Customer Reviews (1)

Critical but excellent
Kellner is highly critical of Baudrillard's turn from Marxist/political solutions to a kind of techno-nihilism but the book is a great review and analysis of Baudrillard's work; it is much easier to read this book with many passages from Baudrillard's own writings with Kellner's critical but complete commentaries than to read some of the horribly translated works of Baudrillard out there.Baudrillard read's more like a sci-fi dystopian at times-his theory of the code and his use of the term Matrix (pre-movie) is very interesting stuff.This is a great introduction to a cutting edge philosophy that provocatively analyzes our current capitalistic and media saturated society. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on May 29, 2002. The length of the article is 1814 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: El complot del arte: Jean Baudrillard.(la cultura en México)(TT: Complot of the art: Jean Baudrillard.)(TA: culture in Mexico)
Author: Mauricio Molina
Publication: Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: May 29, 2002
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Volume: 48Issue: 2554Page: 64(2)

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This digital document is an article from Epoca, published by Thomson Gale on November 17, 2005. The length of the article is 547 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Baudrillard el vicio de lo virtual.(el filósofo Jean Baudrillard recibe medalla del Círculo de Bellas Artes)
Author: Alfonso Basallo
Publication: Epoca (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 17, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 1075Page: 68(1)

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This digital document is an article from The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, published by Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Assn. on February 1, 2005. The length of the article is 1507 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Jean Baudrillard, Passwords.(Book Review)
Author: B. Gerry Coulter
Publication: The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology (Refereed)
Date: February 1, 2005
Publisher: Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Assn.
Volume: 42Issue: 1Page: 112(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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This digital document is an article from Arena Magazine, published by Thomson Gale on April 1, 2007. The length of the article is 1756 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Remembering Baudrillard: forgetting the significance of theory.(COOPER'S LAST)(Jean Baudrillard)(Column)
Author: Simon Cooper
Publication: Arena Magazine (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 88Page: 26(3)

Article Type: Column

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, published by Thomson Gale on November 1, 2006. The length of the article is 1423 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact.(Book review)
Author: Gerry Coulter
Publication: The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 43Issue: 4Page: 465(3)

Article Type: Book review

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Word count: 4930. ... Read more

Book Description
Jean Baudrillard is one of the most important and provocative writers in the contemporary era. Widely acclaimed as the prophet of postmodernism, he has famously announced the disappearance of the subject, meaning, truth, class and the notion of reality itself. Although he worked as a sociologist, his writing has enjoyed a wide interdisciplinary popularity and influence. He is read by students of sociology, cultural studies, philosophy, literature, French and geography.

Organized into eight sections, the volumes provide the most complete guide to Baudrillard currently available:

Section 1:Theoretical Issues

In this section the central themes informing Baudrillard's work are defined and discussed. Baudrillard's place in contemporary social thought is examined through considerations of how his work has been received. The importance of signs and the sign economy in Baudrillard's analysis is highlighted. The case for treating Baudrillard as a seminal theoristin contemporary social thought is elucidated.

Section 2:Postmodernism

Baudrillard is reluctant to regard himself as a postmodernist. Nonetheless, it is as the leading theorist of postmodernism that he is widely celebrated and generally known. This section explores Baudrillard's relation to postmodernism and demonstrates his specific contribution. Questions of Baudrillards relation to capitalism, commodification, fatalism, Lyotard, Jameson and politics are explored.

Section 3:Culture

It is now commonplace to refer to the period since the late 1980s as `the cultural turn'. Baudrillard's work provided a leading exponent of the significance of culture in understanding contemporary life. Included here are reflections on Baudrillard and corporate culturalism, power, ideology, simulation, mass media, Disney, hyperreality and leisure.

Section 4: War

In the 1990s Baudrillard became famous for the thesis that `the gulf war did not happen'. For some critics, it revealed the poverty of Baudrillard's approach. For others it showed more profoundly why his thought is an indispensable tool in grappling with the complexities of contemporary society. At all events, Baudrillard's treatment of the war represented a climacteric in critical responses to Baudrillard. In this section the various range of responses to Baudrillard's intervention are precisely delineated, providing the reader with the essential data required to decide if Baudrillard's thesis is right or wrong.

Section 5: America

America dazzles and appalls Baudrillard. In America and of Cool Memories 1&2, he documents his violent responses to America as an idea; a physical space. Included here are reflections on Baudrillard, America and postmodernism; Baudrillard's significance as an ethnographer of US life; Baudrillard and American film; Baudrillard and Reagan's America; and Baudrillard, America and the politics of simulation.

Section 6: Seduction

Baudrillard's theory of seduction is, like much else in his work, controversial. This section examines how the theory has been interpreted and criticized. The relationship between Baudrillard and feminism is examined. Applications of his theory to art and work are explored.

Section 7: Fiction and Art

Baudrillard is an unusual contemporary thinker, in as much as his writing is taken seriously by artists. Baudrillard himself has responded to this, by becoming more interested in photography in the last ten years. This section aims to provide an essential guide to the relationship between Baudrillard and art. Included here are enquiries into Baudrillard and science fiction, the relationship between Baudrillard and J G Ballard's `Crash'; Baudrillard and abstract painting; Baudrillard and Francis Bacon; Baudrillard, Benjamin and Lichtenstein; Baudrillard, Barthes and photography; and Baudrillard's theory of communication.

Section 8: Baudrillard and Other Social Theorists

The concluding part of the collection aims to situate Baudrillard in the field of contemporary social theory. Interestingly, Baudrillard himself has never attempted to compare and contrast his theoretical ideas with those of others. The 14 contributions included in this section, seek to rectify this shortcoming. The contributions cover Baudrillard and Marx; Baudrillard, Durkheim and Rousseau; Baudrillard and psychoanalysis; Baudrillard and Bataille; existentialism, postmodernism and Baudrillard;Baudrillard and McLuhan; Baudrillard and Critical Theory; Baudrillard and Habermas; Baudrillard and Deleuze; Baudrillard and de Certeau; and the fictional Baudrillard, as dreamt up by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.

The contributions are selected and introduced by Mike Gane, Reader in Sociology at the University of Loughborough. With publications like Baudrillard's Bestiary, Baudrillard: Critical & Fatal Theory and Baudrillard Live, Gane is widely recognized as the leading secondary commentator on the work of Baudrillard. No-one else matches him in the appreciation and critical understanding of Baudrillard. In a full length 'Introduction' to the volumes, written with verve and penetration, Gane shows exactly why Baudrillard is a key thinker of our times.

Mike Gane is Professor of Sociology at University of Loughborough ... Read more

Book Description
Jean Baudrillard is one of the most controversial and stimulating figures in contemporary philosophy and cultural criticism. Whether embraced or reviled for his reflections on 'hyperreality', he never fails to evoke strong reactions. Yet, all too often, discussion of Baudrillard's ideas takes place at one remove, with much imputed to him. It is sometimes claimed that his writing is too abstract or obscure to analyse rigorously. The Indifferent Paroxyst offers the reader a new way to approach Baudrillard's ideas through the use of the interview format. Closely questioned by French journalist Philippe Petit, Baudrillard covers a vast range of topics, including Fukuyama; 1989 and the collapse of Communism; Bosnia, the Gulf War, Rwanda and the New World Order; globalisation and universalisation; the return of ethnic nationalisms; the nature of war; revisionism and Holocaust denial; Deleuze, Foucault, Bataille and Virilio; nihilism and the apocalyptic; the practice of writing; virtual reality; the West and the East; the culture of victimhood and repentance; human rights and citizenship; French intellectuals and engagement; the nature of capitalism today; consumer society and social exclusion; liberation; death, violence and necrophilia; reality, illusion and the media; and destabilisation of all aspects of life, including sexuality. Baudrillard's answers--which span politics, philosophy and culture--are concise, witty and trenchant, and they serve both as an accessible introduction to his ideas for the newcomer and as a fascinating clarification of recent positions for the connoisseur. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Introduction
This is a great introduction to Baudrillard's thought.Petit probes Baudrillard's mind on key points of his analysis.Baudrillard provides clear(as clear as it gets) explanations of what he intends for the readerto understand. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Short and Sweet
This book basically describes how the first Iraq war differed from traditional wars of the past. It is not for everyone, Baudrillard has the unfortunate position of being too loose with ideas to be taken very seriously by 'real' academics while at the same time writing in a style that is not easily accessible to a popular audience. His thesis is that the 'war' was primarily a media event that was useful in different ways to both sides of the conflict. He does not dispute that violence and suffering took place, but suggests that the event was not a war as was defined in the past by Clausewitz. Any review that states he is trying to 'hide' the essential suffering of those at the ground of the event is just wrong. There is nothing in the book that questions or calls into doubt the experiences of soldiers or civilians; at the same time it does not dwell upon them.

Opinion never constitutes reality!
My! And yes of course he must be right! It never ceases to amaze me how 'self aggrandized' intellectuals can sit back (in the relative safety of their ivory towers) and tell themselves 'stories' generated from their own imaginations, conclusions or biases.Unfortunately they often portray these self conjured stories or opinions as reality.Equally amusing is that there are always those (safely out of harms way as well) who are quick to conclude that the opinions of someone with 'credentials' are indeed actual fact, and that of course, the U.S. Government in particular, is corrupt.After all, we all need a good `hate target' to satisfy our own needs of self righteousness. So we might as well pick the biggest target we can find, right?As someone who has been involved in the global intelligence equation for a number of years, I would conclude that any rational human being capable of thought, would agree that "All Governments" on this planet are corrupt . . . without exception.That corruption would be most readily recognized as self-serving agendas of leaders, want-to-be's, and in many cases the religious power mongers, and even the people, for power, wealth, control, fame, notoriety, etc. etc..(Sound anything like real life?) Any way, I still applaud the writer in his ability to make a few bucks on his `fantasy' work, and it is very well written.

So what?
Yeah, so there was a lot of tv coverage of the Gulf War.Yeah, so some people confuse the tv coverage with what actually went on to the point where the real war is irrelevant.Yeah, so there is a level on which there is a war for public opinion, a purely media war.Beaudrillard says all of this in the tortured language of continental philosophy.Since I love continental philosophy, I appreciate the points he makes about images and simulacra.But he offers not the slightest recognition of the fact that the war DID take place, people, animals, and buildings were destroyed, money and years of work erased, longlasting suffering and illness a legacy among all countries involved .And for that reason, this book made me VERY angry.

The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.
No one can lack commonsense as much as an intellectual, especially a leftist one, and perhaps most of all a renowned French professor of sociology.To show his brilliance, Baudrillard takes a perfectly obvious fact and devotes a book to proving it wrong.In saying that the Kuwait war "did not take place," he means that the fighting was so lopsided, it did not constitute a war.Brushing aside American fears of heavy casualties, he deems that the war "was won in advance." It was, in his view, "a shameful and pointless hoax, a programmed and melodramatic version of what was the drama of war." From the American point of view, he claims, "no accidents occurred in this war, everything unfolded according to a programmatic order." In all, the events of early 1991 stood in relation to war as computer erotics do to actual sex.

Baudrillard's exceedingly slight essay (a compilation of three articles published in the newspaper Libération) ceaselessly hammers away at these themes.He stands midway between the United States and Iraq, faulting each of these main actors about equally.For him, it is all aesthetics and ideology; the deeply important human, economic, and strategic issues raised by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait disappear under the weight of his relentless abstraction.Thus unconnected from reality, Baudrillard mangles everything from the French president's name to the number of traffic fatalities in the United States. The result is a book of profound error and transcendent stupidity, the most inane ever reviewed in these pages.

Middle East Quarterly, March 1996

Pure sociological poetry
A brilliant response to the mediated non-event of the Gulf War - a must read for anyone with lingering illusions on the nature of war in the unipolar post-Cold War world in which media war has eclipsed war itself and Clauswitz's definition fails to find resonance ... Read more

Book Description
Jean Baudrillard is one of the most celebrated and controversial of contemporary social theorists. Translated into English for the first time, this remarkable volume examines the full extent of his critical appraisal of social theories including traditional Marxism, cybernetics, ethnography, psychoanalysis, and feminist thought. In particular, it offers the most complete elaboration of Baudrillard's concept of the simulacrum and his reorientation of social theory toward the issues of fashion, the body, and death.Symbolic Exchange and Death, originally published in France in 1976, is a recognized classic and one of the most important sources for the redefinition of contemporary social thought."Just when everyone is bored with Baudrillard, the academic establishment finally gets it together to translate the po-mo prophet's most important book. First published in 1976, this has appeared piecemeal in various guerrilla translations and already had its cultural effect. It's just a relief to get the full SP on the semiology of the death drive."-- I-D"This is easily Jean Baudrillard's most important work. It is a key intervention in the debates on modernity and postmodernity and the site of his postmodern turn. Anyone who wants to understand the complexity and provocativeness of Baudrillard's richest period must read this book."--Douglas Kellner, University of Texas at Austin ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Recommended introduction to an important cultural theorist
Jean Baudrillard has an insatiable desire to stay ahead of the game, to push things further and further. Symbolic Exchange and Death, written in 1976 but surprisingly not translated in English until 1993, is a key text because it sets out in challenging but relatively clear terms Baudrillard's radical approach before his more recent period based upon `fatal strategies' which travels into the ethereal and obscure. Symbolic Exchange and Death fundamentally operates as a genealogy of our dominant system of political economy and the underlying spectre of a pre-existing Symbolic Order. This involves a catastrophic challenge to Marxian and Freudian thought and traditional social approaches. It develops the earlier works of Michel Foucault and phenomenologists such as R.D. Laing to a more radical stance which begins to turn many widely accepted beliefs on their head. It also demonstrates that Baudrillard is not at all the high priest of postmodernism as was thought in the latter part of the 1980s but is a relentless poststructuralist. Despite Baudrillard's own later consignment of the work to a bygone era of dialecticism, Symbolic Exchange and Death, twenty five years on still retains an explosive potency. Fascinating, controversial and unputdownable - will inevitably draw readers to explore the author's other works. ... Read more

Book Description
Prophet of the apocalypse, hysterical lyric poet, obsessive recounter of the desolation of the postmodern scene and currently the hottest property on the New York intellectual circuit.
The Guardian

A sharp-shooting lone-ranger from the post-Marxist left.
New York Times

The most important French thinker of the past twenty years.
J. G. Ballard

"Theory is never so fine as when it takes the form of a fiction or a fable," writes Baudrillard in Cool Memories V – the latest in a series of aphoristic journals that covers the period 2000-2004. During these years Baudrillard re-emerged strongly in the international arena with his trenchant and controversial essay Spirit of Terrorism, developed his work as a photographer and developed cancer.
As his attack on the inanities of "hyperreality" has grown more radical, Baudrillard has come to display an ever more marked penchant for the aphoristic style he has so long admired in such writers as Canetti, Lichtenberg and Nietzsche. "'Aphorizein'", he writes, "from which we get the word ‘aphorism', means to retreat to such a distance that a horizon of thought is formed which never again closes on itself. " Cool Memories are carnets, notebooks, but these are notes for keeping the horizon of thought open within a daunting sphere of ideas that is no less than "a jungle, a nature red in tooth and claw. " "Mentally and affectively," he writes, "we have remained hunters. At every moment, in thought and writing, there is a prey and a predator. And survival is a miracle. "

Jean Baudrillard was born in Reims in 1929 and now lives in Paris. From 1966 to1987 he taught sociology at the University of Paris X (Nanterre). Among his works translated into English are Simulations and Simulacra, Fatal Strategies, Seduction, America, Cool Memories I- IV, The Illusion of the End and The Spirit of Terrorism ... Read more

Book Description
From critic of mass consumption to prophet of the apocalypse. The "pimp" of postmodernism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

bridges marx and the existentialists! this *is* an introduction to baudrillard...
...but not to the thinkers you must be familiar with to understand him. So, I'd have to say that both reviews below (above?) mine are accurate. This text is an *excellent* introduction to Baudrillard and many of his theories but it also refers to Marx and Freud and if you intend to understand what's in this book, you'd better have at least a basic grasp of their philosophies, as well. This book won't be so great for a group of 8th graders, but for anyone with a few good liberal arts credits under their belt- understanding this shouldn't be a problem. It really is a wealth of information presented in a concise and entertaining way. I feel like I could flip through it- or hell, read the whole thing- 10 mpre times and still be stimulated by its content. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in Baudrillard, consumerism, modern society, or philosophy in general.

Keep away.
First off about me. I read philosophy books as a hobby or passion of mine. I am not a scholar and do need some guidance to some subjects out there. I have read many of the Introducing series and those have helped me lots. Some of those include Nietzsche, evolution and Postmodernism. After reading those I persued the subjects with further more in depth readings and I owe some thanks to these first introductory books. However, this is a diferent case.

First off I had an interest in Baudrillard and wanted something introductoy. The way this book is written is horrendous. There is no real organizing to the information and even if u disregard that it is hard to even tell what the writer is trying to say. Putting question marks on lines make them a question for example. It is very confusing reading some lines as some are meant as a joke and others are sarcastic remarks. I dont find either amuzing or funny. I have given alot of time to this book giving it chances and Im almost finished. Dont know where else to look for a good introductory book on Baudrillard but this is definitely not the place for ANY starter. Maybe a crash course on this guy isnt easy. What I truely hate is not caring about the quality being published by the series. It is insulting and a robbery.

Do NOT get this book.

The best introduction to Baudrillard's thought
Ignore the above - like all the books in the Introducing series, this is an exceptionally coherent and successful overview. The format is particularly appropriate and successful in the case of Baudrillard, and it is possible for the intelligent reader to grasp all his key ideas. The best introduction to his thought.

[price] worth spending
The "Introducing" series are very effective in my view because they both go in depth with the critical theories or foundations of a certain thinker and go through their less significant points.I think seeing all the points without sustaining all belief into the ideas of a person like Baudrillard is great by not getting too caught up in their claims."Introducing Baudrillard" compares his significance as a thinker to other contemporary and past philosophy very well and being familiar with the intensity of Baudrillard's claims is well worth the time and money.

Unhealthy Pretentious Chaos
Like most of the Totem Introducing series, I thought Introducing Baudrillard was going to benot quite in depth and truely lacking. Where Introducing Postmodernism was medicore but attempted to go in depth,Introducing Baudrillard is consistently shallow.

My main gripe is thelack of clearity, and it's illogical plot of Baudrillard's philosophicaldevelopment. And the way book is written is flat out horrible, which makesthe whole read incomprehrensible.

If your an undergrad student looking tolearn about contemporary and postmodern philosophy like myself, well FORGETINTRODUCING BAUDRILLARD! ... Read more

Book Description
Self-described "intellectual terrorist" Jean Baudrillard is one of the most important and provocative writers of the contemporary era. Widely acclaimed as the prophet to postmodernity, he has famously announced the disappearance of the subject, political economy, meaning, truth, the social, and the real in contemporary social formations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Various Theses on Various Themes
This book consists of theses, written by researchers in various fields, on various themes such as hyperreality, fashion, capitalism, postmodernism, and feminism. Therefore, I think that there are some theses in whichBaudrillardfs thoughts are not understood at all. The constitution of thisbook is not so good because each researcher mention freely to variousnotions without big theme that combines each thesis. It is disappointingthat discussions on Baudrillard do not develop between each thesis. If eachthesis were complementary to each other, this book would be moreinteresting and more controversial.

Fear & Loathing (and a little affection)in Academia
Editor Kellner is a big Baudrillard 'expert' and an eminently clever chapwho, therefore, needs to take everything terribly seriously, particularlywhen he's putting his name to "truly balanced assessment ofBaudrillard's contributions to contemporary thought". In hisintroduction, we are warned that "Baudrillard loves to shock andoutrage. Some of his antics are highly amusing and provide a levelentertainment rarely found in social theory and criticism. Some of hisprovocations are silly and offensive ..." Antics? Performing dogBaudrillard is not, though it's convenient for academia to treat him as ifhe were, and as much of this critical collection does: po-facedly analysinghis 'tricks', dully pointing out the 'inconsistencies'. "Silly andoffensive ..." Oh right - and the world isn't? Aah, who cares.

Where Kellner is right, though, is that Baudrillard's original writingsare often very funny and horribly prescient and - if you just go with theflow of the bombast and generalization and accept it as Baudrillard'speculiar manifestation of the 'ecstasy of communication' - eye-opening. Sopass on this desperately grave nonsense and enjoy the originals that spawnit. ... Read more