Forget Baudrillard

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.

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.

Characterizing it as a "mythic discourse," Jean Baudrillard proceeds, in this brilliant essay, to dismantle the powerful, seductive figure of Michel Foucault. In a torrent of haikus, which can now be seen as classically Baudrillardian, he swirls Foucault's concepts of repression, sexuality, production, consumption, and history around in an intense, and often comical, reversal of forces. Exceeding the boundaries of literary or philosophical critique, Baudrillard writes from beyond the horizon of political thought and in a space of phantasmic speculation, finally "using" Foucault's terminologies and public significance to launch his own form of occult, philosophical clarity. In the second half of the book, Baurillard meets his match in an interview with Sylvere Lotringer, who teases Baudrillard with his own ideas, in turn making commentaries on subjects as diverse as panic, ecstasy, and May '68.

Characterizing it as a "mythic discourse," Jean Baudrillard proceeds, in this brilliant essay, to dismantle the powerful, seductive figure of Michel Foucault. In 1976, Jean Baudrillard sent this essay to the French magazine Critique, where Michel Foucault was an editor. Foucault was asked to reply, but remained silent. Forget Foucault (1977) made Baudrillard instantly infamous in France. It was a devastating revisitation of Foucault's recent History of Sexuality—and of his entire oeuvre—and also an attack on those philosophers, like Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who believed that desire could be revolutionary. In Baudrillard's eyes, desire and power were interchangeable, so desire had no place in Foucault's work. There is no better introduction to Baudrillard's polemical approach to culture than these pages, in which Baudrillard dares Foucault to meet the challenge of his own thought. This Semiotext(e) edition of Forget Foucault is accompanied by a dialogue with Sylvère Lotringer, "Forget Baudrillard," a reevaluation by Baudrillard of his lesser-known early works as a post-Marxian thinker. Lotringer presses Baudrillard to explain how he arrived at his infamous extrapolationist theories from his roots in the nineteenth and early twentieth century social and anthropological works of Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, and Emil Durkheim.

This book goes beyond Baudrillard′s writings on consumer objects, the Gulf War and America, to identify the fundamental logic that underpins his writings. It does this through a series of close readings of his main texts, paying particular attention to the form and internal coherence of his arguments. The book is written for all those who want a general introduction to Baudrillard′s work, and will also appeal to those readers who are interested in social theory, but who have not yet taken Baudrillard seriously.

Long recognized for outstanding National Film Board documentaries and innovative animated movies, Canada has recently emerged from the considerable shadow of the Hollywood elephant with a series of feature films that have captured the attention of audiences around the world. This is the first anthology to focus on Canada's feature films - those acknowledged as its very best. With essays by senior academics and leading scholars from across the country as well as some fresh new voices, Canada's Best Features offers penetrating analyses of fifteen award-winning films. Internationally acclaimed directors David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Denys Arcand, and Claude Jutra are represented here. Noteworthy films include Mon oncle Antoine, often cited as Canada's number one film of all time, such Cannes Festival favourites as Le déclin de l'empire américain and Exotica, and cult films Careful by Guy Maddin and Masala by Srinivas Krishna. The essays offer the latest word on these films and filmmakers, done from a variety of perspectives. Some of the films have never been examined in-depth before. Complete filmographies and bibliographies accompany each essay. A contextualizing introduction by Professor Gene Walz provides the necessary overview. An annotated bibliography of books on the Canadian film industry completes this impressive package.

Containing two previously unpublished essays by Jean Baudrillard, this book provides a series of dazzling demonstrations of the power of Baudrillard’s thought from many of his most accomplished commentators.