Philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard has died in Paris at age 77. Obituaries in the Guardian, here and in Le Monde, here. An excerpt from the Guardian:
Baudrillard...attracted widespread notoriety for predicting that the first Gulf war, of 1991, would not take place. During the war, he said it was not really taking place. After its conclusion, he announced, imperturbably, that it had not taken place. This prompted some to characterise him as yet another continental philosopher who revelled in a disreputable contempt for truth and reality.
Yet Baudrillard was pointing out that the war was conducted as a media spectacle. Rehearsed as a wargame or simulation, it was then enacted for the viewing public as a simulation: as a news event, with its paraphernalia of embedded journalists and missile's-eye-view video cameras, it was a videogame. The real violence was thoroughly overwritten by electronic narrative: by simulation.
Gallic hyperbole? Weigh this reminder (from Thomas Friedman):
In an interview last Jan. 16, Jim Lehrer asked President Bush why, if the war on terrorism was so overwhelmingly important, he had never asked more Americans “to sacrifice something.” Mr. Bush gave the most unbelievable answer: “Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night.”
Or, as Baudrillard put it: "Welcome to the desert of the real." [Update: The Guardian also has an appreciation by Julian Baggini, which resonates with this blog's ongoing discussion of pluralism.]
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