The Deconstruction of Baudrillard: The "Unexpected Reversibility" of Discourse (Problems in Contemporary Philosophy)

Jean Baudrillard is one of the outstanding representatives both of French poststructuralism and postmodernism. Because of radical criticism it was not possible for him to establish a logically coherent theoretical system; the philosophical aspects of his work are specifically merged, therefore, into a critical asystematic fragmentarism, which is the subject of this work. From the critique of the political economy of the sign, through critiques of rationalism, reality, progress, truth, history to the theory of simulation, Baudrillard's specific para-concepts (fatal strategy, symbolic exchange, seduction, hyperreality, pataphysics, etc.) are constantly fragmentarily present in the development of his thought. These "concepts" are Baudrillard's attempt at disengagement from modern philosophy and his new, unsystematic postmodern view of reality in general. In the analysis of binary metaphysical oppositions (reality-simulation, subject-object, knowledge-seduction, history-end, radical-irradical nihilism, metaphysics (God)-pataphysics), Baudrillard is radically exclusive through the arbitrary preference of one over the other "concept". It seems that contrary to this author, however, by the "deconstruction" of his ideas, it is possible to conclude that these dualistic antagonisms are also paradoxically compatible in his "system", this compatibility is very close to the irrational mysticism of this thinker. This book is "a clear and lucid presentation of this unique brand of postmodernism to English speaking scholarship".