Forget Baudrillard?

by Chris Rojek, Bryan S. Turner

Without doubt, Jean Baudrillard is one of the most important figures currently working in the area of sociology an dcultural studies, but his writings infuriate as many people as they intoxcicate. This collection provides a wide-ranging, measured assessment of Baudrillard's work. The contributors examine Baudrillard's relation to consumption, modernity, postmodernity, social theory, feminism, politics and culture. They attempt to steer a clear course between the hype which Baudrillard himself has done much to generate, and the solid value of his startling thoughts. Baudrillard's ideas and style of expression provide a challenge to established academic ways of proceeding and thinking. The book explores this challenge and speculates on the reason for the extreme responses to Baudrillard's work. The appeal of Baudrillard's arguments is clearly discussed and his place in contemporary social theory is shrewdly assessed. Baudrillard emerges as a chameleon figure, but one who is obsessed with the central themes of style, hypocrisy, seduction, simulation and fatality. Although these themes abound in postmodern thought, they are also evident in a certain strand of modernist thought - one which embraces the writings of Baudelaire and Nietzsche. Baudrillard's protestation is that he is not a postmodernist is taken seriously in this collection. The balanced and accessible style of the contributions and the fairness and rigour of the assessments make this book of pressing interest to students of sociology, philosophy and cultural studies.

Genres: Philosophy

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 21, 1993

About the author

Chris Rojek is Professor of Sociology and Culture at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
In 2003 he was awarded the Allen V. Sapora Award for outstanding achievement in the field of Leisure Studies.

Reviews

[v]

A decent-enough collection of essays on Baudrillard that offers a variety of disciplinary perspectives, writing styles, and responses to him. I think the most informative are Porter's essay, which provides tons of historical background on mental illness and capitalism which serves to contextualize and correct Baudrillard's thoughts on "general hysteria" in The Consumer Society, Rojek's essay on Baudrillard and politics which offers, besides a capable overview of Baudrillard's anti-politics, some titillating observations about Baudrillard and ethnography and the body, and Turner's second essay, which proposes that America and Cool Memories be read as baroque maxims/memoirs. The limited number of Baudrillard's books at the authors' disposal is a major problem, however: I don't think anyone bothers to cite Symbolic Exchange and Death's original French edition (I don't think the first English translation was published yet while this volume was being written and compiled), which leads to some awful flubs regarding Baudrillard's views on symbolic exchange and history. The early work of The System of Objects and The Consumer Society is nearly as neglected. The extent to which this collection is a product (a simulation?) of the Baudrillard reader edited by Poster is quite astonishing. And there are some essays which offer readings of Baudrillard that, while not superficial or reprehensible at all, just aren't good enough: for just two examples, Smart is clearly unwilling to engage America and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place on its own stylistic and ironical level, and Plant mostly just projects her own fears and juvenile fixation with the "outside" onto Baudrillard.

[Arianne X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forget Baudrillard? Yes and No

We need to forget about Baudrillard’s account of America as an out of control amusement park (Disneyland as I believe he called it) a county of pure simulacra, as a place of double unreality containing both utopia and dystopia. This is a simulation of sociological analysis; perhaps this was Baudrillard's point, real analysis is no longer possible in a world of simularcrum. This is where we forget Baudrillard. We need to address the real laws of a real country in the real world inhabited by real people if we really want to really address social ills and alleviate unnecessary suffering, political sadism and economic selfishness, much of which can be cured by concerted public and government action. Baudrillard is all about signs, not solutions, much of which is overlooked in the mood of idle speculation. We find Baudrillard to be ludicrous but impossible to ignore because he is so representative of current postmodern thought. Does this mean current postmodern thought is ludicrous? This is where we cannot forget about Baudrillard.

The problem with the intellectual postmodern left is that it over theorizes issues, becomes focused on abstractions and cedes the practical ground of the established order to the doers and pursuers of the regressive right who have a concrete agenda. The risk embedded in postmodern thought is in moving from a state of resigned pessimistic do-nothing paralysis to one of overt mocking (American as pure simulacra) and finally onto active and violent revolutionary overthrow of everything with the idea of starting over. This cedes the reasonable desire for a rational social order to the alt-right.

Baudrillard, and for that matter thinkers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida to name few, and with them the issues of power and corruption, pathos and ethos, infinite responsibility, discoveries of impossibilities, unreachability and un-representability, utopia and dystopia, seduction and satisfaction as well as simulation and simulacra are fine and fun for living room speculation (we do not want forget about Baudrillard in this context) but not for taking up public responsibility as a serious person and in addressing real problems (we must forget about Baudrillard in this context).

Baudrillard books are interesting but not as radical as advertised. They are very much a product of the avant-garde of current postmodern thinking. They are a part of what is called meta-hype; hyping the process of hyping, which is the postmodern thing to do. This is how we get past mere modernity and enter a new sacred avant-garde movement with a passion for the infinite and the impossible - postmodernity. Maybe it is as Bruno Latour said it, “we have never been modern”, we have never been anything so easily labeled.

I find the book cover to be irresistible in its charm and innocence. Perhaps I am too easily seduced by charm, no good has ever come of it. In any case, shown on the cover is the movie poster from the 1917 silent film, ‘The Gunfighter’ staring William S. Hart and Margery Wilson. That is of course Willian S. Hart at the center of the book cover with guns blazing. The relation to Baudrillard is in the soubriquet given to him by The New York Times as “a sharp-shooting lone ranger of the post-Marxist left.” This is well earned in that Baudrillard was an important part of the collapse of Marxism into postmodernism.