Baudrillard (RLE Social Theory)

Baudrillard is widely recognised as a powerful new force in cultural and social criticism, and is often referred to as the ΓÇÿHigh Priest of PostmodernismΓÇÖ. This study presents a detached assessment of his social thought and his reputation, challenging the way his work has been received in postmodernism and proposing a new reading of his contribution to social theory. Using many sources currently available only in French, Mike Gane provides the keys to understanding BaudrillardΓÇÖs project and reveals the extent and scope of BaudrillardΓÇÖs challenge to modern social theory and cultural criticism. He looks at the sources of BaudrillardΓÇÖs ideas, analysing how Baudrillard has turned these sources against themselves. He describes BaudrillardΓÇÖs dramatic encounter with critical Marxist theory and psychoanalysis, showing how BaudrillardΓÇÖs post-Marxist writings define, through the exploration of fatal theory, a new episode in cultural history: a period of cultural implosion. This balanced account of BaudrillardΓÇÖs social theory emphasises the originality of his work and argues that his significance can only be understood by grasping the paradoxes of his project ΓÇô BaudrillardΓÇÖs work is poetic, yet, at the same time, critical and fatal.