1st Edition

Baudrillard's Bestiary Baudrillard and Culture

By Mike Gane Copyright 1991

    Mike Gane provides an introduction to Baudrillard's cultural theory: the conception of modernity and the complex process of simulation. He examines Baudrillard's literary essays: his confrontation with Calvino, Styron, Ballard and Borges. Gane offers a coherent account of Baudrillard's theory of cultural ambience, and the culture of consumer society. And it provides an introduction to Baudrillard's fiction theory, and the analysis of transpolitical figures. The book also includes an interesting and provocative comparison of Baudrillard's powerful essay against the modernist Pompidou Centre in Paris and Frederic Jameson's analysis of the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. An interpretation of this encounter leads to the presentation of a very different Baudrillard from that which figures in contemporary debates on postmodernism.

    1 Introduction: the double infidelity 2 From literary criticism to fiction-theory 3 Modern ambience of objects 4 Technology and culture: Baudrillard’s critique of McLuhan and Lefebvre 5 The rigours of consumer society 6 From production to reproduction 7 Modernity, simulation, and the hyperreal 8 Fashion, the body, sexuality, and death 9 Anagrammatic resolutions 10 Transpolitical objects 11 From the Beaubourg to the Bonaventure Hotel 12 Conclusion: the other Baudrillard

    Biography

    Mike Gane is Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences at Loughborough University.

    `In this committed and important study, Mike Gane makes a case for Baudrillard as an important cultural critic ...' - The Sunday Times