Jean Baudrillard is dead

[swag]

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-france-philosopher.html

PARIS (Reuters) - French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, whose provocative, paradoxical style was reflected in the title of his 1991 work ``The Gulf War did not take place,'' has died, his publisher Galilee said on Wednesday. He was 77.

Well-known in the United States, and reportedly courted by the makers of ``The Matrix'' who wanted help in their futuristic film trilogy, Baudrillard was usually classified as postmodern. But he did not belong to any clearly defined school.

He had an iconic status in certain sections of the French intelligentsia, illustrated by the left-wing Liberation daily which carried a full front page photograph of Baudrillard on Wednesday, and covered his death over three pages inside.

Baudrillard argued that mass media and modern consumerist society had built up such a complex structure of symbols and simulated experience that it was no longer possible to comprehend reality as it might actually exist.

His dense, allusive style, peppered with expressions such as ``hyperreality'' and ``simulation'' was typical of the rarefied world of French cultural theory, but a mordant sense of humor underpinned his criticism.

He said that the 1991 Gulf War had been so artfully and comprehensively filtered and interpreted by television that the event apparently unfolding before the eyes of CNN viewers was a ''simulacrum'' (another favorite word) rather than an actual war.


. . . more

[Blue-Jay]

1. I didn't even know he was sick.

[MonkeyFunk]

3. I didn't even

know he was alive! :shrug:

[Blue-Jay]

4. We're not very cultured.

Although, I did fart the opening to Fanfare For The Common Man the other night. That's gotta count for something, right?

[swag]

5. Maybe he wasn't.

Maybe he was just a figment of the simulacrum.

[xchrom]

2. good night sweet prince.

i actually liked a lot of what he said about the media.

[Magrittes Pipe]

6. Baudrillard has been dead for years.

He had long since moved on to the third order of simulacra. We had our own ideas of Baudrillard, through professors, the media, those odious films... the man himself no longer existed.

This recent "death" is irrelevant.

[swag]

7. What would you like for your birthday?

[Blue-Jay]

8. A pony.

Or a Fleshlight.

Same thing, if you think about it.

[Magrittes Pipe]

9. Well, it must posses symbolic value, as it is a gift in honor of my birthday.

It should also have some function; and although it is rude to speak of such things as they pertain to a present, I would not complain if it had a respectable exchange value.



I want a pencil.

[asthmaticeog]

10. That's a shame.

I liked Simulacra and Simulation. At least, I liked it to the extent that I understood it. And I'm not sure how much that was. But it's a certainty that I understood it better than Keanu Reeves, assuming he read it, which I won't.

[swag]

11. I found him to be much more entertaining than Dairy Daw.

[mitchum]

12. Or maybe not...

Boy, that critical theory...you can get as many jokes fom it as sex, mother-in-laws, weird food, whatever. It's a comedy gold mine, I tell ya!