Jean Baudrillard RIP
 

"La lâcheté intellectuelle est devenue la véritable discipline olympique de notre temps"


baudrillard died today.
here's a link to an obit in le monde:

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,...-879918,0.html

another in libération:

http://www.liberation.fr/culture/239142.FR.php

i just found out about this and while i am not exactly broken up by the news (as i didn't know him personally) i nonetheless find it a bit sad and so have no particular reaction yet. something will come, no doubt, and i'll post it.
in the meantime:

has baudrillard's work been a particular influence on anyone here?
how?

Thanks for the thread. I have to admit that i hadn't heard of him before. Having just read his wikipedia entry, it seems like he had some interesting things to say. I think i might have to check out some of his writing if i ever manage to make a dent in my reading list, though from the looks of it i might need to read a whole lot of other stuff to begin to understand what he's talking about.

Unfortunately, I never read his work, but he had some influence on some of the philosophers who have had the most influence on me, so I guess he's had an influence by proxy.

Baudrillard's idea of the 'simulacrum' has been interesting to me. It's an interesting analysis of how the idea of knowledge has changed in the present era.

For those of you who don't know, Baudrillard's idea of "simulacra and simulation" were used in The Matrix. Here is a link to an interview in which he talks about that. He is rightly unsatisfied with their take on his ideas. Yet, this does remain to be on of the most interesting parts of the movie.

All in all, Baudrillard has some excellent ideas on how we perceive reality. Once you get your head around what simulacrum really is, it will blow your mind. Maybe.

Another interesting thing he's done is the book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, in which he argues that the Gulf War wasn't really a war because it was so one-sided. For example, fewer US soldiers were killed in this "war" than would have died in traffic accidents had they stayed at home. This is because of the virtual nature of the conflict. Coalition forces avoided engaging the enemy where it was deemed too dangerous (i.e. someone might die).

In writing on Baudrillard's book, William Merrin deemed that Baudrillard considered the Gulf War "an atrocity masquerading as war."

This is a perfect example of simulacrum: the reality of something is so far removed--displaced--that we can no longer trace back to this reality. In a way, it can no longer be called "real."