Fragments

Cool Memories #1991-1995

by Jean Baudrillard, Emily Agar (Translator)

This third book in the Cool Memories series is culled from Baudrillard’s notebooks in the period when he was composing The Illusion of the End and The Perfect Crime . In it, he resumes his investigation of the meta-metaphysics of objects. Like its predecessors, the book is a work of brief meditations, of poetic in a word, of fragments.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, France, Essays

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet, with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as hyperreality. Baudrillard wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, critique of economy, social history, aesthetics, Western foreign policy, and popular culture. Among his most well-known works are Seduction (1978), Simulacra and Simulation (1981), America (1986), and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991). His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism. Nevertheless, Baudrillard had also opposed post-structuralism, and had distanced himself from postmodernism.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking into the mind of a genius - so much I did not understand - still the fragments are embedded in my mind. If you are looking for a truly unique perspective on perspective then you will enjoy the maze of ideas that this book takes you through. Took me a little while to finish this book; spent days trying to 'digest' many of the concepts - but it was worth it.

[Christina knox · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is like what'd happen is baudrillard had a blog.

[Wendy Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

The current top review says "this is like what'd happen is baudrillard had a blog", and I feel like that's a fairly accurate description. Or maybe more like a mix of Tumblr and Twitter. There are definitely some sentences that feel a little bit like dril before dril (Bau-dril-lard?). Lots of incomplete thoughts that don't necessary make sense or go anywhere.

At the same time, there's something truly touching about this book. If you read between the lines, you see someone haunted by recurring fears: that the woman he loves might be unfaithful, or that he won't be able to write what he wants to. Underneath all the bitter and/or acerbic reflections on society and love, there's this sense of aching loneliness, of a brilliant human being just trying to cope with his own mortality. It's a sublime read as long as you don't expect a cohesive whole.

Incidentally, while writing this review I realised I wasn't sure how to pronounce simulacrum (is it "lah-crum" or "lay-crum"?) so I found some YouTube videos that were advertised as having the correct pronunciations. And yet---and you probably see where this going---they were all computer-generated. You could even say that these guides on pronouncing simulacrum were, themselves, simulacra ...?

[Dat-Dangk Vemucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific - lucid yet paradoxical, shot through with melancholy yet as cold and dispassionate as an AI surveying the ruins. Baudrillards insight is at its best in the aphoristic form he takes here, veering into decomposing computer poetry. For a thinker who is sometimes considered an empty provocateur (per Deleuze, Sontag) or a fount of pure gibberish (per Sokal, Latour) I think these pieces are really very canny, acutely switched-on to our situation of ever more transparency, constant availability and communication in a world where the social is indistinguishable from its own technological interfaces and has quite possibly disappeared altogether. In a world which has lost its vital secrets and oppositions Baudrillard's counter-intuitive prose highlights the contours of a vast absence, the hollow of something we have lost forever, and brings into view the scope of impossibility before us, the very real difficulty in changing a world which is fully encompassed by the machine that was once identifiable as capitalism, now dispersed into the total condition of a system without end.

[Rosewater Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could anyone stop reading without need to reread or rewrite the fragment?
Such a possibility is a thoroughly fragmented inadequacy of ethics.
Could any-one (-body and -soul) be ethical in correspondence with fragmented phenomena (which is yet to become phenomena of fragmentation)?
It is possible to communicate in terms of imaginable morality, but piece of information is yet to experience fragmentation.
Could it be that the first fragment of thought the one have ever had is actually the last and worst he may hope for?
This is the 'problem of representation', which is a puzzle of needful pathology of mindfulness, the Self.
...
"..My pulses run, knowing thy thought hath passed
That beareth thee as doth the wind a rose."
(Ezra Pound, "Comraderie")
..there are always random words of misbehavioural terminology come (keep coming) on (the) mind out of which (the) thinker recreates certain senses, kind of poetry without necessity of making things poetic enough to touch the Anthropology of Adequacy (literal antipode of Anthropology of Inadequacy, AI).
Thinker may or may not free himself from impulse to speak freely, but nonetheless random words hold on sufficient influence on thinker's mind (already not a thinking one, but playing own only hought the way the children play themselves).
..так текст может быть подвергнут критике, но критика составляет свой собственный текст, имеющий весьма относительные связующие элементы с объектом её внимания. Критику более важным представляется дать отчёт Другому в собственной позиции, нежели дать оценку продукту чьего-либо труда. Так или иначе, товар вышел на рынок и приносит дивиденды системе знания.
Фрагмент русскоязычный не более значим, нежели англоязычный - как и престолонаследник не может уступать в глазах необходимости сохранения власти самому Его Величеству. Русский язык - это не акт противодействия засилию международного, и его структура не должна нести ответственности за качественную "российскость" его пользователей (поскольку пользователь и носитель - таки "две большие разницы").
Слід за користувачем, на перший план, що постає саме як Питання до Смертельного Ворога - виступає кореспондент, завданням якого є звільнення (захоплення, а не трансформації влади - перетворення минулого на упередженість відносно майбутнього досвіду, що цілком унеможливлює дієве співіснування культури та ідеології) сфери мовленєвого охоплення.
..звідки зв'являються окремі речення, якщо не з дефрагментованої дійсності? Чому суспільні відносини дематеріалізуються у часі до стану, коли зайвим виявляється кожне (перше й останнє) намагання пошуку чи відтворення зв'язків між окремими фрагментами, шо вони потребують сердечної вдячності?
Puoi tradurre Baudrillard in italiano per salvare il frammento del tuo prezioso Sé. Ma ti leggerà ancora prima che tu legga un frammento dei suoi frammenti, guardando attraverso la lente di volontà del Male trasparente.
Se on sääli. Se on sääli. Nämä ovat nimiä. Maailmalla ei ole nimeä.
...
Ne pas voir le Mal, ne pas entendre le Mal, ne pas applaudir.

[Naim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe he has an excellent sense of humour!

"Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. This is as marvellous as being there at the beginning. How could one not wish for that with all one's heart? How could one not lend one's feeble resources to bringing it about?

To have been there at the beginning would have been fantastic. But we arrived too late. Only the end remains. Let us therefore apply ourselves to seeing things - values, concepts, institutions - perish, seeing them disappear. This is the only issue worth fighting for."

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Il mondo, in fondo, è un meraviglioso reportage visivo – è il commento a essere insopportabile." (p. 40)

"Non è l’illusione che dissimula la realtà. È la realtà che dissimula il fatto che non c’è." (p. 87)

[Vasilija Vucetic · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The deprogramming of language will be the work of language
itself.
The deregulation of the system will be the work of the system
itself.
The derealization of the world will be the work of the world
itself.
Such is the prophetico-inert: prophecy fulfilling itself."

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

eh... this was mediocre. there were a couple interesting (less frequently, profound) fragments in this, but much of it would have been better off left to obscurity in his notebooks, rather than offered as anything substantial. And of course Baudrillard tends to be kind of a misogynist, in the most obnoxiously academic way... not particularly of interest unless your interest is reading all of baudrillard. good for bathroom reading though, i guess

[Letianne Zhang · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfect fragmentary thought with a well-matched style

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

Making me yearn for the world in which Baudrillard wrote autofiction/prose poetry instead of the one where he did that theory business. Beautifully insightful stuff, the opening page took my breath away and the book continued to be amazing therein after. The fact I got into this book because of a comment under an iceage music video is pretty amusing to me.

The fragments themselves contain so much, its difficult to explain. For example, when Baudrillard says "Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. This is as marvelous as being there in the beginning" I picture it almost as the beginning to some incredible short story. It's the kind of writing that makes me myself want to write and that's a magical thing.

I think I'm becoming a bigger fan of fragments. These ones loop around a central theme without ever quite getting there, like an asymptote toward its limit. Somehow, though, this felt fitting because much of the content of the fragments is about the fragmentary nature of reality itself. Anyway, this is an instant classic for me. Will probably reread within the month, even if partially, because I loved the prose itself so much.

[Bryan Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love fragmentary writing, especially when the fragments align to form a more coherent argument. This book (and this series from Baudrillard), though, really is just a waste book - random observations, hypotheses, and diatribes. To be fair, there are some aphoristic gems in the mix, but also there are many sections that you'd need to have a postgraduate degree in sociology and semiotics to parse (kudos to the translator, for what it's worth). Like literally, excerpts that I read 2-3 times and still could not summarize if you asked me to. Maybe I just need to stick with simpler aphorists and fragmentarians, or maybe Baudrillard was just so far up his own asshole that he felt obscurity could serve as a safe proxy for profundity.

[Gulliver's Bad Trip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finalmente descobri o que me atraia em Slavoj Zizek: sua reiteração de Baudrillard. Nesta continuação da mesma franquia me chamou à atenção seus comentários sobre a corrupção e os escândalos políticos que assolaram a França na década de 90 (escândalo do sangue infectado para hemofílicos), seu enfarte como modo desejável de evitar viagens e encontros acadêmicos (mesmo que momentaneamente) e, principalmente, as menções breves dos conceitos e dos livros que pensava e escrevia na época.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The zealous enemies of stupidity have forgotten that it is both the illness and the vaccine, and that you have to have been inoculated with it to be able to exorcize it. And because it is extraordinarily contagious, you can't rage against it without falling into its trap. A special mention must go to second-degree stupidity, that stupidity which has already turned around upon itself and come out on the other side, reinforced by a whole sophisticated and ironic critical apparatus of intelligence and culture. True compassion is to suffer in silence for others.”

[Knar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unclear if this man ever got a woman off (or even believed such a thing possible)*... This thought surfaced for me no less than 5x whilst reading this book.

Otherwise (I know!), had a pleasant meander through these frags, and amongst them found some rather luminous moments of insight, ones to which I have and will yet return.

*thoughts & prayers to all who might be able to resolve this question

[Ali Jones Alkazemi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun little read if one seeks a small book of fragments which summarize our current state of ideological affairs. Writing a book composed of fragments, in line with the style of Nietzsche's aphorisms, makes this work a treasure for citations.

"There is no corpse of the real, and with good reason: the real has disappeared."

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant man. Presaged so much. Beautiful soul

‘Keep your memory cool’

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick, easy little musings from Baudrillard on a variety of topics germane to the (post-)modern life. The fragments cover mostly ideas of the political / social spheres, technology, semiotics, and postmodernism.

Baudrillard's style comes across clearly in this book: he has a tendency to make sweeping, grand statements about modernity, with a notion that things are now somehow irrevocably changed or divorced from reality (his notion of "hyperreality"). He seems to really believe this notion that the present era is exceptional, unprecedented and also strangely sinister. The case for this is addressed more in his earlier work, this book being more like a collection of short meditations on life in the postmodern virtual simulacra world.

Baudrillard overstates his case frequently. You can expect a deliberately shocking assertion ("politics have now become impossible", for example, by way of parody) followed by some ruminations, concluding with a paradoxical inversion ("but isn't it the case, then, that politics are precisely the only truly possible thing", again by way of parody). Some of it hits the mark, but most falls short of convincing. Some of it feels profound, some of it feels like drivel: typical postmodern theory. At least it isn't boring.

[Lee Kofman · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book irritated me so that I didn’t even apply to it my 50 pages test, and stopped reading it after about 25 pages. Not only that I share none of Baudrillard's views whether on political or personal matters, but I cannot stand the mode of his expression either. His voice is pretentiously convoluted and opaque, and yet the messages are often either trite or overly generalized, such as - animals are superior to humans in every way. Huh?

[nocturne89 · Rating 2 out of 5]

+_+ Ummmm yeah ok

[Melusine Parry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is what a philosopher's tumblr would have sounded like in the nineties. Ok, I'm exaggerating. There are good things and less good things.