ABSTRACT
Jean Baudrillard is not only one of the most famous writers on the subject of postmodernism, but he somehow seems to embody postmodernism itself. He is a writer and speaker whose texts are performances, attracting huge readerships or audiences. At the same time, his work is highly contentious, attracting a great deal of vitriolic criticism. He has been accused, for example, of being a critical terrorist, a nihilist (someone who has no beliefs at all, or values nothing), and a critic whose ideas are shallow and inaccurate. And yet, even given all of these harsh comments, he also has a wide critical following, with many books and articles being produced about him or using his theories to this very day. Throughout the 1990s many of Baudrillard’s early works, all of which were originally written in French, were translated and made available to the English-speaking world. Thus we now have easy access to virtually all of Baudrillard’s most important books, and this is leading to some reassessment of his worth as a more “serious” thinker and writer.
