Jean Baudrillard

Geeta Gohil

Basic Information about Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard (27th July 1923- 6th March 2007) was a French Sociologist, Philosopher, Cultural theorist and political commentator.

His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism.

Born in France, he started his studies by leaning German and later a a doctorate in sociology.

Geeta Gohil

5 Key Works of Baudrillard

1. Simulacra and Simulations2. Utopia deferred writing from the utopie.3. The System of Objects4. Symbolic Exchange5. The spirit of terrorism.

Geeta Gohil

Simulacra and Simulations

Baudrillard’s work consisted a book called ‘simulacra and simulations’. Simulations meaning that it is simulating a process, display or imitating something real. Simulacra meaning the repetition of another thing, object, person and any static object.

Baudrillard's uses these meanings to explain that today’s reality is not real and that we all live in something called a hyper reality.

Baudrillard’s definition of hyper reality is ‘the simulation of something that never really existed’.

Geeta Gohil

Simulacra and Simulations

In his book, he explains that a connection of simulation with the Borges story. Jorge Luis Borges wrote a fictional story about the uses of map that showed the reality of a city but it slowly decayed and ruined by simulations and the hyper real.

Baudrillard's main arguments are fore phrase: ‘One that reflects a basic reality, one that masks or perverts a basic reality: one that mask the observe of a basic reality: and one that beats no relations to any reality.’

Geeta Gohil

The System of Objects

One key component to postmodernism is Technology.

Baudrillard analysed technology and expresses the emerging consumer society.

Technology has become non-fictional and designed according to fantasy and desire objects become representational of fetishism and fashion.

Hypermarkets become the new experimental space of technology and consumption, the new spaces of everyday life.

Growth in objects, procession of generation of products, appliances and gadgets.

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Symbolic Exchange and Death

Symbolic exchange is one of Baudrillard’s key concepts and is derived from his accounts of so-called ‘primitive’ people.

Symbolic exchange is a process whereby the status of the individual involved changes as much as the status of the object.

Baudrillard's work is essentially about the way in which in contemporary society the symbolic is replace by the semiotic.

Geeta Gohil

Terminology Baudrillard employ

SimulationSimulacraSemioticStructuralismThird-order simulation and hyper reality. Use-valueExchange-valuePotentialisationPrimitives

Geeta Gohil