Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard, as this new biography is titled, is brief. This is in part because the man revealed little about his life. At a 2005 talk at Tilton Gallery, he said he was simply “the simulacrum of myself.” What makes the book so fun to read is that you can see him living out his own pronouncements with his signature wry humor, making his abstract ideas into concrete behaviors, not unlike a performance artist. Quite literally, the book makes his ideas come alive. * Art in America * Emmanuelle Fantin and Bran Nicol have produced a brilliant book on the richly creative and compelling analyses of the prolific French thinker Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard’s work on technology and its impact, consumerism, the media, signs and simulations continues to resonate with the digitalization of our experience of everyday life and Jean Baudrillard deserves to be widely read. * Barry Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth * How could such a celebrated French intellectual have remained so elusive and enigmatic? This paradoxical provocation is addressed through attention to Baudrillard’s literary forms: fragments, aphorisms, theory fictions. Sophisticated and user friendly, it appeals to scholars and beginners as well as the Baudrillardian in all of us. * Diane Rubenstein, Professor Emerita of Government, Cornell University *