The Transparency Of Evil

The renowned postmodernist philosopher's tour-de-force contemplation of sex, technology, politics and disease in Western culture after the revolutionary 'orgy' of the 1960s.

Controversial postmodern thinker explores the rhetoric of the War on Terror and the Clash of Civilizations between East and West.

Working his way through the various spheres and systems of everyday life-the political, the juridical, the economical, the aesthetic, the biological, among others-he finds that they are all characterized by the same non-equivalence, and hence the same eccentricity. Literally, they have no meaning outside themselves and cannot be exchanged for anything. Politics is laden with signs and meanings, but seen from the outside it has no meaning. Schemes for genetic experimentation and investigation are becoming infinitely ramified, and the more ramified they become the more the crucial question is left unanswered: who rules over life? Who rules over death? Baudrillard's conclusion is that the true formula of contemporary nihilism lies here: the nihilism of value itself. This is our fate, and from this stem both the happiest and the most baleful consequences. This book might be said to be the exploration, first, of the 'fateful' consequences, and subsequently-by a poetic transference of situation-of the fortunate, happy consequences of impossible exchange.

Baudrillard sees the power of the terrorists as lying in the symbolism of slaughter—not merely the reality of death, but in a sacrifice that challenges the whole system. Where previously the old revolutionary sought to conduct a struggle between real forces in the context of ideology and politics, the new terrorist mounts a powerful symbolic challenge which, when combined with high-tech resources, constitutes an unprecedented assault on an over-sophisticated and vulnerable West. This new edition is up-dated with the essays “Hypotheses on Terrorism” and “Violence of the Global.”

In his analysis of the deep social trends rooted in production, consumption, and the symbolic, Jean Baudrillard touches the very heart of the concerns of the generation currently rebelling against the framework of the consumer society. With the ever-greater mediatization of society, Baudrillard argues that we are witnessing the virtualization of our world, a disappearance of reality itself, and perhaps the impossibility of any exchange at all. This disenchanted perspective has become the rallying point for all those who reject the traditional sociological and philosophical paradigms of our age. Passwords offers us twelve accessible and enjoyable entry points into Baudrillard's thought by way of the concepts he uses throughout his work: the object, seduction, value, impossible exchange, the obscene, the virtual, symbolic exchange, the transparency of evil, the perfect crime, destiny, duality, and thought.

Develops a theory of contemporary culture that relies on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure. This book represents an effort to rethink cultural theory from the perspective of a concept of cultural materialism, one that radically redefines postmodern formulations of the body.

In a provocative analysis written during the unfolding drama of 1992, Baudrillard draws on his concepts of simulation and the hyperreal to argue that the Gulf War did not take place but was a carefully scripted media event--a "virtual" war. Patton's introduction argues that Baudrillard, more than any other critic of the Gulf War, correctly identified the stakes involved in the gestation of the New World Order.

Closely interviewed by the French journalist Philippe Petit, Baudrillard covers a vast range of topics, including Fukuyama, 1989 and the collapse of Communism; Bosnia, the Gulf War, Rwanda and the New World Order; globalization and universalization; the return of ethnic nationalisms; the nature of war; revisionism and Holocaust denial; Deleuze, Foucalt, Bataille and Virilio; nihilism and the apocalyptic; the practice of writing; virtual reality; the west and the East; the culture of victimhood and repentance; human rights and citizenship; French intellectuals and engagement; the nature of capitalism today; consumer society and social exclusion; liberation; death, violence and necrophilia; reality, illusion and the media; and destabilization of all aspects of life including sexuality. Baudrillard's answers—which span politics, philosophy and culture—are concise, witty and trenchant, and they serve as both an accessible introduction to his ideas for the unfamiliar and a fascinating clarification of recent positions for the connoisseur.