Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena (Reprint) (Radical Thinkers) (Paperback)

~ (Author), James Benedict (Translator)

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Review

"The most important and original French thinker of the past twenty years." J.G. Ballard"

Product Description

The renowned postmodernist philosopher’s tour-de-force contemplation of sex, technology, politics and disease in Western culture after the revolutionary ‘orgy’ of the 1960s.

“The most important and original French thinker of the past twenty years.” --J.G. Ballard

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Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Verso; Reprint edition (June 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844673456
• ISBN-13: 978-1844673452
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #494,847 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a virtuoso,yet probes the surface most of the time. . ., October 9, 2000

By	scarecrow "scarecrow" (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena (Paperback)

Sometimes a brilliant thinker as Baudrillard lets his own theories and perspectives confuse what is reality. Even though all the so-called revolutions and liberations have played themselves out, sexual,cybernetic,political,artistic, there are still powers in the world in all the above categories that are shaping the world in their own image. What is globalization? than the structure of the world surrounded with capital,shaped by it directing the poverty and foodchains of the world. I think Baudrillard forgets this, that there still is someone who creates and directs,and manipulates,and politicizes,and innoculates the populace to soften them up for consumption,controlled if possibly.

This collection of essays are brilliant in that Baudrillard knows how to probe beneath the surface of art,of culture, like Madonna, Michael Jackson or current Hollywood, and the politics of Europe,of the demise of communism. He does it within a formant structure,with many levels of meaning spewed out in all directions. He is a virtuoso in that respect.

What structures material reality? what directs it is not probed however with any degree of conviction and I think that is where his focus should be.You needn't be a Marxist to harbor these convictions simply ahumanist concerned with the direction of the world.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars easy fellas ...., October 21, 2001

By	"doublebind" (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena (Paperback)

This book is a good introduction to the contemporary Baudrillard, it is the last step as he leaves behind the last vestiges of Marxism and ventures into something original and "fatal". Contrary to the first reviewer, Baudrillard does not assume an "Essentialist" position (namely, providing necessary and sufficient conditions for 'such and such' to be 'such and such'). Instead he operates between wildly poetic description and (implied) moral condemnation.

This means, mostly, that his comments on meaning and media are striking. It also means (unfortunately) that he provides little in the way of concrete or rigorous argumentation. Thankfully, this is not a problem if we consider the book a collection of inter-related aphorisms. In any case, Baudrillard "the poet" instead of Baudrillard "the theorist" allows us to conceptualize the expanding domain of media technologies in a different way. Whether there actually -is- anything to his claims will have to be shown by someone else.

Since this book has had something of an influence on art criticism, I recommend it (albeit, with strong reservations about its basic claims)to anyone interested in cultural theory, the arts or any sort of contemporary "critical theory".

11 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Facinating but reactionary, January 14, 1999

By	[e-mail] (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena (Paperback)

Break out your dictionary; here is Baudrillard in all his ontogenetic glory. A wildly entertaining if ultimately depressing journey through the end of the millenia; what could be more shocking than to see J.B. bewail the lost hippy ideals of the sixties? Less a postmodernist than an essentialist critic of postmodernism, Baudrilard bwetrays a startling lack of imagination when it comes to technology and apparently views the computer screen as the fourth horseman of a Marxian apocalypse. Imagine if your kvetching grandfather had attended Yale in the '80s.