The Uncollected Baudrillard

Gary Genosko

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780761965312, 9780761965305
• eBook ISBN: 9781412932127
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Jean Baudrillard is generally recognized as one of the most important and provocative contemporary social theorists. But in the English speaking world, his reputation is largely based on books published after the 1960s, as he moved towards becoming the premier commentator on postmodernism.

This wide ranging and expertly edited book examines the work of the young Baudrillard, it deepens our understanding of his seminal work on consumer culture by presenting his early essays on McLuhan, Lefebvre and Marcuse. The influence of German traditions of thought are clearly revealed, and Baudrillard?s neglected and out of print writing on aesthetics is rediscovered and reprinted. Extracts from his political diaries and commentaries on European terrorism and the rise of the new Right, provide crucial insights into his later claims regarding the implosion of the masses and the rise of gesturial politics.

Baudrillard emerges as a more nuanced and penetrating figure. His aesthetic and political interests are shown to be more deep-rooted and reflexive. In general, the book supplies the missing link for English speaking readers interested in understanding this prismatic and essential thinker.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Young Baudrillard
• Chapter 1 - The Novels of Italo Calvino
• Chapter 2 - Review of William Styron's "Set This House on Fire"
• Chapter 3 - Germany: Is It a New World?
• Chapter 4 - Review of Uwe Johnson's "The Border: Toward the Seventh Spring of the German Democratic Republic"
• Part II: Critique of Mass-mediated Life
• Chapter 5 - Review of Marshall McLuhan's "Understanding Media"
• Chapter 6 - Technique as Social Practice
• Chapter 7 - Review of Henri Lefebvre's "Taking a Position: Against the Technocrats"
• Chapter 8 - Ephemeral and Durable
• Chapter 9 - Dialectical Utopia
• Chapter 10 - Utopia: The Smile of the Cheshire Cat
• Chapter 11 - Police and Play
• Chapter 12 - Mass (Sociology of)
• Part III: The Poetry of Theory
• Chapter 13 - Stucco Angel
• Part IV: Political Bankruptcy on the Left and Right
• Chapter 14 - The Divine Left
• Chapter 15 - Dropping Out of History
• Chapter 16 - Our Theatre of Cruelty
• Part V: Ironic Aesthetic Disorders
• Chapter 17 - Barbara Kruger
• Chapter 18 - Olivier Mosset: The Object that is None
• Chapter 19 - Enrico Baj, or Monstrosity Laid Bare by Paint Itself
• Chapter 20 - The Transparency of Kitsch: Conversation with Enrico Baj
• Index