Jean Baudrillard: Against Banality (Key Sociologists): Against Banality (Key Sociologists)

This uniquely engaging introduction to Jean Baudrillard’s controversial writings covers his entire career focusing on Baudrillard’s central, but little understood, notion of symbolic exchange. Through the clarification of this key term a very different Baudrillard emerges: not the nihilistic postmodernist and enemy of Marxism and Feminism that his critics have constructed, but a thinker immersed in the social world and passionately committed to a radical theorizsation of it. Above all Baudrillard sought symbolic spaces, spaces where we might all, if only temporarily, shake off the system of social control. His writing sought to challenge and defy the system. By erasing our ‘liberated’ identities and suspending the pressures to compete, perform, consume and hate that the system induces, we might create spaces not of freedom, but of symbolic engagement and exchange. This uniquely engaging introduction to Jean Baudrillard 's controversial writings covers his entire career focusing on Baudrillard 's central, but little understood, notion of symbolic exchange. Through the clarification of this key term a very different Baudrillard emerges: not the nihilistic postmodernist and enemy of Marxism and Feminism that his critics have constructed, but a thinker immersed in the social world and passionately committed to a radical theorizsation of it. Above all Baudrillard sought symbolic spaces, spaces where we might all, if only temporarily, shake off the system of social control. His writing sought to challenge and defy the system. By erasing our liberated identities and suspending the pressures to compete, perform, consume and hate that the system induces, we might create spaces not of freedom, but of symbolic engagement and exchange. This uniquely engaging introduction to Jean Baudrillards controversial writings covers his entire career focussing on Baudrillards central, but little understood, notion of symbolic exchange. Through the clarification of this key term a very different Baudrillard emerges: not the nihilistic postmodernist and enemy of Marxism and Feminism that his critics have constructed, but a thinker immersed in the social world and passionately committed to a radical theorisation of it. Above all Baudrillard sought symbolic spaces, spaces where we might all, if only temporarily, shake off the system of social control. His writing sought to challenge and defy the system. By erasing our liberated identities and suspending the pressures to compete, perform, consume and hate, that the system induces, we might create spaces not of freedom, but of symbolic engagement and exchange Humanities Book Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction 12 1 The Object System, the Sign System and the Consumption System 18 2 The ‘Break’ with Marxism 39 3 Symbolic Exchange and Death 58 4 Simulation and the End of the Social 81 5 The Body, Sexuality and Seduction 102 6 Into the Fourth Order 118 7 War, Terrorism and 9/11 144 8 Subjectivity, Identity and Agency 161 Conclusion 179 Notes 184 Bibliography 197 Index 205 The object system, the sign system and the consumer system The break with marxism Symbolic exchange and death Simulation and the end of the social Sexuality, the body and seduction Into the fourth order Terrorism, 9/11 and war Beyond the coded self. This Introduction To Jean Baudrillard's Controversial Writings Covers His Entire Career But Focuses On His Central, But Little Understood, Notion Of Symbolic Exchange. Through The Clarification Of This Key Term A Very Different Baudrillard Emerges. This is the first comprehensive overview of Jean Baudrillard?s work from a socio/cultural perspective. The illuminating book explores Baudrillard?s themes, like power, resistance, the social, subjectivity and agency and puts them into context