Jean Baudrillard: From Hyperreality to Disappearance

Richard G. Smith is Associate Professor in Human Geography at Swansea University. He is co-editor of Jean Baudrillard: Fatal Theories (Routledge, 2009); The Baudrillard Dictionary (EUP, 2010); Jean Baudrillard: From Hyperreality to Disappearance, Uncollected Interviews (EUP, 2015); and, Jean Baudrillard: The Disappearance of Culture, Uncollected Interviews (EUP, 2017). David B. Clarke is Professor of Human Geography at Swansea University. He is co-editor of Jean Baudrillard: Fatal Theories (Routledge, 2009) and The Consumption Reader (Routledge, 2003). He is the author of The Consumer Society and the Postmodern City (Routledge, 2003).

This is an excellent companion for the initiated. There is an opportunity to read into the person who produced books like Simulacra and Simulation and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Smith and Clarke have produced a text that was an absolute joy to read for a Baudrillard fan, while also improving my understanding of his work and my appreciation of his abilities.

• Acknowledgements; Introduction: Not Forgetting Baudrillard; Interview 1: Too Bad about Patagonia; Interview 2: Disappearance beyond Disappearance; Interview 3: After Utopia: The Primitive Society of the Future; Interview 4: The Possibility of Another Game; Interview 5: Politics of Performance: Montand, Coluche = Le Pen?; Interview 6: A Time of Promiscuity; Interview 7: Forgetting Critiques; Interview 8: Cover Story; Interview 9: Symbolic Exchange: Taking Theory Seriously; Interview 10: Vivisecting the 90s; Interview 11: Things Surpass Themselves; Interview 12: On the New Technologies; Interview 13: I’m Not a Prophet; Interview 14: Endangered Species?; Interview 15: Hate: A Last Sign of Life; Interview 16: Europe, Globalisation and the Destiny of Culture; Interview 17: Between Difference and Singularity; Interview 18: The Catastrophe of Paradox; Interview 19: This is the Fourth World War; Interview 20: The Matrix Decoded; Interview 21: Continental Drift; Interview 22: The Art of Disappearing; Interview 23: The Antidote to the Global Lies in the Singular; Select Interviews and Dialogues; Books by Jean Baudrillard in English; Name index; Subject index.