Biography of Jean Baudrillard

Philosophy of scandals

20 June 1929 6 March 2007 Jean Baudrillard was born in the Episcopal city of Reims (France) on June 20, 1929 to a family of peasant origins. Parents are both civil servants; Jean is the first member of his family who gets an advanced education degree, which means a break with her parents and the cultural environment from which it comes. In 1956 he debuted as a professor in a college and in the early ' 60 works at the French publisher Seuil. Baudrillard at the beginning is a scholar of German language and culture: Essays on literature in the magazine "Les temps modernes" between 1962 and 1963 and translates works of Peter Weiss and Bertolt Brecht in French, as well as a book by Wilhelm Mühlmann messianic revolutionary movements. During this period he studies the works of Henri Lefebvre and Roland Barthes, who have an ongoing influence on his work. He is a member of the Research Institute on social innovation at the National Center of scientific research, teaches at the European Graduate School in Switzerland and writes many articles and criticism for printing. In 1966 Baudrillard became Assistant Lefebvre and began working at the University of Paris-Nanterre where he studied both languages, philosophy, sociology and other disciplines. Also in 1966 discusses his "Thèse de Troisième Cycle" in sociology in Nanterre with a discussion entitled "the system of objects" and in October of the same year he was appointed Professor of sociology, acquiring charisma and authority, and is invited to give lectures and conferences in major European and American universities. But they must spend a full two decades before in 1987 his "thèse d ' état", which became full Professor, is accepted and presented by Georges Balandier the Sorbonne. It is a belated recognition, just not from the motivation enough to engage in academic life but rather the pretext to depart from them permanently and devote yourself to your freelance writer and analyst, conducting among other things the magazine "Sleepers". In the 1960s he joined the French left as does not endorse and is opposed to the French-American intervention in the wars in Algeria and Viet Nam. On March 22, "movement" associated with Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the "engagés", comes to life in the Department of Sociology of Nanterre since it is a strategic point for radical politics. Although it is identified with the name and the work of Jean-François Lyotard, postmodernism has probably more to reflection by Jean Baudrillard, in epic period of the student revolt of 1968. Baudrillard makes known to have taken part in the events that lead to student unrest and portly in a general strike that leads to the removal of De Gaulle. To revolt and to the spirit of that era, Baudrillard remains always faithful, and his relations with the Communist movement and Marxism are more marked in terms of a constant polemics against the Stalinist bureaucracy of Pcf, and then in the constant effort to integrate Marxism in a more radical vision of history and society. In the second half of the 1960s Baudrillard publishes a series of books that give it notoriety worldwide. The work closely with Lefebvre, the essays of Barthes and a number of French thinkers whose charisma will be discussed later, affects not just Baudrillard who take an extensive study in the field of social theory, semiotics and psychoanalysis by publishing his first book "the system of objects" in 1968, followed by another book "consumer society" in 1970 and "to a critique of political economy of the sign" in 1972. These early works are intended to amalgamate the everyday studies initiated by Lefebvre with a social sign that studies the life semiology in social life in the context of critical sociology. This arduous design bears the signature of the influence of Barthes which is based on the system of objects in the consumer society (the subject of her first two books) and the meeting point between political economy and semiotics (which is the mainstay of his third book). These works are the first to examine and consider how objects are encoded in a system of signs and meanings that constitute the contemporary consumerism and media companies. Combining semiological studies, Marxian political economy and sociology of consumer society, Baudrillard to the enterprise of a lifetime with the purpose to inspect the system of objects and signs upon which our daily lives. Originally Baudrillard describes the uses covered by everyday objects (such as the value obtained from the identification with their car while driving) and the structural system by which objects are organized in a new and modern society (e.g. the prestige of a new luxury car). The first three books are thought of Baudrillard that classical Marxian criticism of political economy must be complemented by semiological sign theories that mark the different meanings expressed by signifiers such as a language organized in a system of meaning. Baudrillard believed that even the fashion, sports, media and other ways of meaning they produce meaning articulated systems by logical rules, codes and specifications. This period is characterized by the capitalist development, economic concentration, by new production techniques and the development of new technologies that speed the ability to mass production and capitalist corporations focus on interest in the control of consumption and creation of needs for new luxury goods, producing this way the regime of what Baudrillard calls "sign-value". Baudrillard argues that advertising, exhibition, fashion, mass media, culture, communication and the growth of products increase the amount of signs and produce an increase in sign-value. By this time he declares that the goods are no longer characterised by the use value and exchange value (as in the theory of Marx), but the sign-value becomes an increasingly important part of the asset and its consumption. In this view, Baudrillard argues that the consumer buys and shows the product as much for their sign-value for their value in use and that the phenomenon of the sign-value is a vital element of the product and consumption in consumer society. Baudrillard gives notice that the whole society is regulated around the consumption and the exposure of goods through which individuals acquired prestige, identity and social reputation. In this system, the most prestigious are the assets of a person the more his social reputation under the sign-value. Since 1970, Baudrillard distances itself from Marxist revolutionary theory to assume only the possibility of rebellion against the consumer society in a form "unpredictable but certain". In the second half of the 1960s he joined a group of intellectuals that focus around the newspaper "Utopias" in order to go beyond the disciplinary constraints and to provide reflections on everyday life, architecture and alternatives ways of society. The affiliation with "Utopie" lasts only until the early seventies but can help give birth in Baudrillard a desire to work behind the scenes, not to get involved by the time trends and fads and to develop their theoretical positions. During the early seventies Baudrillard has an ambivalent report with classic Marxism. From a Marxian criticism of the continuous part production of goods that outlines and critique various forms of trading, supremacy and speculation produced by capitalism. From this perspective, it seems that his criticism stems from the model of neo-Marxian location that attaches to blame capitalism to conform, control and guide social life, deprived of freedom and creative individuals. On the other side cannot demonstrate any revolutionary force and in particular do not question the situation and the potential of the working class as "unknown" in the consumer society. Baudrillard has no theory of the subject as an active Manager of social change, and therefore follows the structuralist critique and post-structuralist philosophical and practical subject categorized by Descartes, Kant and Sartre: considers that subjectivity is produced by language, cultural and social institutions and forms that is not independent from its construction in these institutions and practices. Although Baudrillard develops a theory of class or group of nature that is common in revolt France post-1960s, his work is particularly close to the work of the Frankfurt School, particularly that of Herbert Marcuse, outlining several Marxist critical consumer society. In a sense Baudrillard's work can be seen as a description of a more advanced stage of reification and social domination of that described by the Frankfurt School, describing how individuals are controlled by the institutions and ways of thinking. Baudrillard goes beyond the Frankfurt School applying the sign semiological theory to describe how goods, media and technologies create a world of illusion and fantasy in which individuals become prey of consumerist values, ideologies, media role models and seductive technologies like computers that provide worlds of cyberspace. In the end, brings this analysis of the supremacy of the signs and of the system of objects more negative and pessimistic conclusions, in which it claims that the issue of "end of the individual" anticipated by the Frankfurt School has reached its fulfillment with the total defeat of human subjectivity on the part of the world of objects. His philosophy, founded on the traditional critique of scientific thought and the concept of virtuality of the apparent world, leads him to become satrap of patafisici in 2001. Often considered to be a "philosopher of scandal" shows how contemporary sociological trends, such as commemorations, bulk donations for victims of disasters and other excesses, are nothing but scandalous means totalitarian extension of Well designed to achieve social cohesion. Internationally acclaimed author, wrote some fifty books and is one of the most influential post-modern thinkers, notably his criticism to the mechanisms of consumer society. His essays have marked deeply the contemporary intellectual life and the cultural representation of our time. Jean Baudrillard dies at the age of 78 years old on March 6, 2007 in Paris.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.