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Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) was a French social, cultural, and political theorist; a philosopher; and a sociologist. Even though he has usually been presented as a representative for French postmodern theory and sometimes associated with poststructuralism, post-Marxism, and other contemporary schools of thought, Baudrillard was able to develop a very particular frame of analysis, characterized throughout his large collection of writings by a sharp and provocative critique of the impact of consumerism, the media, and other technologies in the social and political arenas.

Baudrillard was born in Reims, France. After concluding his thesis in sociology, Le Système desobjets (The System of Objects), he joined the faculty of the Université de Paris-X Nanterre, which was considered one of the most radically oriented French institutions during the 1960s. Baudrillard aligned with colleagues and students in the buildup of the May 1968 events, which led to an unprecedented general strike that brought the French government to the verge of collapse. He remained at Nanterre until 1986, when he transferred to Institut de Recherche et d’Information Socio-Économique (IRIS) at the Université de Paris-IX Dauphine. Distancing himself from academic orthodoxy, his works became increasingly popular and reached a wide international readership.

Beginning with his early works, Baudrillard took on the structuralist semiotic tradition, further developing and applying the notion of self-referentiality. However, as he considered objects could never be fully comprehended, they would produce a form of delusion (or seduction) among subjects seeking absolute knowledge. As a consequence, individuals and societies would fall into a form of simulated reality or hyper reality driven by a showcase of images, codes, information, and entertainment. This simulation shapes human behavior, providing an experience of such intensity that “actual” life is shadowed. In addition to explaining consumer dynamics (the acquisition of symbols) and the associated reification of the self, Baudrillard applied this framework to political analysis. The cold war (The Illusion of the End, 1992), the Gulf War (The Gulf War Never Happened, 1995) and the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States (The Spirit of Terrorism, 2002) were examined in three of his most controversial essays.

In these three works, politics and history are presented as sheer illusions. In Baudrillard’s view, in the same way the system of nuclear deterrence made it impossible for the cold war to actually take place, halting historical progress, the Gulf War also was viewed as a “weak event,” a media creation closer to a video game than to a genuine war. He presented this simulated kind of warfare as, as he stated in The Spirit of Terrorism, “the continuation of the absence of politics by other means” (34). The September 11 attacks would be a gruesome example of a strong or absolute event, a symbolic inversion of the rules of the game (with the sole aim of disrupting it), brought about as a violent reaction to the expansion of the post–cold war New World Order.

Baudrillard’s rhetoric received considerable criticism, which was often stimulated by his provocative and at times exaggerated style. Critics have argued that some of Baudrillard’s works actually provide grounds for justifying terrorism. Others have seen his denial of reality as a form of instant revisionism or cynical skepticism. Nevertheless, his views generated a large following and led to the creation of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies in 2004.

Bibliography:

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
The Gulf War Never Happened. Oxford, U.K.: Polity Press, 1995.
The Illusion of the End. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.
The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers. London: Verso, 2002.
Butler, Rex. Jean Baudrillard:The Defense of the Real. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1999.
Kellner, Douglas, ed. Jean Baudrillard: A Critical Reader. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1994.