A review by adamz24
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
3.0
Completely agree with everything said in Shiv's review, as quoted:
"Some authors have a gift of being able to explain complex matters in simple terms. Baudrillard, on the other hand, seems to have the complete opposite - explaining essentially simple (although nontheless interesting) concepts in overly complex terms. While the core message of his essays is thought provoking and engaging, the text itself is so full of jargon, unnecessarily convoluted language, and a fair amount of repetition. If you are anything like myself you will spend an hour reading, rereading, and digesting a couple of pages before reaching a point where you can explain what Baudrillard was essentially saying in a few simple sentences.
Baudrillard also has a habit of making quite extravagant claims or suggestions with no proof, or even justification or much in the way of reasoning.
All in all a difficult and unrewarding read, I feel that I would have been better off reading something written by someone else about Baudrillard's ideas."
Would add to this by saying that all this applies to much of the continental philosophy I have read, even some of the greatest (Gadamer, Sartre). Also would add that, perhaps mildly contradicting my agreement with the complaint about Baudrillard's language, Baudrillard and other (relatively speaking) great continentalists would probably have been better off as literary authors, communicating these worthy ideas through art instead of jargon-laden and obtuse 'philosophy.'
In support, I submit some stunningly gorgeous and worthy sentences from this book, all from the same page (on which there also exists unbearable obtuseness and obscuritythat Baudrillard worsens through repitition, as he constantly fucking thinks it's a good idea to):
"Los Angeles is surrounded by these imaginary stations that feed reality, the energy of the real to a city whose mystery is precisely that of no longer being anything but a network of incessant, unreal circulation--a city of incredible proportions but without space, without dimension. As much as electrical and atomic power stations, as much as cinema studios, this city, which is no longer anything but an immense scenario and perpetual pan shot, needs this old imaginary like a sympathetic nervous system made up of childhood signals and failed phantasms."
"Everywhere today one must recycle waste, and the dreams, the phantasms, the historical, fairylike, legendary imaginary of children and adults is a waste product, the first great toxic excrement of a hyperreal civilization."
"Some authors have a gift of being able to explain complex matters in simple terms. Baudrillard, on the other hand, seems to have the complete opposite - explaining essentially simple (although nontheless interesting) concepts in overly complex terms. While the core message of his essays is thought provoking and engaging, the text itself is so full of jargon, unnecessarily convoluted language, and a fair amount of repetition. If you are anything like myself you will spend an hour reading, rereading, and digesting a couple of pages before reaching a point where you can explain what Baudrillard was essentially saying in a few simple sentences.
Baudrillard also has a habit of making quite extravagant claims or suggestions with no proof, or even justification or much in the way of reasoning.
All in all a difficult and unrewarding read, I feel that I would have been better off reading something written by someone else about Baudrillard's ideas."
Would add to this by saying that all this applies to much of the continental philosophy I have read, even some of the greatest (Gadamer, Sartre). Also would add that, perhaps mildly contradicting my agreement with the complaint about Baudrillard's language, Baudrillard and other (relatively speaking) great continentalists would probably have been better off as literary authors, communicating these worthy ideas through art instead of jargon-laden and obtuse 'philosophy.'
In support, I submit some stunningly gorgeous and worthy sentences from this book, all from the same page (on which there also exists unbearable obtuseness and obscuritythat Baudrillard worsens through repitition, as he constantly fucking thinks it's a good idea to):
"Los Angeles is surrounded by these imaginary stations that feed reality, the energy of the real to a city whose mystery is precisely that of no longer being anything but a network of incessant, unreal circulation--a city of incredible proportions but without space, without dimension. As much as electrical and atomic power stations, as much as cinema studios, this city, which is no longer anything but an immense scenario and perpetual pan shot, needs this old imaginary like a sympathetic nervous system made up of childhood signals and failed phantasms."
"Everywhere today one must recycle waste, and the dreams, the phantasms, the historical, fairylike, legendary imaginary of children and adults is a waste product, the first great toxic excrement of a hyperreal civilization."