Jean Baudrillard

Interview

• "The virtual has absorbed the real" (Paris, 11/02/1999)

Biography

Born in 1929 in Reims, France, Jean Baudrillard began his studies as a Germanist, and later obtained a doctorate in sociology.
In 1966 he began teaching in the University Paris X-Nanterre, and subsequently joined the Institut de Recherche sur l'Innovation Sociale, part of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
A brilliant sociologist, Baudrillard has dedicated his studies to the analysis of contemporary society and, in particular, the consumer society, its myths and structures. His work treats consumption as a "social language", something which tends to increase individual desires rather than satisfy them.
The contemporary world is undergoing a dematerialisation of reality and the man's attention is distracted from the natural world and concentrated on television, on the world of communication, which has become an absolute value, an objective in itself.
The old myths have been superseded and society is, according to, Baudrillard, dominated by an ideology founded on the "ecstasy of communication". Violence, poverty and ignorance have not disappeared, but make up an everyday reality which people no longer see, their vision clouded by the "fatal strategies" (see bibliography) and reassured. Baudrillard has also translated many of the works of Bertolt Brecht.

Bibliography

Among his works available in English:

• The Gulf War did not take place: Trans. Paul Patten. Indina University Press, 1995.
• Seduction. New York and London: St.Martin's Press and Macmillan, 1990.
• Cool Memories. Trans. Chris Turner. London: Verso, 1990.
• Fatal Strategies. Trans. Philip Seitchman and W.G.J. Niesluchowski. New York: Semiotext(e), 1990.
• America. Trans. Chris Turner. London: Verso, 1988.
• The Ecstasy of Communication. Trans. B. and C. Schutze. New York: Semiotext(e), 1988.
• Forget Foucault. New York: Semiotext(e), 1987.
• In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.
• Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.
• For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign.Trans. Charles Levin. St. Louis: Telos P, 1981.
• The Mirror of Production. Trans. Mark Poster. St. Louis: Telos P, 1975.