Let's start with the meaningful words: “If people say, time is running out. When time speaks people leave. ” In relation to the author of this quotation, its meaning is enriched with new meanings. When Jean Baudrillard left, it turned out that he had said so much about the time and society in which he lived, that his personality and work acquired timeless significance.
He was a man who was looking for new ways in everything he did — in philology, in sociology, in philosophy, in literature, and even in the art of photography.
Grandson of a peasant
He was born in northern France, in the city of Reims, on July 27, 1929. The ancestors of his family always worked on the earth, only parents became employees. For education, an elementary or secondary school is enough - this was believed in the Baudrillard family. Jean was able to enter the Sorbonne, where he studied German studies. He said later that he was the first in the family who received a university education, and this caused a break with his parents and with the environment where he spent his childhood. A solid, stocky man with a round peasant face, who loved to smoke home-made cigarettes, entered the small caste of influential French intellectuals.
Jean Baudrillard, whose biography has long been associated with the teaching of German language and literature, has been working in high school since 1956. At the same time, he collaborates with many publications of the "left" sense, publishing in them literary and critical essays. In these articles, as in the translations of Peter Weiss and Bertold Brecht, the figurative, ironic, paradoxical style of presentation is polished, which distinguishes even the most complex scientific texts of Baudrillard.
Sociology teacher
In 1966, he defended a dissertation in sociology at the University of Nanterre-la-Défense. Campuses on the outskirts of Paris at the end of the 60s are a hotbed of "left" ideas, a boiling cauldron from which the student unrest of 1968 spilled out. Radical “leftist” ideas did not attract much of Baudrillard’s independent nature, although he recalled that he had participated in anti-war protests that developed into a strike — events that nearly overthrew the de Gaulle government. Perhaps it was then that one of Baudrillard's most famous sayings was born: "The loudest thing is silence ..."
At the University of Paris-X Nanterre, and since 1986, Paris-Dauphin IX - two of the thirteen that made up the Sorbonne, J. Baudrillard served as a senior lecturer (assistant professor) and then professor of sociology. At that time, many prominent scientists worked there: Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barth, Pierre Bourdieu. After the publication of the first serious works, Baudrillard began to enjoy great authority among the creators of the philosophy of modern times.
Neo-marxist
Jean Baudrillard was fond of Marxism, and even translated some of the works of the founders of scientific communism - Marx and Engels. But this influence was paradoxical in nature, which manifested itself in the study of other philosophical theories. An insight into the ideas was followed by their application for the analysis of modernity, and it all ended with attempts at complete reform or harsh criticism. As one of his aphorisms says, “New thoughts are like love: they wear out.”
“The System of Things” (1968) and “Consumer Society” (1970) are works in which Jean Baudrillard used some of the principles of communist theory to consider contemporary sociology problems.
The mythical "society of plenty", which was considered the romantic romance of the industrial revolution, turned into civilization, where the main goal is to comply with the accepted standards that form the advertising of services and goods. The ideal she created is continuous consumption. The Marxist view of industrial relations, as the main criterion for evaluating society in the modern world of signs and symbols, is hopelessly outdated.
Neo-nihilist
A harsh criticism of the current state of society gradually becomes Baudrillard's dominant publication. The work “In the Shadow of the Silent Majority, or the End of the Social” (1983) contains the assertion that the modern era is approaching a boundary beyond which collapse and collapse. The former class structure of society has disappeared, giving rise to a void between individual human masses, which also lose their real shape.
Human community becomes fiction. Jean Baudrillard, whose quotes are unique in accuracy and expressiveness, writes: "Citizens are questioned so often that they have lost all opinion." He denies the masses the ability for constructive political representation. All ideologies - religious, political or philosophical - are non-life because they lose their specificity by summarizing the law that does not distinguish them and having a ready-made collection of labels that they are endowed with.
Postmodernist
The polemic properties of Baudrillard's critical texts aroused a fierce protest reaction from some, while others gave rise to declare him the high priest of postmodernism, which he also actively opposed. Despite the high concentration of rejection of the ongoing social processes, which Baudrillard saturates with his work, the philosophy of postmodernism seems to him giving a gloom, or even a regression.
The essence of postmodernity, which consists in the creation of new artificial systems through endless play with images and concepts from various fields, does not seem progressive and creative to him. But it was very difficult for him to disown titles like the “guru of postmodernism”. The virtuosity with which he expressed his ideas in words was too obvious, the game of images and meanings in his texts was too mesmerizing, and the irony and black humor from Baudrillard became almost a separate meme.
The ideologist of the "Matrix"
One of Baudrillard's most famous theories is concentrated in the book Simulacra and Simulation (1981). It lies in the concept of “hyperreality”, in that we live in a world where simulated feelings and experiences have replaced the real thing. The carriers of this hyperreality, the "bricks" of which it consists, are simulacra. Their meaning is in reference to a thing or concept, which means that they themselves are just a simulation. Everything is modeled: the material world and emotions. We do not know anything about the real world, we judge everything from a foreign point of view, we look through a foreign lens.
The relevance of this idea to the Russian reader was fixed by Pelevin in “Generation P”, and for the whole world - in the cult film trilogy of the Wachowski brothers “The Matrix” (1999). The link to Baudrillard in the film is shown directly - in the form of the book "Simulations and Simulation", from which the main character - the hacker Neo - made a cache for illegal things, that is, the book itself became a simulation of the book.
Jean Baudrillard reluctantly spoke about his involvement in this trilogy, claiming that his ideas in it were incomprehensible and distorted.
Traveler
In the 1970s, the scientist travels a lot around the world. In addition to Western Europe, he traveled to Japan and Latin America. The result of his visit to the United States was the book America (1986). This philosophical and artistic essay is not a tourist guide, not a tourist report. The book gives a vivid form of analysis of the "original version of modernity", compared with which Europe was hopelessly behind in its ability to change, in creating a utopian and eccentric hyperreality.
He was struck by the creation of this hyperreality - the superficiality of American culture, which, however, he does not condemn, but simply states. Baudrillard's arguments about the results of the Cold War are interesting. With the victory of the United States, the reality of this world becomes even more illusory.
A trip to Japan turned out to be significant for Baudrillard in that he became the owner of a modern apparatus there, after which his passion for photography came to a new level.
Photographer
As he did not consider himself a philosopher, he did not call himself a photographer, and the popularity that he acquired in this capacity arose without his desire. It is clear that Baudrillard as a photographer remained the same independent and original thinker as a philosopher or writer. His way of looking at things is unique. He said that his task is to achieve objectivity in the reflection of the subject and its surroundings, in which nature itself will show what it wants to make visible.
His photographs, published in the form of several albums, Baudrillard's approach to shooting were the subject of serious discussions among professionals. His posthumous exhibition “Disappearing Methods” of 50 photographs was of great interest in many countries.
Aphorism genius
Few people knew how to express a thought in such a way that its depth and severity persisted even after translation. Some aphorisms - the continuation of discussions on scientific and philosophical topics, others - have purely literary virtues, similar to the brilliance of an advertising slogan:
- "Dry water - just add water."
- "The pleasure of feeling water on the lips is higher than that of swallowing it."
- "Statistics are the same form of fulfillment of desires as dreams."
- "I have only two drawbacks: poor memory and ... something else ..."
- "The weak always gives way to the strong, and only the strongest gives way to everyone."
- "The saddest thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks cunning and, therefore, intelligence."
- "God exists, but I do not believe in him."
- "I feel like witnessing my absence."
“Death is meaningless" - Jean Baudrillard also liked to repeat these words. The biography, briefly reflected in two dates (07/27/1929 - 03/06/2007), included, among other things, the cosmic volume of intellectual work, which makes it easy to believe the truth of this statement.