ABSTRACT
Baudrillard’s intellectual formation was decisively marked by literature, and it is no accident nor is it incidental that Baudrillard’s first essays were literary in the traditional sense, and his first period was dominated by work of translation from German into French. However, the critical phase passed, and in the 1970s Baudrillard began to use literature more as a theoretical resource (and aesthetic criticism disappeared). In this chapter this transition is examined through close scrutiny of Baudrillard’s changing techniques of reading fiction: first of a set of novels around 1962, second of J.G.Ballard’s Crash, and last of Borges’ story The Lottery in Babylon’.
