ABSTRACT
NOTHING COULD BE MORE NATURAL than to confuse the names of the French symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire and the French poststructuralist poet Jean Baudrillard. Both writers explore realms of sensual or conceptual extremes: in Baudelaire’s case, the charms of “perfumes cool as the flesh of children…And others, corrupt, rich and triumphant”1; in Baudrillard’s case, the partially poetic, partially parodic hypotheses-fueled by “provocative logic”2which find their most provocative form in his ponderings upon American culture, entitled Amérique.3 How ironic then that Amérique, one of the most amusing examples of this century’s fin-de-siècle magic realism should appear within the Trojan horse (or under the lamb’s clothing) of Baudrillardian sociological speculation, a genre more likely to be cataloged and shelved under “theory” than belles lettres. Nevertheless, in a decade where fiction has virtually burst at its bindings under the pressure of self-reflective, self-critical, selfanalytical and self-deconstructive hot air, Baudrillard’s travels in Amérique offer a refreshing alternative to ‘theoretical’ fiction-something one might define, perhaps, as “fictional” theory.
