Thursday, March 08, 2007

Jean Baudrillard Never Happened

Jean Baudrillard has died. The obvious joke is to say that we cannot be sure that he is dead in reality, only simulation; but everybody made that joke when Derrida died. Oh, of course, that won't stop anybody. It's a shame too because Baudrillard was actually pretty funny. More so than Derrida. Any philosopher who has done a Vegas-style reading of his work, complete with dancers, is taking the piss out to a certain extent. There were pearls of wisdom in his works, but I'm not sure that people, including myself, always got the jokes that were there. Admittedly, he wrote the same book over and over again; a Baudrillard cook book would tell the reader that "There is no such thing as food." But, I think he's worth reading for the fun of it.

3 comments:

Greg von Winckel said...

Hey, that reminds me, have you ever read The Futurist Cookbook?

Rufus said...

No, but I have to say that I've always been fascinated/terrified by the Futurists.

Greg von Winckel said...

I used to have a copy, but gave it away before moving to Europe. If you can find a copy, you should skim through the "recipes" it's extremely amusing and has the occasional good idea even if I would never eat a banana stuffed with capers and chicken meat.