JEAN BAUDRILLARD Postmodern Theorist

MINI BIOGRAPHY Baudrillard was a French sociologist and philosopher, born in 1929. He died

in May 2007 aged 77. As his parents were civil servants and his grandparents peasant farmers, he was the first of his family to attend University.

He spent a lot of his life teaching at either University or at a lycée (French secondary school).

Baudrillard published multiple books on his ideas and theories, and he was regarded by some to be an ‘intellectual celebrity’.

He is NOT a postmodernist.

SIMULATIONS & SIMULACRA Baudrillard believes that nothing we experience is real. Everything we see

is a representation or ‘simulation’.

We have come to a point where the representation or simulation of things replaces the real. Therefore any new simulations are merely simulating a simulation. This is what Baudrillard referred to as simulacra.

Representations have replaced reality.

We experience a simulation of reality.

HYPERREALITY When the real still exists, we are able to measure the success of the

simulation against it.

When we cannot see the real and all we see is the simulation, the simulation becomes our reality.

When there is no true reality, Baudrillard believes a ‘hyperreality’ will replace it.

For example, many of us connect more deeply to film/TV, celebrities and virtual reality (e.g. social networking – Facebook) than we do with real things.

"A real without origin or reality"- Jean Baudrillard

EXAMPLE: HER The film tells the story of a man falling in love with his operating system.

This is a very obvious example of how we are able to connect with virtual reality on a deeper level than reality itself. The voice of the operating system (Samantha) is not a real person, yet the character is able to fall in love with it.

EXAMPLE: THE MATRIX “What is the real? How do you define the real?... The real is simply

electrical signals interpreted by your brain” (Morpheus, The Matrix)

The Matrix embodies Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality, suggesting that life itself is a hyperreality. It is a simulation within a computer program.

Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or dispatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.“ ”

AMERICABaudrillard argues that America is a hyperreality.

“America is the original version of modernity. We are the dubbed or subtitled version. America ducks the question of origins; it cultivates no origin or mythical authenticity; it has no past and no founding truth. Having known no primitive accumulation of time, it lives in a perpetual present.” 

“Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth.”

“Life is cinema.”

CRITICISMMark Poster

“Baudrillard’s work is invaluable in beginning to comprehend the impact of new communication forms on society.”

However, “fails to define his major terms”.

Critics of Baudrillard’s theories are often in strong disagreement with his remarks about America, believing that he saw what he wanted to see to support his theories.

“no culture here, no cultural discourses. No ministries, no commissions, no subsidies, no promotion.” - Baudrillard