Comments on Simulacra and Simulation

Oh, what an original joke

Indeed, he didn't die. He just stopped breathing and turned cold and began to let his flesh rot, and society called it death. True death has ceased to exist.

semioticians....is he an icon, or a symbol?

From our perspective today, it's pretty obvious that the Gulf War really didn't happen. That book seems almost common sense today rather than anything particularly post-structuralist.

In fact I don't think one could do much better than read Baudrillard's book (or it's serialized version in Libo (trans in the Gaurdian) to really get yourself in a mindset to really understand the level of insanity governing the current Iraq debacle.

Some bits and pieces from Libo:
http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/evenement/evenement2/239266.FR.php

And libo's obit:
http://www.liberation.fr/culture/239275.FR.php

This joke is already old.

Merde. Et encore un fois: Merde.

This is too hyperreal!!

This is too hyperreal!!

This joke is never old for a college student. It helps to connect with others who have trudged through Baudrillard, Delillo, and on and on and on. The joke sustains because of how much we simultaneously love and hate them.

Uh, this joke was also the lede and headline for the Guardian's obit yesterday.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2028890,00.html

people, it's the "bird lives" of our generation. get used to it.

i agree with jennifer. this is tuesday's news. i wore black yesterday.

I so enjoyed his writings (especially System of Objects). Sad to see him go...

Not that his death "did not happen" or "did not occur," but "did not take place." His death did not take place.

Have we really understood the phrase, "did not take place?" No. The answer must me in the affirmative. His death did not arrive. It did not come. His death did not beckon.

What then is the subject of "did not take place" is not the man, Jean Baudrillard, but death. The subject is death. His death did not come for him. He did not meet death, and yet he said to be "dead."

But the question here is not whether we believe he is dead, but why would we think of death as an absence, a "did not take place?" And how is it possible for one to die if death is nothing? This is the paradox and the purpose of much of Jean's writing, for only in language is it possible for a living thing to cease to exist.

Death is in the supermarket of language.

billy, thanks for correctly reading my choice of words. the real comment is not the joke but the wording.