

There is a source for this too - The article on the Stanford page speaks of Baudrillard's pataphysical elements in his work. Baudrillard has mentioned Jarry in his works, too. --Knucmo2 14:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Critiques of Baudrillard - Citation

Could we get a citation for Mark Poster's (rather lengthy) comment from the section entitiled "Critiques of Baudrillard"? I would suspect that it comes from Poster's edited volume of Baudrillard's works, but the article does not indicated if this is the case.

post-marxism

the post-marxism article was pointing to neo-communism, i split it out, but it will need much work to get it up to a basic level. if people are interested, please contribute what you know, edit my starter drivel :), and help build that article too. --Buridan 13:05, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

editorial changes

Anyone who's been browsing this page fairly recently might have noticed I've made some fairly radical changes, mainly because I don't think the article got to grips with the fundamentals of Baudrillard's thought - and the concepts weren't ordered chronologically either, which is significant in a thinker whose work is so ofen characterised as 'early' (consumerism) and 'late' (media). In parts I think there were elements that were just incorrect (particularly the fallacy that Baudrillard literally thinks the Gulf War didn't exist, which is just not true), which I've tried to rectify while remaining faithful to the form of the article. In other parts I thought the references (such as 'Baudrillard believes we somehow reached the end of history') were just a little, as it were, undergraduate Baudrillard. I've expanded some of the references too.

Generally, I've tried to introduce the fundamental (structural) underpinning to his work in the introduction, but it may be that it comes across a little complex, because I wanted to keep it short. Similarly I've tried to show how the semiotic/symbolic elements run through the entirety of his oevre.

Anyone's welcome to try and add to/improve it (I really need to get back to the work I'm supposed to be doing!), the spelling hops a bit between US and UK spelling, and the references are just brackets rather then footnotes. I think in particular a section specifically on Seduction (the book) and its relation to essentialist feminism (Luce Irigaray) and anti-essentialist feminism (Judith Butler) might be useful - not to mention the role of the principle of seduction generically.

And one last thing: whilst editing's all well and good, I can't help thnking the standard of critical theory, sociology, contemporary philosophy pages (the liked of Badiou, Latour, Butler and so on) on Misplaced Pages can be a little (or very) poor in comparison to the historical, mathematical or scientific ones. So while this ain't mine to edit, please don't fall into the trap of treating this stuff like you might if you were writing about Transformers or something, cos I know a fair old amount of Uni students who rely on it (and it doesn't do my career as a sociologist any good when it keeps getting the fashionable nonsense tag attached either!). Ta!

hyperrealism critique

I am fascinated by his concept of hyperrealism, and was wondering, since there seems to be volumnious critique of his work, whether or not there are any critiques of this particular idea.

outdated opinion? how?

His argument can be summarised as being an attempted subversion of the (now rather outdated) thesis of Francis Fukuyama how does this passage have any sense - what does it mean that Fukuyama's thesis is outdated? And why is it 'rather' outdated, and not simply outdated? And by this logic, would this mean that each philosopher discussin Plato or Aristotle should be prefaced with warnings that they are talking about 'outdated' positions? I think this is a nonsensical claim and will remove it. --83.131.133.28 13:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Quick reply: Woa! No need to get too het up about it! I noted that it's a somewhat dated position purely and simply because Fukuyama himself has distanced himself from it to an extent, apropos of various events that have taken place since the mid 90s. And if we're being pedants, by the way, I think its fair to say some (if by means all) of Aristotle's thought is outdated: does anyone living today hold on to the idea that there are four main elements to earthly existence, for example? It is, I think, dependent on the argument; and Fukuyama's argument in this case was very much an argument situated in the capricious world of current affairs.

Ambiguity, etc.

The first paragraph of the Criticisms of Baudrillard section:

Baudrillard's writing, and his uncompromising positions, have led to criticism the force of which can only be compared to, in contemporary social scholarship, Jacques Lacan. Only one of the two major confrontational book-length critiques — 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 has characterised as reductive (in Nicholas Zurbrugg's Jean Baudrillard: Art and Artefact). (emphasis added)

Re the first sentence, is that really right? And does that refer to Lacan's writings or writings of others on Lacan? Re the last sentence, does that refer to postmodernism or (probably more likely, but no citation is given) Keller's analysis of "Baudrillard's relation to" it? --zenohockey 02:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Quick reply: sorry if that sounded ambiguous; Lacan had no position whatsoever on Baudrillard himself, if that's what your wondering, having died a bit too early. (Baudrillard does have some Lacanian influence in his work mind, but that's by the by.) What I meant to say was: both Baudrillard and Lacan persistently attract scabrous (and for my money a wee bit misinformed) critique that claims they write 'Fashionable Nonsense'(cf. the book of the same name, among others). If anyone wants to elaborate on who exactly is contiually bashing him feel free (I could certainly list a few - even, for instance, Brian Turner gives him very short shrift in his book Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism), but I don't really have time. I think it's certainly not too far from the truth, mind.

On the last sentence, I agree, it needs more elaboration. Baudrillard was talking about (in the Zurbrugg book here) Kellner's treatment of his 'system' of thought. That is, Kellner's interpretation of the (quasi idolatrous) power, if you will, of simulacra. What he actually said went something like: "perhaps my system is reversible and can and should be reversed, but in Kellner's case my system was reduced and therefore I had to defend myself." If that seems unclear, it's because it's very hard to get across exactly what he's getting at in less than 1000 words! The best way I can think to sum it up is that Baudrillard's notion of simulation refers less to technological simulation as normally understood (and therefore to a virtual unreality) and more to a premature understanding of reality; a belief the world can be fully comprehended. So consequently Baudrillard's position is that Kellner takes his writings about virtual reality a little too literally: Kellner's version of Baudrillard seems to allude to everyone living in a Matrix-esque techno-universe, which isn't really what Baudrillard is getting at.

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