The objective profile of the United States, then, may be traced throughout Disneyland, even down to the morphology of individuals and the crowd. All its values are exalted here, in miniature and comic-strip form. Embalmed and pactfied. Whence the possibility of an ideological analysis of Disneyland (L. Marin does it well in Utopies, jeux d’espaces): digest of the American way of life, panegyric to American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory reality. To be sure. But this conceals something else, and that “ideological” blanket exactly serves to cover over a third-order simulation: Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the “real” country, all of “real” America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle. –Jean Baudrillard, from SIMULACRA AND SIMULATIONS
Jean Baudrillard, who argued that all reality is for us but artifice and simulation, is dead… NYT … IHT … NYSun … Figaro … Reuters … London Times … Guardian … Le Monde … Telegraph
“As his intellectual career developed he disassociated himself from the academic world, particularly the social sciences. He also became a critic of the main forms of western politics and culture, stigmatising the doctrines of democracy and human rights as alibis for increased western penetration, globalisation, and elimination of other cultures (paradoxically after having virtualised its own).
Such radicalism was not accepted by the conventional left because it rejected all forms of political correctness, socialism, feminism, and democratisation.
In person Baudrillard was modest and relaxed, and he preserved an unfailing curiosity about the human dimension and the environment of the modern world.
He was twice married and had two children by his first marriage.
Jean Baudrillard, social theorist and writer, was born on June 20, 1929. He died after a long illness on March 6, 2007, aged 77″ –London Times
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Jean Baudrillard was a Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he taught an Intensive Summer Seminar. |
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Jean Baudrillard, notorious French sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist of postmodernity, was born in 1929 in the northern town of Reims. Son of civil servants and grandson of peasant farmers, Baudrillard was the first in his family to attend university, is an ex- university sociology teacher, and a leading intellectual figure of his time. His early life is influenced by the Algerian war in the 1950s and 60s. Source: EGS website. Put a little Baudrillard in your life:
Bibliography.Reality of Simulation: Articles by Baudrillard plus photographs of and by him.
Philosophy and Theory list of links.
“Simulacra and Simulations” by Jean Baudrillard.
The mind of terrorism by Jean Baudrillard
The violence of the Image. by Jean Baudrillard
A narration of Baudrillards “Simulation and Simulacra” spoken over footage from Grand Theft Auto: