Seduction (CultureTexts) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Nothing is less certain today than sex, behind the liberation of its discourse..." (more)
Key Phrases: Diary of the Seducer

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Seduction, in French thinker Baudrillard's apocalyptic discourse, is a power of attraction and fascination capable of subverting mechanical, orgasm-centered sexuality and reality in general. Two chief obstacles to unleashing the potentially liberating forces of seduction are the women's movement and psychoanalysis, charges the author of America and Forget Foucault. While recognizing that seduction has a negative side--turning the seduced person away from his/her true thoughts and impulses--Baudrillard is intrigued by the seductive processes at work in the vertigo induced by games, in magic and the lottery, in the transvestite's "total gestural, sensual and ritual" behavior. He decodes pornography as "an orgy of realism," a hyperreality of signs. In his analysis, seduction has itself been corrupted in a world of manufactured desires and ready-made satisfactions. With seductive irony, Baudrillard storms the fragile phallic fortress of patriarchy in this heady, sometimes obscure meditation.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

If a state of exasperation, a thwarting of expectation, and a teasing of the imagination are sufficient response to a book that bafflingly evades all of the flexible nomenclature of literary classification, then Seduction has been successful. It is not science, if science is clear thinking from carefully ascertained facts. It is not art, for Baudrillard writes a prose--in translation at least (the book was first published in France in 1979)--that has neither intelligibility nor music. The author of America ( LJ 1/89) had an opportunity to inform and enlighten us on the various roles the art and act of seduction play in our lives, but his arguments are vitiated by the lack of a coherent point of view and by diffuseness. To read the book takes much more effort than the average reader is likely to give.
- A. J. Anderson, Graduate Sch. of Library & Information Science, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; English ed edition (January 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312052944
• ISBN-13: 978-0312052942
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #111,817 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Seducing Book, June 5, 2000

By A Customer

In this book, Baudrillard develops his own theory in various fields from sex, Freud, Kierkegaard, to politics in the theme of �gseduction�h. Probably, this book is written to be seduction. At the same time, we can see Baudrillard�fs general attitude toward his works including this book: Prediction, warning, and seduction. He seems to learn a lot of things from Kierkegaard�fs works. In the first part, he maintains his own theory on sex against Freud, which is different from feminists�f theory based on sexual difference. It is interesting that he almost predicts today�fs situation of sex, which is why his works always seduce people. Moreover, I am impressed by his comments on Japanese striptease and by his idea that Japanese sexual culture is different from Western one. Through chapters, his point that seduction is fatal to itself appears continuously in his skillful rhetoric: The style of this book is similar to his �gSimulacra and Simulation�h, which is a good guidebook to read this book.