Synopses & Reviews
Fragments presents a set of brilliantly intriguing interviews with Jean Baudrillard whose work today occupies center stage in the analysis of consumerism, terrorism, and contemporary culture. In these frank discussions with Francois L'Yvonnet, Baudrillard reveals for the first time in detail the thinkers who have been the dominant influences on his work during his career. Instead of examining his work as a project of intellectual accumulation, he challenges all the major interpretations of his work by suggesting he has always adopted an anti-system, anti-totality strategy. Even globalization is accompanied in his view by a Western culture which itself is no longer a well-founded confident universalism.
Perhaps most interestingly, Baudrillard discusses his life's work in relationship to his contemporaries -- Bataille, Barthes, Lyotard and Deleuze - and explores his position as an outsider in the field of French philosophy. Baudrillard in these interviews is in sparkling form, and in his own words he presents not only a lively introduction to this great thinker but also gives readers a window into a brilliant mind.
Synopsis
Jean Baudrillard is one of the most revered philosophers of the past century, and his work has helped define how we think about the post-modern. In this fascinating book of interviews conducted with Francois L'Yvonnet, Baudrillard is on sparkling form and explores his life in terms of his educational, political and literary experiences, as well as reflecting on his intellectual genesis and his position as outsider in the field of great French thinkers. Perhaps most interestingly, Baudrillard discusses his life's work in relationship to his contemporaries: thinkers such as Bataille and the Situationists, Barthes, Lyotard, and Deleuze, amongst others.
Fragments: Interviews with Jean Baudrillard will be essential reading for any scholar of Baudrillard, but will also prove an attractive and informative starting point for any student trying to get to grips with his work for the first time.