Product Description

In a provocative analysis written during the unfolding drama of 1992, Baudrillard draws on his concepts of simulation and the hyperreal to argue that the Gulf War did not take place but was a carefully scripted media event -- a "virtual" war.

Patton's introduction argues that Baudrillard, more than any other critic of the Gulf War, correctly identified the stakes involved in the gestation of the New World Order.

Customer Reviews (12)

The war happened, but didn't take place...
Provacativively titled book either impresses or deeply angers people, I read this years ago and retained only a few points of interest.

Yes, the war happened, as in bombs were dropped, people died, buildings were destroyed, many suffered, etc.But it differed markedly from previous wars in that it was mainly an event to be manipulated by different sides in the media.Therefore, it did not take place the way previous wars had, in that the suffering and even a uniform understanding did not penetrate the population at home who watched the events on CNN.

Unfortunately, all of this business about the 'realness' of the war, and the simulacra, and the hyper-reality we're now mired in, is written in a frustrating and unnecessarily bloated style that makes even this slim work a slight chore at times.Can certainly be expressed in a simpler way, therefore appearing less profound, but then it wouldn't be the work of French postmodern philosopher.Interesting 'take' on a modern war, with points that would only resonate more in the years since, it's hit-or-miss for most readers of current events (more for the philosophy crowd).

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 ... Read more

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Aujourd'hui l'abstraction n'est plus celle de la carte, du double, du miroir ou du concept. La simulation n'est plus celle d'un territoire, d'un entre référentiel, d'une substance. Elle est la génération par les modèles d'un réel sans origine ni réalité : hyperréel. Le territoire ne précède plus la carte ni ne lui survit. C'est désormais la carte qui précède le territoire - procession de simulacres - c'est elle qui engendre le territoire et s'il fallait reprendre la fable, c'est aujourd'hui le territoire dont les lambeaux pourrissent lentement sur l'étendue de la carte. C'est le réel, et non la carte, dont des vestiges subsistent çà et la, dans les déserts qui ne sont plus ceux de l'Empire, mais le notre. Les désert du réel lui-même. --- from book's back cover ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

pretty terrifying
1. if you dont like baudrillard you wont like this, nor is this a good intro to his work
2. if you like him conceptually and find his writing interesting, i dont know if id say this adds much to his more read works
3. if you like him because you like being scared, this does a fantastic job and i highly recommend it ... Read more

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Jean Baudrillard is one of the most controversial theorists of our time, famous for his claim that the Gulf War never happened and for his provocative writing on terrorism, specifically 9/11. This new and fully updated second edition includes:

• an introduction to Baudrillard’s key works and theories such as simulation and hyperreality
• coverage of Baudrillard’s later work on the question of postmodernism
• a new chapter on Baudrillard and terrorism
• engagement with architecture and urbanism through the Utopie group
• a look at the most recent applications of Baudrillard’s ideas.

Richard J. Lane offers a comprehensive introduction to this complex and fascinating theorist, also examining the impact that Baudrillard has had on literary studies, media and cultural studies, sociology, philosophy and postmodernism.

Customer Reviews (3)

excellent companion volume
This volume is a very good introduction to Baudrillard for those unacquainted with his writings, and a useful companion volume to a thorough study of his texts.Unlike the "[Philosopher] in 90 minutes" series, the "Introducing" series, etc., this book is intended as a supplement to the primary texts, not as a simplified condensation of the original texts for the casual inquirer who wishes to appear well-read.

Cultural influences on Baudrillard are discussed at length (the Monnet projects in post-WWII France; the student revolt in Paris in May '68); etc.Also, many of the key concepts that Baudrillard appropriated from other thinkers are situated in context by reference to their origins with Foucault (the panopticon as a model for contemporary culture), Bataille (excess, expenditure - the escape from Hegel), Mauss ("potlatch"), Debord (spectacle), and others.

Some of the scandals associated with Baudrillard's writings - the fights with various feminists over his notorious remarks about women, his misconstrued analysis of the United States in "America," and of course the bru-ha-ha over his wildly misunderstood claim that "the Gulf War did not happen" - are rather neatly side-stepped in this volume with a paradigm in which Baudrillard's later writing (after "Symbolic Exchange and Death") is understood as performative, with an emphasis on hyperbole, exaggeration, fictionalization and, above all, humor.

A few disadvantages of this volume are largely caused by the date of its publication: completed in 1999, it does not address Baudrillard's final works, particularly his analyses of 9-11; nor does it include any commentary on the most important pop-cultural manifestation of Baudrillard's work, namely the Matrix trilogy.

I would suggest this book before, after, or along with Mark Poster's excellent selection of Baudrillard's texts in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings: Second Edition and, of course, the now-classic text Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism).

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

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The renowned postmodernist philosopher’s tour-de-force contemplation of sex, technology, politics and disease in Western culture after the revolutionary ‘orgy’ of the 1960s.“The most important and original French thinker of the past twenty years.” --J.G. Ballard ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Baudrillard's Best Book?
As anyone knows who has read Baudrillard, by "evil" he does not mean evil in a moral or ethical sense, but rather that principle which is antithetical to the smooth functioning of our hypermodern systems. Thus, AIDS, cancer, terrorism, computer viruses, etc. are examples of "extreme phenomena" which are a form of evil in the sense that they tend to disrupt the flow of systems. AIDS disrupts the flow of sexual promiscuity; cancer disrupts the flow of genetic programming; terrorism disrupts the flow of politcal economy, and so forth. These disruptions, moreover, may be the result on the part of these systems of a sort of homestatic tendency to preserve the system itself from even worse evils. Drugs, for example, prevent the tyranny of rationality; terrorism the tyranny of political consensus; AIDS, the absolute tyranny of sexual promiscuity, etc.

Our society, according to Baudrillard, operates in terms of virulent phenomena: that is to say, phenomena that proliferate with a metastatic or viral meaninglessness. We are saturated with media images that proliferate metastatically, like cancer cells which grow without regard for the context of the system within which they are embedded. Indeed, simulation is a form of this endless repetition of the Hell of the Same, in which ideas, tradition, and discourse have disintegrated and left behind a residue in the form of hollow ghost-like traces which proliferate around us like viruses, intent only upon destroying the system with oversaturation.

Baudrillard, like Nietzsche before him, thus sees our society as a sick one, for he draws his metaphors largely from biology and medicine. Art, he says, has become Trans-Aesthetic, producing images in which there is literally nothing to see because they make no effect and leave no trace; sexuality has become Trans-sexual in the sense that there is no longer any fixity of gender. Figures like Michael Jackson or Boy George simply discard their genders and proceed as if there is no such thing. Economics, too, he says, has become Trans-Economic, creating virtual realms of speculation that have little to do with the real world, which is why, he says, the crash of 1987 had little actual effect upon the real economy.

This is, in short, one of Baudrillard's two or three best books. It is clearly written and very readable. Nobody had a better grasp of the essentially phantom nature of postmodernity; its shallowness, and ghostly production of promiscuous forms with no relation to context or tradition of any sort. He is a kind of modern equivalent of Nietzsche, diagnosing our contemporary predicament, the way a physician would analyse a patient.

easy fellas ....
This book is a good introduction to the contemporary Baudrillard, it is the last step as he leaves behind the last vestiges of Marxism and ventures into something original and "fatal". Contrary to the first reviewer, Baudrillard does not assume an "Essentialist" position (namely, providing necessary and sufficient conditions for 'such and such' to be 'such and such').Instead he operates between wildly poetic description and (implied) moral condemnation.

This means, mostly, that his comments on meaning and media are striking.It also means (unfortunately) that he provides little in the way of concrete or rigorous argumentation.Thankfully, this is not a problem if we consider the book a collection of inter-related aphorisms.In any case, Baudrillard "the poet" instead of Baudrillard "the theorist" allows us to conceptualize the expanding domain of media technologies in a different way.Whether there actually -is- anything to his claims will have to be shown by someone else.

Since this book has had something of an influence on art criticism, I recommend it (albeit, with strong reservations about its basic claims)to anyone interested in cultural theory, the arts or any sort of contemporary "critical theory".

a virtuoso,yet probes the surface most of the time. . .
Sometimes a brilliant thinker as Baudrillard lets his own theories and perspectives confuse what is reality. Even though all the so-called revolutions and liberations have played themselves out, sexual,cybernetic,political,artistic, there are still powers in the world in all the above categories that are shaping the world in their own image. What is globalization? than the structure of the world surrounded with capital,shaped by it directing the poverty and foodchains of the world. I think Baudrillard forgets this, that there still is someone who creates and directs,and manipulates,and politicizes,and innoculates the populace to soften them up for consumption,controlled if possibly.

This collection of essays are brilliant in that Baudrillard knows how to probe beneath the surface of art,of culture, like Madonna, Michael Jackson or current Hollywood, and the politics of Europe,of the demise of communism. He does it within a formant structure,with many levels of meaning spewed out in all directions. He is a virtuoso in that respect.

What structures material reality? what directs it is not probed however with any degree of conviction and I think that is where his focus should be.You needn't be a Marxist to harbor these convictions simply ahumanist concerned with the direction of the world.

Facinating but reactionary
Break out your dictionary; here is Baudrillard in all his ontogenetic glory.A wildly entertaining if ultimately depressing journey through the end of the millenia; what could be more shocking than to see J.B. bewailthe lost hippy ideals of the sixties?Less a postmodernist than anessentialist critic of postmodernism, Baudrilard bwetrays a startling lackof imagination when it comes to technology and apparently views thecomputer screen as the fourth horseman of a Marxian apocalypse.Imagine ifyour kvetching grandfather had attended Yale in the '80s. ... Read more

Product Description
The Utopie group was born in 1966 at Henri Lefebvre's house in the Pyrenees. The eponymous journal edited by Hubert Tonka brought together sociologists Jean Baudrillard, René Lourau, and Catherine Cot, architects Jean Aubert, Jean-Paul Jungmann, Antoine Stinco, and landscape architect Isabelle Auricoste. Over the next decade, both in theory and in practice, the group articulated a radical ultra-leftist critique of architecture, urbanism, and everyday life. Utopia Deferred collects all of the essays Jean Baudrillard published in Utopie as well as recent interviews with Jean Baudrillard and Hubert Tonka.

Utopie served as a workshop for Baudrillard's thought. Many of the essays he first published in Utopie were seminal for some of his most shockingly original books: For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, The Mirror of Production, Simulations, Symbolic Exchange and Death, and In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. But Utopie was also a topical journal and a political one; the topics of these essays are often torn from the headlines of the tumultuous decade following the uprisings of May 1968. ... Read more

Product 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 (2)

Postmodern nonsense
Here's a big heads up.Although I have the deepest respect for Philippe Petit, ( he was the guy that walked across a wire between the twin towers in New York). Petit does an admirable job of trying to tease out what the heck Baudrillard is trying to say. And some of the things he says make a certain amount of sense, itis just that the way he says it that is the problem. This is a great instantiation oftaking a fewgood ideas and killing them with circular, redundant, boring prose; the sure "tell" of a postmodern mind caught in its own web of obfuscation.

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

Product Description
“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.”—Ziauddin Sardar, New StatesmenThis shrinkwrapped set contains twelve Verso Radical Thinkers volumes at a discounted price:

• In Search of Wagner by Theodor W. Adorno
• The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena by Jean Baudrillard
• War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception by PaulVirilio
• Reading Capital by LouisAlthusser and EtienneBalibar
• The Origin of German Tragic Drama by WalterBenjamin
• The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 by FredricJameson
• WalterBenjamin, Or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism by TerryEagleton
• Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity: Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought by SimonCritchley
• Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought by GeorgLukács
• Panegyric by GuyDebord
• Hegel Contra Sociology by GillianRose
• The Democratic Paradox by ChantalMouffe

Product Description
The Utopie group was born in 1966 at Henri Lefebvre's house in the Pyrenees. The eponymous journal edited by Hubert Tonka brought together sociologists Jean Baudrillard, René Lourau, and Catherine Cot, architects Jean Aubert, Jean-Paul Jungmann, Antoine Stinco, and landscape architect Isabelle Auricoste. Over the next decade, both in theory and in practice, the group articulated a radical ultra-leftist critique of architecture, urbanism, and everyday life. Utopia Deferred collects all of the essays Jean Baudrillard published in Utopie as well as recent interviews with Jean Baudrillard and Hubert Tonka.

Utopie served as a workshop for Baudrillard's thought. Many of the essays he first published in Utopie were seminal for some of his most shockingly original books: For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, The Mirror of Production, Simulations, Symbolic Exchange and Death, and In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. But Utopie was also a topical journal and a political one; the topics of these essays are often torn from the headlines of the tumultuous decade following the uprisings of May 1968. ... Read more

Product 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 (2)

Postmodern nonsense
Here's a big heads up.Although I have the deepest respect for Philippe Petit, ( he was the guy that walked across a wire between the twin towers in New York). Petit does an admirable job of trying to tease out what the heck Baudrillard is trying to say. And some of the things he says make a certain amount of sense, itis just that the way he says it that is the problem. This is a great instantiation oftaking a fewgood ideas and killing them with circular, redundant, boring prose; the sure "tell" of a postmodern mind caught in its own web of obfuscation.

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

Product Description
“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.”—Ziauddin Sardar, New StatesmenThis shrinkwrapped set contains twelve Verso Radical Thinkers volumes at a discounted price:

• In Search of Wagner by Theodor W. Adorno
• The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena by Jean Baudrillard
• War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception by PaulVirilio
• Reading Capital by LouisAlthusser and EtienneBalibar
• The Origin of German Tragic Drama by WalterBenjamin
• The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 by FredricJameson
• WalterBenjamin, Or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism by TerryEagleton
• Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity: Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought by SimonCritchley
• Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought by GeorgLukács
• Panegyric by GuyDebord
• Hegel Contra Sociology by GillianRose
• The Democratic Paradox by ChantalMouffe

Product Description
Jean Baudrillard's work on how contemporary society is dominated by the mass media has become extraordinarily influential. He is notorious for arguing that there is no real world, only simulations which have altered what events mean, and that only violent symbolic exchange can prevent the world becoming a total simulation. An ideal introduction to this most singular cultural critic and philosopher, Jean Baudrillard: Live Theory offers a comprehensive, critical account of Baudrillard's unsettling, visionary and often prescient work. Baudrillard's relation to a range of thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Marx, McLuhan, Foucault and Lyotard is explained, and the impact of his thought on contemporary politics, popular culture and art is analysed. Finally, in the new interview included here, Baudrillard outlines his own position and responds to his critics. ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Jack Lang, Michel Crozier, Jean Baudrillard, Henri Suhamy, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Michèle Salmona, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Allais, René Rémond, Stéphane Courtois, Jacques Roubaud, Christine Lagarde, Henri Lefebvre, Paul Ricœur, Alain Testart, Jean-François Sirinelli, Gilles le Béguec, Henry Rousso, Jean Foyer, Jean-Marc Providence, Robert Mandrou, Emmanuel Dockès, Pierre Goubert, Daniel Borrillo, Jacques Heers, Marshall Sahlins, Serge Tisseron, Denis Kessler, Christian Laval, Didier Musiedlak, Alain Musset, Olivier Favereau, Martine Segalen, Jeanne Favret-Saada, Didier Anzieu, Étienne Balibar, Philippe Combessie, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Danièle Sallenave, Alain Caillé, Michel Aglietta, Guy Carcassonne, Francis Vian, Jean-Pierre Rioux, Pierre Avril, Jean-Michel Maulpoix, Claudine Blanchard-Laville, Jacques Lacant, Mikel Dufrenne, Annette Becker, Yves Guchet, Jacques Perriault, André Vauchez, Alain Milon, Pierre Mélandri, Jean-Jacques Becker, Sylvia Preuss-Laussinotte, Gilles J. Guglielmi, Guy Burgel, Sylvain Crépon, David Buxton, Alain Pellet, Eric Millard, Michel Troper, Claude Lepelley, Nikita Harwich, Colette Beaune, Jean Canavaggio, Ronny Abraham, Marc Belissa, Jacques Martineau, Antoine Lyon-Caen, Francis Caballero, Monique Cottret, François Soulage, Philippe Carré, Pierre Ayçoberry, Gabrielle Althen, Laurent Bonelli, Pierre Bouvier, Pierre Riché, Pierre Brunet, Bernard Pudal, Danièle Lochak, Jacques Donzelot, Anne Cauquelin, Stéphane Haber, Bernard Friot, William Marx, Jacques Pimpaneau, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Bruno Dumézil, François Billacois, Xavier Lagarde, Anne-Claude Ambroise-Rendu, Jean-Marc Thouvenin, André Legrand, Jean-Maurice Verdier, Matty Chiva, Philippe Dessertine, Isaac Joseph, Didier Franck, Carmen...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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