Customer Reviews (15)

On Baudrillard's America
I expected Baudrillard to get out of the box and give us some real insight into America. However, this book felt more like an angry diatribe from a collapsing empire than real thoughtful commentary. Read Barthes' Empire of Signs (on Japan) to see how good, and unbiased French critical philosophy can be.

Baudrillard's Great Prose Poem
Since his recent death, there has been a lot of Baudrillard bashing in the media. He is variously written off as a "comedian of ideas," as obscurantist, as saying everything about nothing and nothing about everything. Indeed, these are claims that can be said to be true of French cultural discourse in general, but they are actually inaccurate when used to describe Baudrillard, who really did have interesting and important things to say about culture. His prose is difficult; there is no denying that. But then so is Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Oswald Spengler, etc. Would it be wise to characterize these men as having nothing important to say because of the difficulty involved in working through their dense prose? Of course not. While Baudrillard is neither as profound nor, ultimately, as insightful as these other philosophers--and this is generally true of French thought as opposed to German thought, despite what your English professors would have you believe--he is witty and entertaining.

America provides the novice with a good in-road to his thinking, since Baudrillard is more relaxed and informal in these meditations upon what, after all, is a very informal land, indeed. The interesting thing about this book is that Baudrillard's attitude toward American culture--and this is certainly atypical of the average Euro thinker--is not condescending. This is a Frenchman (for a change) who is genuinely fascinated by America and its kitschy world of movie screens, parking lots, freeways, strip malls and airports. What fascinates him, in particular, as he writes in his chapter on "Utopia Achieved," is how American society represents such a radical break with history. It is an achieved utopia that has fled from the nightmare of world history and managed to succeed in erecting a civilization in which that very history is denied and largely ignored. Thus, the ahistorical cities of the American Southwest, and L.A. in particular, are places where events with inward cultural significance no longer take place. Instead, it is a world in which history has been replaced by historical simulacra in theme parks like Disneyland or the Getty Museum or Venice Beach. No more history, Baudrillard insists, means no more culture. America is just an endless horizontal expanse of kitsch and hyperreal meaninglessness utterly devoid of significance. And yet he does not mean this derisively, as a typical Euro thinker would. He is fascinated by the boldness and insolence of this attempt to achieve a paradise on earth in which history has been rendered obsolete. Bookstores, coffee shops, museums: that is Old World; shopping malls, theme parks, and theme towns like Las Vegas; that is the New. And Baudrillard is utterly taken by it all. He admits the shallowness of American culture, and then turns around and embraces it for exactly what it is. Americans, he says, are at their worst when they try to duplicate European high culture with their insipid California wines and their all-encompassing museums. They are better off, he says, with their roller coasters and their Hollywood movies. That, after all, is what is original in the world today.

Ultimately, then, Baudrillard's very readable book is a celebration of American culture. And, in many ways, it is an introduction to Americans of their own world, since those who are submerged in a particular environment cannot see that very environment due to its disappearance into banality. It takes an outsider to help us see ourselves anew, for only an outsider (or an artist) is capable of holding up the mirror to reveal ourselves as we really are.

In short, this is a great place to start if you have never read Baudrillard. It is highly readable and very well written. But Baudrillard is always read best as a kind of prose poet, not a true philosopher. People who claim not to be able to understand him are trying, as it were, too hard to understand him. His prose is best read as poetry, and America is best understood as a prose poem about the historyless civilization of the New World.
--John David Ebert,
author of Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society

Sharp and poetic
If some of the reviewers could forgive Baudrillard for being French, they might be able to see his razor sharp eye and lucid thoughts. Baudrillard acknowledges America for what it is, and although at times may seem critical, he seems to love it in his own way. One of the best books on the subject by one of the most brilliant thinkers.

A simply amazing read
This book was an incredible read! The extremely spatial nature of the text unfolds throughout each line, disclosing a thought process that is evolving as much, if not more than incredible journey you are taken on as Baudrillard manifest a vision of a nowaday hyperreality. Sculptural, sci-fi, timeless and visionary!

Excellent stylist and amazingly insightful!
You got a love a Frenchman who drinks whiskey!This is a 'light' book for Baudrillard, very much like his passion for photography, and these essays, though at times almost frighteningly piercing and insightful, are only snapshots of New York, California, Utah and the Nevada desert.Baudrillard comes face to face with his entire theory of the Simulacra in America and, though he dreads much of it, he has the courage to acknowledge that America is the future and that 'Old Europe', (another term like the 'matrix' that he uses years ahead of everyone else), even part of Old Europe worth saving, is dead and, or dying.There are some hilarious passages in here as well, the section on the strangeness of Salt Lake City architecture and topography and the 'mutants' that live there, being one of them.Essentially, according to Baudrillard, we Americans, prefiguring the rest of the planet, are all mutants living in a land with no real past, present or future, with no real ideology, convictions or perceptions of where exactly we are in the universe.According to Baudrillard we are America as moving picture, as cinema, as air-conditioned somnambulists sliding down our sanitized grocery ailes and freeways, obeying no moral code or ideology, but the code of capitalsit signs and symbols, of advertising, as objectified and commodified as the objects we purchase.Baudrillard, whiskey in hand, shows us America as hyperreality fait accompli.He is the most important writer writing today whose use of metaphor and satire topples any current novelist or poet.It makes perfect sense that his books are just now, 15 years ex post facto, being translated into English.15 years later and his theories proven true his ideas are still too strong, too painful, for most people to get their head and heart around.Awesome stuff. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Seducing Book
In this book, Baudrillard develops his own theory in various fields from sex, Freud, Kierkegaard, to politics in the theme of gseductionh. Probably, this book is written to be seduction. At the same time, we cansee Baudrillardfs general attitude toward his works including this book:Prediction, warning, and seduction. He seems to learn a lot of things fromKierkegaardfs works. In the first part, he maintains his own theory on sexagainst Freud, which is different from feministsf theory based on sexualdifference. It is interesting that he almost predicts todayfs situation ofsex, which is why his works always seduce people. Moreover, I am impressedby his comments on Japanese striptease and by his idea that Japanese sexualculture is different from Western one. Through chapters, his point thatseduction is fatal to itself appears continuously in his skillful rhetoric:The style of this book is similar to his gSimulacra and Simulationh,which is a good guidebook to read this book. ... Read more

Book Description
This book marks an important evolution in Jean Baudrillard's thought as he leaves behind his older and better-known concept of the "simulacrum" and tackles the new problem of digital technology acquiring organicity. The resulting world of cold communication and its indifferent alterity, seduction, metamorphoses, metastases, and transparency requires a new form of response. Writing in the shadow of Marshall McLuhan, Baudrillard insists that the content of communication is completely without meaning: the only thing that is communicated is communication itself. He sees the masses writhing in an orgiastic ecstasy of communications. Baudrillard navigates the Object's maelstrom with the euphoria of the astronaut reentering Earth's atmosphere with no possibility of assistance from Mission Control. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Modern Philo Par Excellence
This book is a riot and a total joy to read. Baudrillard skitters over all the modern fixtures (Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, Derrida) citing no one, instead whipping together confections that result in immediate addiction to his prosaic bakery. All his books glow like embers after being read, but this one in particular sews up a lot of his interests: modern existence enslaved by the eye, history as a mass recapitulation of fantasy put on by nostalgia, the secret as already always revealed.

A stimulating book
A major contribution to the theory of postmodernity written in a mentally stimulating way. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

diabolically nietzschean
critics of "postmodernism" often fail to see past ideological blinders or perhaps are just too lazy to actually read the works of (anti)theorists like jean baudrillard. this collection is superb as markposter offers a concise overview of baudrillard's "project" andalso reveals baudrillard's work in all its iconoclasm and hyperbole all atonce. this definitely makes for a fascinating read if not a criticalinsight into late modern society.

A prominent instance of chic obfuscation.
Like so much travelling these days under the fashionable banner of "post-modernism," Baudrillard and his ilk fuel the arrogant irrelevancy that has reached epidemic proportions in the lower reaches ofthe Humanities, exemplified by that most dubious of 'disciplines,'"cultural studies."A no less fashionable curative to thispretentious non-sense is the (otherwise, but much more fruitfully,problematic) work of Richard Rorty, particularly his widely-read book,CONTINGENCY, IRONY AND SOLIDARITY. ... Read more

Book Description
A cultural critique of the commodity in consumer society, The System of Objects is a tour de force—a theoretical letter-in-a-bottle tossed into the ocean in 1968, which brilliantly communicates to us all the live ideas of the day. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

:D nice book
It's really a nice book...
everyone should get one lol

keen insights within a cloud of pompous prose
Baudrillard's SYSTEM OF OBJECTS stands as a landmark... the first book by one of France's leading men of letters, an astute social critic (and deconstructionist?!critical theorist?!).The author discusses the roles objects play in our lives, from mirrors to automobiles to furniture.He dissects the role and purpose of credit (in the late 1960's; his ideas about the expansion of credit purchasing are humorous in hindsight). Author devotes sections to gadgets, gizmos, and robots.

Some of OBJECTS' highlights:a discussion of why the rich and other status seekers acquire old things, a critique of collectors and their motivations ("everything that cannot be invested in human relationships is invested in objects."), and a commendable exegesis of the personalization of cars (since the 1970s this critique could be expanded to houses).In addition the section on credit is juicy:"the credit system is the acme of man's irresponsibility to himself."

Should I credit the translator with handling a difficult text well?I can't say.I don't read French (at least not on Baudrillard's level).However, the reader is left with some of the most pompous and opaque prose.Nothing is stated simply.Example:"In the love relationship the tendency to break the object down into discrete details in accordance with a perverse autoerotic system is slowed by the living unity of the other person."Another:"We may thus trace functional mythologies, born of technics itself, all the way to a sort of fatality in which the world-mastering technology seems to crystallize in the form of an inverse and threatening purpose."Here's a favorite:"Thus freed from practical functions and from the human gestural system, forms become purely relative with respect both to one another and to the space to which they lend 'rhythm.' "

These overwrought and ridiculous passages would be humorous, but they impede the reader's understanding of the text. Various worthwhile statements pepper the book throughout, which could be condensed into a sort of "famous quotes by Baudrillard," perhaps as captions in a book of photographs, a coffee-table book.I recommend this currentlynonexistent product.Until its creation, we must be partially satisfied by SYSTEM OF OBJECTS.

Ken Miller

Rewarding 1968 analysis of psycho-sociology of consumption
Some contemporary French philosophy is a fascinating and invigorating mix of psychology, sociology, semiotics and, dare one say it, poetry. In the English speaking world, Marshall McLuhan is probably the philosopher whose style is most similar to this first, 1968, book by the now well known Jean Baudrillard.

What is the book about? In a sense it is about the meaning of low tech everyday objects, and thus it is also about the psycho-sociology of our technology. Take mirrors, for example, which were frankly disappearing as an element of interior decoration when Baudrillard wrote his book. Yet for years, mirrors were an important fixture of well-to-do bourgeois interiors; they were opulent, expensive objects which in Baudrillard's words permitted "...the self-indulgent bourgeois
individual to exercise his privilege --reproduce his own image and revel in his possessions". Family portraits and photographs represent diachronic mirrors of the family, and thus played a similar narcissistic role in decoration. Baudrillard analyses clocks, lighting, glass, seating, antiques and the drive to automate and miniaturize gadgets and tools, and always comes up with provocative, sometimes maddening, insights into modern society and one's place in it --and after all what is philosophy
for but to make you think?

There is a brilliant and probably timeless exploration of the passion of collecting and leads up nicely to what the bulk of the book is devoted to:the study of systems of objects (one of the main chapters is aptly titled "The Socio-Ideological System of Objects and Their Consumption"). What do we yearn to express through technology? What is it it that fascinates us about robots? Why is there such a proliferation of automatism, accessory features, inessential features to the point where
an object's dysfunctions are as important as its functions? Baudrillard acknowledges his debt to some of Lewis Mumford's ideas, and deplores with him that too often we try to solve problems by building a machine (perhaps nowadays we would tend to develop software, or in Baudrillard's terms simulate) and thus not onlyfall wide of the mark but also reveal clear signs of social ineptitude and paralysis. Fashion, consumption, technology are intertwined themes in modern society, feeding off each other and leading to a world that is at once systematized, fragile and baroque, in the sense that the proliferation of forms seems to be more important than mining for substance. It is interesting to compare some of these insights with a more recent book by another French philosopher, Gilles Lipovetsky, on fashion in modern societies ("The empire of the ephemeral", 1987).

The book ends by looking at the role credit and advertising play in the consumption of systems of objects, and thus completes what the book's jacket indicates is"a cultural critique of the commodity in consumer society". Baudrillard is a humanist critic of technology and consumer society and uses psychoanalytical ideas as weapons to grapple with his subject. The book is by turns, infuriating, keen, stimulating but in the end one feels that, curiously, it lacks a certain depth; it plays with
mirrors and is content with catching the light and obtaining the occasional blinding flash; but sometimes that the criticisms seem a little too one-sided or perhaps I simply prefer more constructive criticism. Still, the book is a tour-de-force, and I feel that the translator, James Benedict, did a fine job with a difficult text.

A seminal force in semiotics Beaudrillard's first book rocks
If you're academically inclined and into semiotics, this book should be part of your library. Any designer of systems, whether they be Web applications, lemon squeezers, or a marketing campaign, would probably finduse of the insights offered here. ... Read more

Book Description
This new edition further explores the connection between the cultural analysis provided by the contemporary philosopher Jean Baudrillard and the new 'star' of global culture - architecture.


In a world in which images have become a substitute for reality - i.e. simulacra capable of both stimulating and satisfying collective needs - the question arises as to whether architecture could be seen as a 'super-fetish', capable of both mirroring and shaping western society's culture and identity.

The aim of this book is thus to provide new methodologies and to suggest new meanings for the comprehension and development of contemporary architecture. In Baudrillard's terms, architecture could be seen as the supreme medium of contemporary visual culture, especially in its potential to influence the individual's perception of reality as a component of the mass-media system. This kind of cultural analysis of the built environment and its effect on everyday life is still a relatively new phenomenon - both in the fields of critical theory and even more so in mainstream architectural criticism.

This book, which forms a significant resource on the work of an immensely important writer, should appeal to a wide range of readers. Through highly evocative writing, it provides a theoretical, illuminating pathway for everyone who, either directly or indirectly, is involved or interested in architecture, urbanism and related subjects. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

architecture: the biggest "show" of power and consumism
This book is very interesting for phylosophers as well as architects/designers, but also for all the people who wants to be politically active.
It is s review of essays by Jean Baudriallard, a french phylosopher and a real genius of our times. As in most of his books, he explains perfectly how our society works, this time he uses architecture to tell us new things about our life.
We live in the "dream of democracy" because the real political power is an effect of the communicational power (that is to say: money to buy advertising). How architecture explains it?
Take the centre pompidou, for example. People think to go there to see the works of art, but most of them are just getting into a temple of culture to make their own show: the mass getting into aristicracy. It's all a big farce...
The transparency of the walls and the exibition of the structures is showing the box and revealing the inside. This is the obscene of our society, the pornography of reality, that is to say - in few words - an over-exibition of it.
We are all so used to be part of a show, to be "other from ourselves" that we are now missing reality.
Please, notice also the foreword by Francesco Proto, that suggests new idea about the "doubleness" of contemporary society.
Forgive my poor english and have a good reading! ... Read more

Book Description
Alterity is in danger. It is a masterpiece in peril, an object lost or missing from our system, from the system of artificial intelligence and the system of communication in general.
--from Radical Alterity

Where is the Other today? Can Otherness challenge our arrogant, insular cultural narcissism? From artificial intelligence to the streets of Venice, from early explorers to contemporary photographers, Jean Baudrillard and Marc Guillaume discuss the traces of radical alterity in our world. These provocative seminars, held in 1990 and 1991, follow the multiple, intertwined trajectories first projected in Baudrillard's work and his reading of the "radical exoticism" posited by Victor Segalen--ideas Baudrillard extends into the realms of mass media, pseudonyms, technology, and that illusorily close yet radically foreign "primitive society of the future," America.

In a world where no corner is unexplored, the Other remains a challenge to thought, a crack in the shell of universal understanding, impossible to communicate but potentially the linchpin of communication itself. Together, Baudrillard and Guillaume explore the threatened and fatal figures of radical alterity.

This collection is no longer available in French, and this English edition includes an additional essay by Baudrillard, "Because Illusion and Reality Are Not Opposed." ... Read more

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Book Description
Jean Baudrillard is one of the most famous and controversial of writers on postmodernism.But what are his key ideas?Where did they come from and why are they important?This book offers a beginner's guide to Baudrillard's thought, including his views on technology, primitivism, reworking Marxism, simulation and the hyperreal, and America and postmodernism.Richard Lane places Baudrillard's ideas in the contexts of the French and postmodern thought and examines the ongoing impact of his work.Concluding with an extensively annotated bibliography of the thinker's own texts, this is the perfect companion for any student approaching the work of Jean Baudrillard.Download Description
Baudrillard is one of the most famous and writers on postmodernism. But what are his key ideas? Where did they come from and why are they crucial? This offers a beginners guide to Baudrillard. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Postmodern embodiment...
Richard J. Lane's text on Jean Baudrillard is part of a recent series put out by the Routledge Press, designed under the general editorial direction of Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway, University of London), to explore the most recent and exciting ideas in intellectual development during the past century or so. To this end, figures such as Paul Ricouer, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and other influential thinkers in critical thought are highlighted in the series, planned to include more than 21 volumes in all.

Lane's text, following the pattern of the others, includes background information on Baudrillard and its significance, the key ideas and sources, and Baudrillard's continuing impact on other thinkers. As the series preface indicates, no critical thinker arises in a vacuum, so the context, influences and broader cultural environment are all important as a part of the study, something with which Baudrillard might agree,

Why is Baudrillard included in this series? This series is primary for critical thinking in a literary sense, but also develops the cultural criticism aspect of which literary theory cannot help but be a part.Baudrillard, as Lane suggests, is not only one of the more famous names in postmodernism, but practically embodies postmodernism in his own work.Key ideas and catch-phrases of Baudrillard include 'simulation', 'hyperreal', and 'implosion of meaning'.Baudrillard is very much a product of the French literary/philosophical school of the 1960s, opting eventually toward a radical reworking of both primitive cultures and post-Marxist thought that some critics see as inconsistent and confused, but definitely not to be ignored.

One of the useful features of the text is the side-bar boxes inserted at various points. For example, during the discussion on Baudrillard's development of writing strategies for postmodernism, there is brief discussion, set apart from the primary strand of the text, on Nihilism, developing further these ideas should the reader not be familiar with them, or at least not in the way with which Baudrillard would be working with ideas derived from them. Each section on a key idea spans fifteen to twenty pages, with a one-page summary concluding each, which gives a recap of the ideas (and provides a handy reference).

One of the more useful pieces in this text is also the 'two worlds' listing, which develops some of contrasting ideas in the shift from modernity to postmodernity.These include hierarchy versus anarchy, selection versus participation, signified versus signifier, and more interesting, sometimes surprising pieces.In discussing the development of culture in all its various aspects in an American context, Baudrillard shows the difference in 'city' culture as one goes from East to West - one of the paradoxes of the postmodern situation in America is that there are two primary city paradigms, New York City and Los Angeles, each of which is a perfect example of the city structure, one built up and close-knit architecturally, and the other spread out and low-rising.The cultures of the two cities are quite different, yet both are quintessentially American and both undoubtedly urban.That two different cities occupy the centre at the same time is the paradox of postmodernity.

Baudrillard has a fascination with America, which can be seen in his development and application of ideas such as the hyperreal and of simulation.The levels of simulation and hyperreality in America extend from the 'real' town square to the simulation of the town square in the shopping mall, which becomes a hyper-reality with controlled climates and selected people both as workers and shoppers; another classic example is that of Disneyland, with its carefully constructed and controlled environments, which is 'real' because it stands in contrast to the 'really real'.Media portrayals of events is also highlightedas examples of this kind of shift in thinking - the media distorts both the rhythm and the nature of the event, through selectivity and varying emphasis on actors and actions involved, and the kinds of manipulation to which media is always subject.News of real events becomes entertainment; entertainment programming becomes more fully developed and thus more real.We have more information, without more understanding, and the experience becomes more complex and involved, yet empty at the same time.

Part of Baudrillard's fascination with America is an interest in the development of technology, and the growth of the production/consumer kind of culture, where everything becomes part of a system of commodities, including language and knowledge.Indeed, Western identity is constructed of these kinds of objects, which the system also requires to be destroyed (think of the built-in redundancy or ever-increasing development of 'new and improved' products) - a dialectical performance writ large over the culture.

The concluding chapter, After Baudrillard, highlights some key areas of development in relation to other thinkers, as well as points of possible exploration for the reader.Baudrillard's ideas impact the development of aesthetic theory (from art to mere performance and entertainment).History and geography are also at issue, for the landscape of the past and of the present shifts with emphasis in different categories.Perhaps the most important development of significance to a postmodern fragmentation of the sort Baudrillard writes about is the internet, and the growth of theory from his influence is only beginning here.

As do the other volumes in this series, Clark concludes with an annotated bibliography of works by Baudrillard in English (or English translation), works on Baudrillard, and a good index.

While this series focuses intentionally upon literary theory, in fact this is only the starting point. For Baudrillard (as for others in this series) the expanse is far too broad to be drawn into such narrow guidelines, and the important and impact of the ideas extends out into the whole range of intellectual development. As intellectual endeavours of every sort depend upon language, understanding, and cultural interpretation, the thorough comprehension of how and why we know what we know is crucial.

A Concise & Accessible Introduction
I'm trying to gain a perspective on key postmodern thinkers, so I can't really contextualize this work within others on or by Baudrillard.What I can say is that this book provides an excellent overview of Baudrillard's theories, his influences and his milieu.Lane also makes it a point to introduce important concepts (like structuralism, deconstruction, modernism) as though they are being encountered for the first time.This is really nice since most of texts on or by people like Baudrillard, Derrida, and their ilk can be difficult to penetrate because of the neologisms and assumptions about the foreknowledge of the reader.In addition to providing an accessible introduction to and broad overview of Baudrillard, the book also features recommendations for further reading which I think is an excellent aspect.It's obviously not the end-all-be-all on Baudrillard or postmodernism, but it's an excellent start in my opinion. ... Read more

Book Description
Simulations never existed as a book before it was "translated" into English. Actually it came from two different bookCovers written at different times by Jean Baudrillard. The first part of Simulations, and most provocative because it made a fiction of theory, was "The Procession of Simulacra." It had first been published in Simulacre et Simulations (1981). The second part, written much earlier and in a more academic mode, came from L'Echange Symbolique et la Mort (1977). It was a half-earnest, half-parodical attempt to "historicize" his own conceit by providing it with some kind of genealogy of the three orders of appearance: the Counterfeit attached to the classical period; Production for the industrial era; and Simulation, controlled by the code. It was Baudrillard's version of Foucault's Order of Things and his ironical commentary of the history of truth. The book opens on a quote from Ecclesiastes asserting flatly that "the simulacrum is true." It was certainly true in Baudrillard's book, but otherwise apocryphal.

One of the most influential essays of the 20th century, Simulations was put together in 1983 in order to be published as the first little black book of Semiotext(e)'s new Foreign Agents Series. Baudrillard's bewildering thesis, a bold extrapolation on Ferdinand de Saussure's general theory of general linguistics, was in fact a clinical vision of contemporary consumer societies where signs don't refer anymore to anything except themselves. They all are generated by the matrix.

In effect Baudrillard's essay (it quickly became a must to read both in the art world and in academe) was upholding the only reality there was in a world that keeps hiding the fact that it has none. Simulacrum is its own pure simulacrum and the simulacrum is true. In his celebrated analysis of Disneyland, Baudrillard demonstrates that its childish imaginary is neither true nor false, it is there to make us believe that the rest of America is real, when in fact America is a Disneyland. It is of the order of the hyper-real and of simulation. Few people at the time realized that Baudrillard's simulacrum itself wasn't a thing, but a "deterrence machine," just like Disneyland, meant to reveal the fact that the real is no longer real and illusion no longer possible. But the more impossible the illusion of reality becomes, the more impossible it is to separate true from false and the real from its artificial resurrection, the more panic-stricken the production of the real is. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Difficult reading, but interesting insights (sometimes swallowed up by verbiage)
Jean Baudrillard, postmodern thinker, despairs; he claims, in "Forget Foucault," that there is an "impossibility of any politics" in our current situation.An important part of this context are media simulations, of reality so obscured by the play of images completely unrelated to any "reality" which might be out there that we are hopelessly incapable of arriving at any judgments on which to base political decisions and actions.Images on television and in the movies and in other media are "floating signifiers," having no real connection to concrete referents.The key concept associated with Baudrillard is simulations and the simulacrum.He begins by quoting Ecclesiastes: "The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth that conceals that there is none.The simulacrum is true"(by the way, this quotation may be a simulacrum; I could not find it in Ecclesiastes!). Simulations began historically as replicas of the real, as reflections of "reality."However, with time, simulations have become increasingly detached from concrete "real" references.Simulations do not have reference points or substance or any tie to "reality."Simulations have become "a real without origin or reality"--a hyperreal.We face a procession of images and simulations, and lose sight of the simple fact that they are "floating signifiers."The simulacra become real for us.

Put in post-structural (or postmodern) terms, the models created are floating signifiers (simulations in Baudrillard's terms) which structure people's discourse with one another and shape their behavior.Images become crucial in politics.After presidential debates or major policy speeches or elections, the "spin patrol" gets going.These are the spokespersons of the parties or candidates who try to convince the audience that their simulations of the event are better than their opponents' simulations.In the process, no one particularly cares whatactually happened or what was said.It is the simulations pushed by the various actors that become the news.

Baudrillard's writing is challenging; many will write him off as an unreadable crank.Nonetheless, the underlying concept of the simulacrum is fascinating and generates much reflection.This is a postmodern work that may actually speak to some real world issues. . . .

Great book, bad edition.
A very interesting read on the nature of reality. Baudrillard has a wonderful way of shuffling your thinking that can only be understood by reading his work first hand. I highly recommend this work, but I would suggest buying a different edition; the Semiotext edition fell to pieces the first time I read it. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (34)

Thought provoking but intense.
A thought provoking book.Do not be shocked however if you find yourself reading it extremely slowly.The text is wordy and thick at best but often times necessarily to bring its points across.If you are not an avid reader, enjoy abstract thinking, or want to learn more about the differences between Simulacrum and Simulations avoid this book.

This is still a great read although convoluted at times so all others should enjoy.But those who are not well read have been warned.

Then again if you looked for this book odds are you are ready for this.I only wanted to warn those with out college education or advanced vocabulary to so that they wont lose their appetite for knowledge from heavy text, such an event would be regrettable.

The text is heavy, full of valuable info on what it pertains and much like this review it sometimes seems to repeat facts redundantly.Did I mention it was a hard read? (just kidding. lol)

Worst translation ever!
This is quite a nice book, with an horrible translation.The translator made no big efforts to find the correct names of places, books and movies. And she also does not help at all if you don't know France and Paris: many places are cited, and you will not know that Beaubourg is an modern art museum if you were not there (luckily, I was over there while reading it).

The same occurs for "Forum de Halles", which is a huge underground mall, and for "Stand on Zanzibar", which was translated back from the French version, resulting in "Everyone to Zanzibar", clearly showing that the translator did not even looked for this book name in the internet (that shows no results).

Quite interesting ideas, easy to read (you do not need a lot of philosophical background) with such poor translations... more footnotes would have helped a lot!

Baudrillard's Great Science Fiction Novel
This is Baudrillard's most famous work, and indeed, it is a must-read for those who wish to acquaint themselves with the basics of postmodern thought. It is beautifully written, and comes across like a sort of non-fiction equivalent of William Gibson's Neuromancer with its glittering display of polished, gleaming words patterned into strange, mercurial sentences that are not always easy to follow. But, as with Finnegans Wake, it is not so much the particular thought of the moment that counts, as it is the impression and impact upon the mental sensorium of the total experience. Baudrillard is a dazzling word-smith and it is likely that you will come away from this book with one or two new words to add to your vocabulary.

One of the things, of course, that has made this book so popular is its visual quotation in the science fiction film The Matrix, but I must say that the book does little towards an elucidation of that film. Indeed, Baudrillard himself has stated his dislike of the film (see the book "The Conspiracy of Art" for his comments), and he has stated how it compares less favorably with films built around similar themes such as The Truman Show, Mulholland Drive and others (I think David Cronenberg's Existenz is a much better take on the virtual reality theme. The Matrix seems cliched by comparison, especially since Cronenberg was already there first with his early 80's classic Videodrome). The theme of hyperreality displacing the real is not really what The Matrix is all about (there is too little in it irony for that; and no ambiguity; instead it concerns how technology robs the human soul of its spiritual potentialities) but it is what Simulacra and Simulation is about.

The French philosophers are fond of developing a single metaphysical concept and then exploring its ramifications in numerous books and their sequels: Debord's "Spectacle," for instance, is essentially equivalent to Baudrillard's hyperreality; Foucault's "episteme," though a completely different idea, is nonetheless monolithic in Foucault's thought. And much of Baudrillard's writings are an exploration of his concept of the hyperreal and how it has displaced the real.

The point of the book is that we postmoderns live inside a media-generated dome that seals us off from the "real" world. Indeed, we are so convinced by our own fabrications that we can no longer differentiate reality from its simulacrum. When spending money on gambling in Las Vegas, are we really losing all that money, or is it just a part of the "game"?

The best essay in the book is "The Precession of the Simulacra," and it is also the longest. I saved it for last and began with the shorter essays. Baudrillard's piece on J.G. Ballard's novel Crash is one of the best in the collection, as is his essay on "Hypermarket and Hypercommodity" and "The Beauborg Effect." Each of these pieces feels more like reading a science fiction novel than anything else but, let's face it, we live in a world that is stranger than science fiction. It takes an artist to make the contours of such a world visible to our perception, and Baudrillard does a fine job of this. He is, however, less successful with his pitiful one page ramblings on Apocalypse Now, which is disappointing and sheds almost no light on Coppola's masterpiece. (For this, the reader would do well to consult Ebert's Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons).

I confess that there are paragraphs I did not understand and words that sound as if they are made up, but this is actually true of most authors who have something profound to say (Lewis Mumford, for instance, or Heidegger). But Simulacra and Simulation is an important work and should be read despite its difficulties. Read it just the way you would a poem by Holderlin or Rilke. That is, don't try too hard to understand it, just let the imagery sink into your consciousness and enjoy the alterations that it produces upon you.
--John David Ebert
author, Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society

The Key to Understanding Jean Baudrillard
Baudrillard's classic is neither easy to read, nor is it the last word in continental postmodernism. It is also replete with ideas of questionable merit. So, why I have rated it with fives stars? Because buried within its pages, among the dross and the drivel, are enough intellectual gems to make the entire exercise more than worthwhile! Even with its flaws, Simulacra and Simulation reveals Jean Baudrillard to be one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. Any person deeply interested in critically understanding the postmodern, media saturated era in which we live, needs to read this book.

The most useless book I have ever read.
Hardly being a serious look into the (supposed) simulated world, Simulacra and Simulation unnecessarily confuses, compounds, and over-estimates the reality of simulation, and implies simulation in virtually everything while failing to give any real evidence or examples for this phenomenon. Through and through, Baudrillard fails to adequately define his terms, concerns, and sources for his critiques. While never settling on one particular point, his arbitrary method of critiquing never moves beyond the realm of opinion. Critical analysis of the subject matter (whatever that is) is never applied, instead being sacrificed for ever more obscured superficial observations. Baudrillard gives us no example as to the cause of his concerns (whatever those may be) let alone giving us any real solutions as to how we may pierce through our alleged self created illusions. Nor does he give us any real insight as to how these critiques can be applied in any useful way to our education or our daily life. If this is what is passing for philosophy today, I can only imagine how useless the field will become in fifty years if we continue to look to Baudrillard as the top of his field. Superfluous and meaningless double-talk is all you will get out of this useless excuse for a book. For anyone interested in reading "Simulacra and Simulation", I would sooner recommend Dr. Seuss "Green Eggs and Ham." You will have more fun reading it, and you will probably learn more as well. ... Read more

Book Description
The images from Abu Ghraib are as murderous for America as those of the World Trade Center in flames. The whole West is contained in the burst of sadistic laughter of the American soldiers, as it is behind the construction of the Israeli wall. This is where the truth of these images lies. Truth, but not veracity. As virtual as the war itself, their specific violence adds to the specific violence of the war.

In The Conspiracy of Art, Baudrillard questions the privilege attached to art by its practitioners. Art has lost all desire for illusion: feeding back endlessly into itself, it has turned its own vanishment into an art unto itself. Far from lamenting the "end of art," Baudrillard celebrates art's new function within the process of insider-trading. Spiraling from aesthetic nullity to commercial frenzy, art has become transaesthetic, like society as a whole.

Conceived and edited by life-long Baudrillard collaborator Sylvère Lotringer, The Conspiracy of Art presents Baudrillard's writings on art in a complicitous dance with politics, economics, and media. Culminating with "War Porn," a scathing analysis of the spectacular images from Abu Ghraib prison as a new genre of reality TV, the book folds back on itself to question the very nature of radical thought. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Before you read it, it makes sense
I always thought that Baudrillard's ideas were interesting. I always thought that they were an interesting way to look at certain issues, a new lens of sorts. However, upon reading this book, I finally understood Baudrillard and as a result found his theory to be inane. Baudrillard makes a lot of sense before you really read the evidence (oh, wait he doesn't use evidence) or rather analysis he provides.

The first problem that I found with the book is its utter lack of defining terms. If a reader has not read Simulations and Simulacra, then this book would be completely unaccessible. However, Baudrillard just throws terms around, seemingly knowing the definition himself, but withholding it from the reader. Words like 'event' come to mind. Actually 'null' is also strangely ambiguous in this book. The 1970s seemed to pass over Baudrillard and this was written as though post-structuralism never happened (was that an event). So what does this come down to? A lot of Baudrillard's criticism is then nothing more than a linguistic problem... He says that a certain thing happens as a result of art, but then that is just a word, an undefined floating signifier that leaves me, and probably will leave you, uncertain as to what is the worth of anything written.

Another gripe that I have is the sequence of the articles and interviews. (Actually I think many of the interviews could have been left out entirely, since many interviews were nothing more than the interviewers massaging Baudrillard's late-inflated ego.) Some of the essays make absolutely no sense until later essays are read. It seems as though they were thrown together randomly or perhaps intentionally in the most incomprehensible way possible.

At the end of the day, I thought Baudrillard was cool. I thought his ideas were interesting, but upon reading this book I really lost faith. It isn't that I think that Baudrillard's ideas are irrelevant to current discourses, but rather that the analysis he provides is often questionable and so against the laws of logic and rationality. His ideas are interesting if you take them and attempt to formulate them into your own worldview, but otherwise I can't say that this conspiracy of an assertion-fest is worth reading.

Baudrillard vs. Art = entertaining and informative
This is a fascinating collection of some of Baudrillard's most polemical writings on art. He freely admits in one of the interviews within that he is, by no means, an art expert. He doesn't appreciate it and he doesn't necessarily *like* it. He does respect traditional/classical art's beauty and importance. This positions him in an excellent place to offer remarkably disinterested observations. He's not partial to any one movement, any one school, or any one artist (with the possible exception of Andy Warhol) and he pulls no punches in his critique of the meaninglessness of contemporary art.

It is important to note that Baudrillard is NOT an art hater. From his interviews and from other writings, I get the impression that art is simply "not his thing". I believe this is a positive factor because he isn't required to tip-toe around issues for fear of being rejected by the art community, a community he is happy to avoid altogether.

As a student of contemporary art, and as a contemporary artist myself, I don't always agree with Baudrillard, at least to the extent that he goes. In his essay, "The Conspiracy of Art", he tends to make sweeping generalizations. Such is the format of his polemic - a brief essay. Had he developed these ideas in a longer format, I'm sure some points would be smoothed by further explanation and clarification. Fortunately, this book includes and number of interviews where he explains some of his points and gets a chance to defend himself against his many critics.

I believe this text would be most useful to any student of contemporary art. Baudrillard does raise many important issues, even if his conclusions are questionable. Even if you hate every word, it's at least an amusing read. I've always enjoyed his style. It's very conversational - a welcome relief from reading the prolix, convoluted texts of Deleuze and Lacan. He is clear, cogent, and concise.

Baudrillard sees the Emperor naked again
Contemporary "art" endlessing pleasing itself with how "clever" it is - how "important" it is - how "valuable" it is. Baudrillard sees through it all and offers some great critiques. Again, to some he may seem the seer of the obvious but others put up great resistance to his ideas because it destroys their privileged, little cozy world. The film Zoolander does much the same thing with its hilarious send-up of the "fashion" world - the "Derelique" campaign, turning the "look" of homeless people into the latest haute-couture. The fashion world is a conspiracy and so is the contemporary art world. The commodification of the banal - the banal world turned into "brilliant" concepts by art stuporstars. I think Baudrillard would agree with Hansel in Zoolander when he says: "Derelique" my balls. ... Read more

Book Description
Baudrillard's work of the last two decades has downplayed the position of the critical subject and gone over to the standpoint of the object. Nowhere is this objective (non-)critique which results so clearly played out as in the Cool Memories series. Here again, in this fourth collection of fragments and sketches, Baudrillard's stance is less that of the interventionist intellectual analysing the world as critical subject than of the barely participant observer—an object among objects, an "internal exile", watching the world "world itself" with such fierce insistence, yet registering with acuity our general deficit of reality and meaning. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ramblings
A coffee-table collection of thoughts, aphorisms, pithy sayings.
Some of what Baudrillard says is seductive, some is humorous, much is cynical, some may even be true. A good portion of it appears as the pseudo-philosophically justified grumblings of a post-marxist, sometimes reactionist malcontent.
The great question that this book (and much of Baudrillard's writing raises) is that of irony--how ironic is Baudrillard being at any given time?
His diatribe against the female activist (for example) could easily be turned against himself, and there are many other occasions in this collection where this is the case.
The claim that Baudrillard has attined some sort of renunciation of critical subjectivity in favour of a non-critical object among objects is, to me, spurious and laughable.
Nonetheless, this book is enjoyable to pick up and read for a couple minutes now and then (a clearly intented reading strategy). But I would recommend something else by him if you want an intro to his thought. "Simulacra and Simulations," for example. ... Read more

Book Description
The famous postmodernist thinker turns detective to investigate the murder of reality.

"Verso's beautifully designed Radical Thinkers series, which brings together seminal works by leading left-wing intellectuals, is a sophisticated blend of theory and thought. The authors whose writings are included in the series have worked tirelessly to expose the mechanisms by which culture and knowledge are manufactured, managed and controlled."—Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesman ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

surprisingly lucid and poetic!
I'd never read a word of Baudrillard before reading this book. I had assumed that he was an apostle of the silly side of 'postmodern' writing - of a tedious celebration of indeterminacy, advertising and globalization, like Hardt and Negri. But no - this is a powerful, tragic lament that at times sounds like a romantic elegy for the human imagination, threatened by a hubristic 'virtuality'. His argument seems to be that the old (romantic) duality of 'the real' and 'the illusory' is being replaced by a new duality of 'the real' and 'the virtual'. Whereas in the former duality, we chased the seductive shadows of a Utopia forever out of reach, in the new duality we deny to ourselves the tragic truth that this seduction is never complete by creating a virtual replica world that requires no imagination at all - in other words which simply translates 'the real' into code of various kinds, in particular that which forms virtual worlds in the media and the internet, or which turns the fallible human body into a body of pure digital knowledge in the form of genetic code on disc. This is an old story - it's a story about denying desire because it cannot be fulfilled - about denying our mortal human condition out of a childish demand for perfection. In fact one might even find parallels to the argument in mainstream Anglo-american philosopher Thomas Nagel's book 'The View From Nowhere', though I'm sure both Nagel and Baudrillard would rather eat knives than acknowledge each other. One doesn't have to buy into Baudrillard's dubious metaphysics or odd misreadings of politics to find this book rather beautiful and deeply disturbing.

Baudrillard's Best Book
Though Simulacra has acquired Baudrillard his most cultural currency, this book in fact is the most eloquent (and witty) and well argued, filled with trenchant wit and sly insights. Baudrillard is the best cultural critic tocome out of France in the last century, and this book will prove to be thegreatest sample of his thought. Covering topics as disparate as Andy Warholand Yugoslavia, Baudrillard examines the implosion of reality in thecontemporary global world, exploring the moral implicatioins of the age ofinformation. Those who seek to discredit Baudrillard as a stylishpostmodernist will have difficulty dismissing this eloquent and disturbingtext. Very highly recommended. ... Read more

Book Description
Jean Baudrillard, Art and Artefact offers a major reappraisal of Jean BaudrillardÆs thoughts on image, radical illusion, and media culture. Here for the first time, through a number of highly accessible interviews and recent essays, Baudrillard introduces what he calls the "stunning clarity" of the photographic image, and fascinatingly outlines his present thoughts on urban reality, aesthetics, virtual reality, and new media technologies, in the light of his practice as a photographer.The book is illustrated with eight color plates of BaudrillardÆs photographs and includes a number of provocative and illuminating responses to his recent writings from noted Baudrillard scholars. Jean Baudrillard, Art and Artefact also includes a definitive bibliography of critical responses to BaudrillardÆs writings on media culture, art, and photography. ... Read more

Book Description
Postmodernity's quintessential theorist with his disturbing meditations on the meanings of objects. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Baudrillard's Table Talk--Under the Salt
"The fragment has its ideal" -- R. Barthes.

It's a little expensive for such a slim book, but it's so dense you wouldn't really want it any longer.FRAGMENTS is a very overdetermined word, too, it makes you wonder why, after Kierkegaard and Barthes and all the other writers who used the word so precisely, if Baudrillard sanctions its use or is it a "clever" device of the translator?

He's constantly fascinating, and quite a conversationalist, not a dull sentence in the book.Did you know that in Japanese there is no word for "the subject," nor for 'the universal,' nor again for "communication" itself?It makes you realize with a start that if one's vocabulary is shaped with some words and not others, than one's conceptual limits will be quite different than someone else with a different language, where perhaps there are three hundred words for rice--or love.

Ha, it's funny how Jean and Francois put down America for producing novels that last for manybe a thousand pages.This is hypertrophy they say, linking it to America's search for empire and planet glory.Well I have read some baggy monsters originated in France too.Then he (Jean) will turn around and praise something like Abbott's wonderful FLATLAND, and we see that nothing artificially determined sways his likes and dislikes, and that for Baudrillard, cities and cultures alike are controlled by language, borders, and the shock troops that keep us all from understanding one another.He follows Abbott in seeing God as an intuition, a vanishing point, very much as Antonioni found God in the American desert in Zabriskie Point.These European intellectuals with their quite touching view of the American West.

liberating,violinin water,colour in a hot-dog sexectoplasm
If Jean Baudrillard wrote music it would indeed transcend the musical languages and styles of modernity to popular tex/mex forms,it would have the negativity of Schoenberg mixed with the traditional beauty of Mozart with the energy of Joanie Jett,the subversiveness of The Dead Kennedys and the directness of Sharon Crow;Baudrillard indeed has paid his dues writing from the late Sixties,he also became frustrated when the revolution didn't come as quickly as expected. His work today cuts across many genres. I know painters who don't paint until they read him first. Also philosophers wanting a good time,those who need to escape the stifling air of academia,and the interlocking complexity that can be a part of todays philosophic scene of intertextual interdiscipline without being committed in anyone direction. But to call Baudrillard ancompact anarchist would be too cruel his thought has too much discipline of it,although that's how his language comes across. Yet he has a deep-rooted feeling for humanity; he can't quite seem to find a place for its demise. He wants to see something happen,well people still make sex and art,and music. I think behind all the dark-edged pessimism that emanates from his sentence constructions there is a need to emote, Baudrillard is a new genre artist,there is no label yet for who he is like Hannible Lecter. For instance on politics,"There is no need to attack politicians. They are engaged in spontaneous self-destruction. You simply have to be firm about not going to their aid." Baudrillard has seen and will seen things going,jettisoning down the tubes for some time to come. And that's why we need him. He has a gift for picking the smallest nuance of reality, the tiniest particle of the life-world as a means toward whatever is larger. A political system and institution. We find value in the fragments,Wittgenstein said this of God: I always find other things in Baudrillard than what he means. Like danger zones, like tripping over a cliff,The beauty in a Chicago ho! t-dog,yet it can kill you. "In Amazonia,certain butterflies simulate the markings of their poisonous fellows to protect themselves. When you have the good fortune to be poisonous,you have to use deception." Since the world has long stood on its philosophic head(Hegel/Marx), we can find comfort in being "Other" or so it seems. To be outcast is cool soemtimes, it doesn't help pay any bills,you need to be a Derrideanfor that to find a normative world. To Baudrillard all culture is worth the trip to understand it. Although you feel his European roots all the time, with the heavies he introduces us to Canetti,Pessoa. He always speaks within eye-shot of a monument. Years of theory does that to you. And he searches the mysteries of expression,from one fountain head one manifold source,culture going over Niagara Falls,expression teeming with amoeba,paramecium. He also is/was the first to speak on postmodernity,another stick in the side of art. In fact we owe a debt to him for taking the rigours of the postmodernist credo to a new level of cognition. Composers would never have been able to distinguish five strains of tango without it. He finds meaning in anything today,antique sales in Pennsylvania Even pornography has a double meaning. The skinny porno-queen blond who ran for the Italian Pariliament, (La Cicciolina),she married Jeff Koons who also accelerated the postmodern language to its head,carnal ectoplasm. Baudrillard speaks of the ends of things. And since we are at the end of languages,styles,meanings,subjects and objects,we are at the beginning of them as well. Too bad Baudrillard can't give us any third base guidance. Well who can? I hear he lectures at UCLA today.But I love Baudrillard because he looks for meaning anywhere. In Egyptian pyramids(ultimate space) inside,in a hermit's life,in boredom, in Andy Warhohl,in the scar on a womens face,which lends her all her charm. I think Baudrillard's next zone should be on the mystery of women throughout the ages. "Not to think any! more. To be like a dog. To be in one's head like a dog in a kennel." After you read Baudrillard you can get high from the Los Angeles Yellow Pages. He can also look beyond his own coffe-table, The French conceit that Chernobyl didn't cross to Paris,1,000 French impervious to Russian fission. Of course the dark side to all this is that Baudrillard sees us as all in a zoo,that we all have basic fatal attraction instincts that can put the rabbit into boiling water faster than the anyone. ... Read more

Book Description
Edited by Peter Weibel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Brilliant, Provocative, Disturbing . . .
Jean Baudrillard's The Illusion of the End is a fantastic read whether one chooses to take the author seriously or whether one simply wishes to loose himself in the author's creative metaphors which sum up the meaning of life and death in our modern (post-modern) society with a few hard-hitting words and phrases.Baudrillard's style is fairly simple, and I would say that his texts are easy to understand in French and in English although finding his texts in the original French can sometimes be problematic.Chris Turner's translation ... , does a great job of capturing Baudrillard's humorous and sometimes shocking ideas about the world and what he considers to be the illusion of time.

The central theme of this book is that time is becoming an illusion, and I would even say that Baudrillard already believes time has disappeared.Humankind, by falsely believing that time is linear and that "ends" exist, has created a reality out of illusions and is now gradually erasing history in an attempt to make itself "feel" better about living a life that is all but certain.

Baudrillard does not spend a great deal of time wading through previous critics' opinions about the nature of time or what physicists may say about the past, present, and future.He jumps right into his own theories which really ask the reader to rethink his notions about our world and where humankind is going, or as Baudrillard would say - re-visiting - in its attempt to revise all of those little unpalatable events from the past such as the Cold War, Persian Gulf War, and the Timisoara massacre.

Baudrillard is refreshing and shocking at the same time.Although his style is simple and stimulating, his ideas verge on the outrageous and the unpredictable.I recommend this book highly.

crunch your brain
Jean Baudrillard - I must say that albeit he is a self-proclaimed postmodernist theorist, it is not at all fair to lump together with others (specifically those influenced from poststructuralism).Baudrillard is amaterialist.In spite of that, he has other postmodern sensibilities(fragmentation, symbolic-surface function, etc.).

He talks about historyand the linear construction of time, and how this has framed our thoughtprocesses.Because of this artificial linearizing of time, he pokes fun at"ends."For Baudrillard, time has, more or less, stopped.It isno longer a question of forward or backward.

He argues that we arespeeding towards hyperreality, where everything is sterile and eternal. Using the example of the compact disc, he says (roughly) "If objectsno longer grow old when you touch them, you must be dead."We need tosee and experince death and decay to constitute life.My only concern isthis implicit statement that there is a kind of default nature positon whenthings were right (vinyl records, no email, news travelling via mouth,etc.).

Overall, brilliant and stimulating. ... Read more

Book Description
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