Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillardwas a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 July 1929
CountryFrance
safe-keeping banking bankers
I hesitate to deposit money in a bank. I am afraid I shall never dare to take it out again
pride reality order
It is not enough for theory to describe and analyze, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality.
reality opposites giving
Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we shall never inhabit true fiction we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.
fashion play culture
In our culture, futility plays the role of transgression and fashion is condemned for having within it the force of the pure sign which signifies nothing.
media squinting depth
The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters—there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void.... That’s why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.
technology data omnipotence
Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process data (but only data -- i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion.
fashion sex reality
The liberated man is not the one who is freed in his ideal reality, his inner truth, or his transparency; he is the man who changes spaces, who circulates, who changes sex, clothes, and habits according to fashion, rather than morality, and who changes opinions not as his conscience dictates but in response to opinion polls.
jealousy giving judging
A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.
destiny arbitrary alive
Neither dead nor alive, the hostage is suspended by an incalculable outcome. It is not his destiny that awaits for him, nor his own death, but anonymous chance, which can only seem to him something absolutely arbitrary. He is in a state of radical emergency, of virtual extermination.
silence desert body
The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body.
suicide philosophy sociology
Philosophy leads to death, sociology leads to suicide.
childhood genius talent
Genius is childhood recaptured.
long innocence language
Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.
men skills independence
Man has lost the basic skill of the ape, the ability to scratch its back. Which gave it extraordinary independence, and the liberty to associate for reasons other than the need for mutual back-scratching.