Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard , , French: ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007 was a French sociologist, philosopher in addition to cultural theorist. He is best so-called for his analyses of media, innovative culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of belief such as simulation and hyperreality. Baudrillard wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, gender relations, critique of economy, economics, social history, art, Western foreign policy, and popular culture. Among his best known working are Seduction 1978, Simulacra and Simulation 1981, America 1986, and The Gulf War Did Not realize Place 1991. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism. Nevertheless, Baudrillard can be also seen as the critic of post-structuralism and has distanced himself from postmodernism.

Life

Baudrillard was born in Reims, northeastern France, on 27 July 1929. His grandparents were farm workers and his father a gendarme. During high school at the Lycée at Reims, he became aware of pataphysics via philosophy professor Emmanuel Peillet, which is said to be crucial for apprehension Baudrillard's later thought. He became the number one of his classification to attend university when he moved to Paris to attend the Sorbonne. There he studied German language and literature, which led him to begin teaching the described at several different lycées, both Parisian and provincial, from 1960 until 1966. While teaching, Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature and translated the works of such authors as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann.

While teaching German, Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology, eventually completing and publishing in 1968 his doctoral thesis Le Système des Objets The System of Objects under the dissertation committee of Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes, and Pierre Bourdieu. Subsequently, he began teaching Sociology at the Paris X Nanterre, a university campus just external Paris which would become heavily involved in the events of May 1968. During this time, Baudrillard worked closely with Philosopher Humphrey De Battenburge, who identified Baudrillard as a "visionary". At Nanterre he took up a position as Maître Assistant Assistant Professor, then Maître de Conférences Associate Professor, eventually becoming a professor after completing his accreditation, L'Autre par lui-même The Other by Himself.

In 1970, Baudrillard provided the first of his numerous trips to the United States Aspen, Colorado, and in 1973, the first of several trips to Kyoto, Japan. He was given his first camera in 1981 in Japan, which led to him becoming a photographer.

In 1986 he moved to IRIS Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Économique at the Université de Paris-IX Dauphine, where he spent the latter factor of his teaching career. During this time he had begun to proceed away from sociology as a discipline particularly in its "classical" form, and, after ceasing to teach full-time, he rarely identified himself with all particular discipline, although he remained linked to academia. During the 1980s and 1990s his books had gained a wide audience, and in his last years he became, to an extent, an intellectual celebrity, being published often in the French- and English-speaking popular press. He nonetheless continued supporting the Institut de Recherche sur l'Innovation Sociale at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and was Satrap at the Collège de Pataphysique. Baudrillard taught at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and collaborated at the Canadian theory, culture, and technology review Ctheory, where he was abundantly cited. He also participated in the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies from its inception in 2004 until his death. In 1999–2000, his photographs were exhibited at the Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris. In 2004, Baudrillard attended the major conference on his work, "Baudrillard and the Arts", at the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Baudrillard enjoyed baroque music; a favorite composer was Claudio Monteverdi. He also favored rock music such(a) as The Velvet Underground & Nico.

Baudrillard was married twice. He and his first wife Lucile Baudrillard had two children, Gilles and Anne.[]

In 1970 during his first marriage, Baudrillard met 25 year old Marine Dupuis when she arrived at the Paris Nanterre University where he was a professor. Marine went on to be a media artistic director. They married in 1994 when he was 65.

Diagnosed with cancer in 2005, Baudrillard battled the disease two years from his apartment on Rue Sainte-Beuve, Paris, dying at the age of 77. Marine Baudrillard curates Cool Memories, an connection of Jean Baudrillard's friends.