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Rating: 
Summary: America
Review: Well, this is a very short book. If you are not familiar with Baudrillard's academic social theory and philosophical works, much of the commentary may come across as superficial, cynical or just plain odd. The unreferenced paraphrasal of Clauschwitz's formula (earlier inverted by Foucault), the references to 'symbols' and death as 'sacrifice'; none of this will make any sense unless you have read Symbolic Exchange and Death, or Signs and Simulations, and like those english journos who reviewed 'The Gulf War did not take place' with similar ignorance, if you take it only at that level you will miss the whole point, and look like a stupid arse. Sacrifice referes to his thesis in symbolic exchange and death that the only resistance to the 'system' is suicide, building on the third volume of Marx's Capital; so that dead labour now outweighs living labour, we all live in a world of death, the only refusal is to stop the system killin us. As the editor of the edition of 'The Gulf war did not take place' that I read showed; many people criticsed Baudrillard comparing him to a classical 'enlightenment' thinker like Noam Chomsky. But this edition then had a quote by Chomsky in the intro where he said it wasn't a 'war' because that conventionally meant two sides fighting against each other. Similarly, Baudrillard's point that we have all imagined the collapse of american empire; in a couple of different places in his work on US foreign policy Chomsky talks about the war mongers in Vietnam and what they said about the 'VC', hypothesising what they would have done if the VC had launched attacks in downtown New York. Besides which, why should Baudrillard have to explain himself to you in any case? If we can't see through the oxymoronism of a 'War on Terrorism' we deserve to blown up in densely populated city centres like the sheep we are.
Rating:
Summary: America
Review: Well, this is a very short book. If you arte not familiar with Baudrillard's academic social theory and philosophical works, much of the commentary may come across as superficial, cynical or just plain odd. The unreferenced paraphrasal of Clauschwitz's formula (earlier inverted by Foucault), the references to 'symbols' and death as 'sacrifice'; none of this will make any sense unless you have read Symbolic Exchange and Death, or Signs and Simulations, and like those english journos who reviewed 'The Gulf War did not take place' with similar ignorance, if you take it only at that level you will miss the whole point, and look like a stupid arse. Sacrifice referes to his thesis in symbolic exchange and death that the only resistance to the 'system' is suicide, building on the third volume of Marx's Capital; so that dead labour now outweighs living labour, we all live in a world of death, the only refusal is to stop the system killin us. As the editor of the edition of 'The Gulf war did not take place' that I read showed; many people criticsed Baudrillard comparing him to a classical 'enlightenment' thinker like Noam Chomsky. But this edition then had a quote by Chomsky in the intro where he said it wasn't a 'war' because that conventionally meant two sides fighting against each other. Similarly, Baudrillard's point that we have all imagined the collapse of american empire; in a couple of different places in his work on US foreign policy Chomsky talks about the war mongers in Vietnam and what they said about the 'VC', hypothesising what they would have done if the VC had launched attacks in downtown New York. Besides which, why should Baudrillard have to explain himself to you in any case? If we can't see through the oxymoronism of a 'War on Terrorism' we deserve to blown up in densly populated city centres like the sheep we are.
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