Cool Memories IV, 1995-2000 [Hardcover]

Jean Baudrillard (Author), Chris Turner (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2003

In this fourth collection of fragments and sketches, Baudrillard’s stance is less that of the interventionist intellectual analysing the world than of the barely participant observer.

Baudrillard's work of the last two decades has downplayed the position of the critical subject and gone over to the standpoint of the object. Nowhere is this objective (non-)critique which results so clearly played out as in the Cool Memories series.

Here again, in this fourth collection of fragments and sketches, Baudrillard's stance is less that of the interventionist intellectual analysing the world as critical subject than of the barely participant observer, an object among objects, an 'internal exile', watching the world 'world itself' with such fierce insistence, yet registering with acuity our general deficit of reality and meaning.

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“The most important French thinker of the past twenty years.” (J. G. Ballard )

About the Author

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) began teaching sociology at the Université de Paris-X in 1966. He retired from academia in 1987 to write books and travel until his death in 2007. His many works include Simulations and Simulacra, America, The Perfect Crime, The System of Objects, Passwords, The Transparency of Evil, The Spirit of Terrorism, and Fragments, among others.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Verso (July 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859845355
• ISBN-13: 978-1859845356
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 7.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,620,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Intellectual(?) Entertainment......, September 21, 2008

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William Paul Sanford "Geographyhorse" (Ludington) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cool Memories IV, 1995-2000 (Hardcover)

How would one even go about reviewing a book such as this. Or, for that matter; how could anything even be said of an academic work that has no central thesis. In fact, it is hard to even pin down any point in which there could be said to be an actual message. Then again, that seems to be the point of the work. In the Baudrillardian world, one that has become so submerged in the hyperreal, representations merely become the model by which which reality is generated. Thus, there is no longer a need for representation. Baudrillards attempt here is to present the fatal strategy of fractal information. Ideas, or words that have no referrent, but merely metamorphise into ideas created by the words themselves. What matters here is not the truth for which the words represent, but rather; the style and manner in which the words present themselves as objects. Perhaps, a possible critique would be to use Baudrillards concept of the System of Objects against these fragments. So, rather than judging the futile referent of said statements. Rather, contrast the fragments against each other in a system that would reveal the hyperreal contstruction they create. Regardless, taken this work too seriously is an insult both to the book and to the reader. The better approach would be to take the book as it appears; simply a collection of fragmented ideas for the mere purpose of entertainment.