Consumerism critic Baudrillard dies MARCH 07, 2007

布希亞2007年3月6日病逝巴黎，葬禮於3月13日在巴黎市內的蒙帕納斯（Montparnasse）墓園舉行，哲學家何內·謝黑（René Schérer）說道：「看起來應該就是這樣，布希亞的葬禮從未發生過。更好的是，從現在起他將一直活下去。」（Tout ça est parfaitement normal, l'enterrement de Baudrillard n'a pas eu lieu et c'est tant mieux, à présent il va vivre.）

Jean Baudrillard, the French sociologist and philosopher and critic of globalisation and consumerism, has died in Paris at the age of 77.

Baudrillard died on Tuesday at his home in Paris after a long illness, said Michel Delorme, of the Galilee publishing house.

Baudrillard was a prolific writer and renowned photographer who first attracted worldwide attention in 1991 with the deliberately provocative claim that the Gulf War "did not take place".

He was one of Europe's leading postmodernist thinkers known for his provocative commentaries on consumerism.

Critic of modern society

Baudrillard argued that neither side could claim victory by the end of the war and that the conflict had changed nothing on the ground in Iraq.

Just over a decade on, in an essay entitled The Spirit of Terrorism: Requiem for the Twin Towers, he courted fresh controversy by describing the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States as an expression of "triumphant globalisation battling against itself".

Born in Rheims on July 29, 1929, into a peasant family, he studied German at the Sorbonne, later working as a teacher and translator of Bertolt Brecht before his interests turned to sociology.

Baudrillard taught sociology throughout the 1960s and went on to develop a stinging - some say nihilistic - critique of modern society.

He was the author of more than 50 works including: The Mirror of Production (1973), Simulacra and Simulation (1981), America (1986), and The Spirit of Terrorism: A Requiem for the Twin Towers (2002).

from the movie WAG THE DOG（1997）

IS IT ALSO ABOUT SIMULACRA??

SOME LINKS WHICH MIGHT HELP YOUR STUDY OF SIMULACRA/SIMULATION

taken from here[http://www.thinkingshop.com/AIP/aesthetics/plato-baudrillard.htm]

Baudrillard:

Jean Baudrillard has written about popular culture and the emergence of imagery as reality [termed the "hyperreal"] since the mid-1970s. Here are links to some of the most interesting sites featuring the ideas of this compelling thinker.

• Baudrillard on the Web: links to many of the philosopher's essays
• Reality of Simulation: a site devoted to Baudrillard including an interview
• Directory of the Third (dis)Order --a searchable, indexed guide to key terms and concepts in the works of Jean Baudrillard.
• An interview with Baudrillard covering the time he spent in America.
• Fanfare for the Commons Utne Reader Online: Are pubic spaces in danger? Read this article to learn why the hypermarket and hypercommodity threaten the future of communities nationwide.

Studies of Virtual Reality:

• Check out these statistics on virtual worlds from Mother Jones Magazine
• the HUB explores the sociological implications of multi-user online gaming
• Sherry Turkle's MIT Initiative on Technology and Self: this project explores the ways in which our uses of technology affect the context for self-exploration and social encounters

Desert of the Real: Jesus, The Matrix, and Hyperreality.

Philosophy and the Matrix - Baudrillard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3tr0gSNBx4

There is nothing new under the sun. With the death of the real, or rather with its (re)surrection, hyperreality both emerges and is already always reproducing itself. The dead are already dead; precisely more than the living which are yet alive. God himself has only ever been his own simulacrum; his own Disneyland…

To begin with it is no ''objective'' difference: the same type of demand. Formerly the discourse of crisis, negativity and crisis. It is pointless to laboriously interpret these films by their artificial resurrection in systems of signs, a more radical political exigency.
Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra”