Changes

[[Baudrillard]] has moved from a [[Marx]]ist-inflected critical commentary on the affluent [[consumer society]] to an ambiguous [[position ]] which can be [[interpreted ]] either as a bleakly lucid [[perception ]] that there is no escape from what [[Deboprd]] calls the [[society of the spectacle]], or as a horrified [[fascination]] with the shallowness of a [[postmodern]]ist [[society ]] in which the [[sign]] has become a [[simulacrum]] that signifies [[nothing]].

[[Baudrillard]]'s prolific output of books (most of [[them ]] short), articles and interviews has brought him enormous [[media]] attention.

[[Baudrillard]]'s early studies of the [[consumer society]] are influenced by a variety of tendencies within [[sociology]] and [[philosophy]], ranging from [[Marx]]'s [[theory ]] of [[commodity fetishism]] to [[Barthes]] of ''[[Mythologies]]'' (1957) and ''The Fashion [[System ]] (1967) and from [[Debord]]'s denunciations of the '[[society of the spectacle]]' to [[Mcluhan]]'s celebrated proclamation that '[[the medium is the message]]'.

According to [[Baudrillard]], the [[consumer society]] is dominated by a system of [[object]]-[[signs ]] (consumer goods and gadgets) which circulate endlessly and cosntitute an [[order ]] of [[signification] which can be compared to the [[sign]]s of [[Saussure]]'s [[linguistic ]] system.

Their [[use-value]] is less important than their ability to [[signify ]] the status of their consumer; the posession of a washing amchine allows one to wash clothes, but it also signifies membership of a [[social ]] group.

In a postindustrial society where the importance of [[economic ]] production is in decline, it is consumption that binds society together.

The society described by [[Baudrillard]] in these early studies is remarkably similar to that depited by OULIP-member Georges Pec in his novel ''things'' (1965), in which an affluent couple live through the [[objects ]] they purchase and consumer.

With ''[[Symbolic ]] [[Exchange ]] and [[Death]]'' (1976), which provides the most sustained exposition of his later theory, [[Baudrillard]] depart scompletely from the quasi-[[Marxi]]st framework of his early books.

In the course of a far-ranging [[discussion ]] of [[Saussure]], [[Mauss]]'s theory of the [[gift]] [[relationship ]] (1923) and [[Freud]], [[Baudrillard]] now argues that, in the era of [[postmodernity]], [[sign]]s are replaced by [[simulacra]], and the [[real ]] by [[hyperreality]].

Consumption itself gives way to the [[game ]] of [[seduction]]s in which nothing real is at stake, and to a [[simulation]] in which [[sexuality]] itself is absorbed into a vacuous [[hyperreal]] [[pornography]] which is more real than any actual [[sexual ]] encoutner could ever be.

In this [[world]], the [[masquerade]] of [[sexuality]] described by Joan Riviere is the [[reality ]] of sex.

Production and labor are now seen as quite irrelevant and [[political ]] hopes for political [[change ]] are dismissed as a [[nostalgia ]] for an era of [[signification]] typical of the lost industrial age.

His contention that the imagianry Disneyland is a cosntruct designed to convince us of the reality of an America that now [[exists ]] only as a [[hyperreal]] [[simulacrum]] of itself is seen by many as an entertaining [[paradox]], but the [[claim ]] that the Gulf War of 1990 would not take [[place ]] (1991), followed by the assertion that it did not take place, seems to defy all [[logic]].

Such statements are anticipated by the earlier claim that the only [[future ]] war would be a [[hyperreal]] and dissuasive war in which no events would take place because there was no more [[space ]] for actual warfare.

Whatever its [[human ]] consequences, this was, for [[Baudrillard]], a war which consisted largely of its [[self]]-[[representation ]] in the real [[time ]] of media coverage.

[[Baudrillard]] is a highly literate and [[literary ]] stylist whose [[work ]] contains some unexpected allusions.

He revives the [[pataphysics]], or [[science ]] of [[imaginary ]] solutions, of jarry to describe the inexorable build-up of weapon-systems which are designed not to be used, and the [[notorious ]] claims [[about ]] the Gulf War appear to allude to the title of Jean Giraudoux's play ''The Rojan War Will Not Take Place'' (1935), which ends with the Greek [[army ]] going off to war in a fulfilment of Cassandra's unheeded prophecy.

[[Baudrillard]]'s style -and style of [[thought]]- often resemble sthe cultivate and glacial dandyism of a [[Baudelaire]], particularly in the fragmentary notations and observatiosn of the [[three ]] volumes of ''Cool [[Memories]]'' (1987, 1990, 1995).

At [[other ]] [[times]], eh appears to adopt the pose of a latter-day Flaneur.

Indeed, the [[Baudrillard]] who [[drives ]] accross a [[hyperreal]] America in a fast car seems to be the direct descendant fo the [[figure ]] celebrated by both Baudelaire and [[Benjamin]].

Like his ancestor, the postmodern flaneur is, by definition, [[male]], and his [[fantasy ]] of sacrificing a [[woman ]] in the deserts of the West has done little to recommend him to [[feminist ]] readers.