For nearly forty years, outlaw sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard has challenged all existing theories of contemporary society with implacable humor and irreverence. As a consequence, he has been called a pessimist, a nihilist, an agent provocateur, a dandy, a traitor. Renouncing both alienation and liberation at once, proclaiming the end of production while dismissing critical theory as complicit in capitalism, Baudrillard has presented the inertia of the masses as last-ditch resistance, arguing that only the capitalist world system itself can secure its own demise. Early on, Baudrillard’s analysis of consumer society demonstrated that the society of the spectacle simulates nothing but itself, killing off representation as we know it. In recent years, he has conceived of theoretical violence as a radical weapon that makes possible a new type of symbolic exchange in a world where global hegemony long ago replaced traditional domination.
In his public dialogue with Sylvère Lotringer, Baudrillard will offer contemporary corroboration of Marx’s claim that history repeats itself the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. The farcical nature of our present is that global hegemony now cannibalizes its own reality, pervading all facets of social life: politics, fashion, media, art, and everything else.
The dialogue will take place Friday, November 4, 6:00-7:30 p.m. in The New School’s Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, 1st Floor. No ticketing. No registration. (This is Baudrillard.)
Born in Reims, France, in 1929, to peasant parents from the Ardennes, Jean Baudrillard has remained an outsider within the French intellectual establishment all his life. From 1952 to 1966, he taught German Literature in Germany and France and became a reader for Editions du Seuil as well as a professional translator. In 1962, he belonged to a Maoist group with Felix Guattari. Under Henri Lefebvre, he completed his doctorate, The System of Objects in 1966 at Nanterre, where he was teaching in May 1968. From 1967 to 1977, he belonged to the radical Utopie architecture group for which he wrote most of his 1970s essays. With Paul Virilio, he editorially directed the magazine Traverses at the Pompidou Center. Unlike most of his intellectual peers, Baudrillard never managed to gain acceptance in the academic profession, even after he published The Ecstasy of Communication (1986), his habilitation thesis. His first claim to fame in France was Forget Foucault (1977) and he became widely known in America with the publication of Simulations (1981), a cult hit that made Baudrillard an art world icon overnight.
Among his more than twenty-five books are America (1986), Cool Memories (1987), Impossible Exchange (1999), The Singular Objects of Architecture (2000), The Spirit of Terrorism and Requiem for the Twin Towers (2002). His latest book, The Conspiracy of Art, was published in September 2005 by Semiotext(e).
A professor of French literature and philosophy at Columbia University, Sylvère Lotringer studied at the Sorbonne and received his doctorate from the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris in 1967. As founder and general editor of Semiotext(e) and its "Foreign Agents" series, he has been a remarkably successful publisher of post-1968 French criticism, philosophy, and theory in the United States. Lotringer has written widely on modern and contemporary art, often contributing catalog essays for MoMA and Guggenheim exhibitions. His many books include Antonin Artaud (1990), Nancy Spero (1995), Crepuscular Dawn (2001), Yves Klein (2004). With Paul Virilio, he wrote The Accident of Art, published in September 2005 by Semiotext(e). His study of E.M. Cioran, Cioran: In Praise of the Jews, will appear in 2006 from Gallimard.
The New School for Social Research was founded in 1919 by a distinguished group of intellectuals, some of whom were teaching at Columbia University in New York City during the First World War. Fervent pacifists, they took a public stand against the war and were censured by the university's president. The outspoken professors responded by resigning from Columbia and later opening their own university for adults in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan as a place where people could exchange ideas freely with scholars and artists representing a wide range of intellectual, aesthetic, and political orientations.
During the 1920s, Alvin Johnson, the school's first president, collaborated regularly with colleagues in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. They made him aware of the danger Hitler presented to democracy and the civilized world, alerting him to the seriousness of the problem before many in the United States had grasped it. With the financial support of enlightened philanthropists like Hiram Halle and the Rockefeller Foundation, Johnson responded immediately and in 1933 created within The New School a University in Exile to provide a haven for scholars and artists whose lives were threatened by National Socialism. The University in Exile sponsored over 180 individuals and their families, providing them with visas and jobs. While some of these refugees remained at the New School for many years, many others went to influence institutional life in the United States. Today The New School for Social Research remains a place where professors and students take risks for their intellectual commitments and political beliefs.