- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Sage Publications (CA) (December 1993)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0803983980
- ISBN-13: 978-0803983984
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 522 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,244,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
Iain Hamilton Grant's excellent translation of Symbolic Exchange and Death, perhaps Baudrillard's most widely admired text, or at least, as he himself once wryly observed, "the last book that inspired any confidence"... For anyone seeking a way into Baudrillard's highly inventive, uncompromising, and occasionally maddening oeuvre, Symbolic Exchange and Death is still one of the best places from which to start Radical Philosophy
Arguing that a political economy predicted on commodity value has long since been replaced by the political economy of the sign. Baudrillard traces the hyperrealist consequences of the "end of production" through chapters focusing on fashion, the body and death. The seeming inevitability of the triumph of the "semiotic" commodity over "symbolic" (gift) exchange is shown to be an error perpetrated by Marxist theory, which has itself been absorbed into "the code" that governs the transformation of value. Baudrillard's intention is to defeat the code by turning its own logic against it, inverting Marx, Freud, and finally Saussure in an effort to abolish "value" itself. His analysis is carried along on its own rhetorical force... achieves extraordinary insight into the malaise pervading late-capitalist societies Choice
Of all the major works which contributed to the surge of interest in recent French philosophy, only two remained untranslated. Until now. Earlier this year saw the publication of Lyotard's Libidinal Economy. Now we have Baudrillard's Symbolic Exchange and Death. Baudrillard has a warm glow of nostalgia about his earlier work. He claims it is "the last book that inspired any confidence". If the newly translated Symbolic Exchange and Death had been available earlier, the perception of Baudrillard as a postmodernist playboy might have been different. It bridges the gap between his early serious work and the later funny work The Modern Review
This is easily Baudrillard's most important work. It is a key intervention in the debates on modernity and postmodernity and the site of his postmodern turn. Anyone who wants to understand the complexity and provocativeness of Baudrillard's richest period must read this text Douglas Kellner
Without doubt Baudrillard's most important book Mike Gane
Arguing that a political economy predicted on commodity value has long since been replaced by the political economy of the sign. Baudrillard traces the hyperrealist consequences of the "end of production" through chapters focusing on fashion, the body and death. The seeming inevitability of the triumph of the "semiotic" commodity over "symbolic" (gift) exchange is shown to be an error perpetrated by Marxist theory, which has itself been absorbed into "the code" that governs the transformation of value. Baudrillard's intention is to defeat the code by turning its own logic against it, inverting Marx, Freud, and finally Saussure in an effort to abolish "value" itself. His analysis is carried along on its own rhetorical force... achieves extraordinary insight into the malaise pervading late-capitalist societies Choice
Of all the major works which contributed to the surge of interest in recent French philosophy, only two remained untranslated. Until now. Earlier this year saw the publication of Lyotard's Libidinal Economy. Now we have Baudrillard's Symbolic Exchange and Death. Baudrillard has a warm glow of nostalgia about his earlier work. He claims it is "the last book that inspired any confidence". If the newly translated Symbolic Exchange and Death had been available earlier, the perception of Baudrillard as a postmodernist playboy might have been different. It bridges the gap between his early serious work and the later funny work The Modern Review
This is easily Baudrillard's most important work. It is a key intervention in the debates on modernity and postmodernity and the site of his postmodern turn. Anyone who wants to understand the complexity and provocativeness of Baudrillard's richest period must read this text Douglas Kellner
Without doubt Baudrillard's most important book Mike Gane
Product Description
Jean Baudrillard is one of the most celebrated and most controversial of contemporary social theorists. This major work, appearing in English for the first time, occupies a central place in the rethinking of the humanities and social sciences around the idea of postmodernism. It leads the reader on an exhilarating tour encompassing the end of Marxism, the enchantment of fashion, symbolism about sex and the body, and the relations between economic exchange and death. Most significantly, the book represents Baudrillard's fullest elaboration of the concept of the three orders of the simulacra, defining the historical passage from production to reproduction to simulation. A classic in its field, Symbolic Exchange and Death is a key source for the redefinition of contemporary social thought. Baudrillard's critical gaze appraises social theories as diverse as cybernetics, ethnography, psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, communications theory and semiotics.
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First Sentence
Saussure located two dimensions to the exchange of terms of the langue, which he assimilated to money. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Saussure located two dimensions to the exchange of terms of the langue, which he assimilated to money. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Recommended introduction to an important cultural theorist,
By chris.webb0@tinyworld.co.uk (Enfield, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Symbolic Exchange and Death (Paperback)
Jean Baudrillard has an insatiable desire to stay ahead of the game, to push things further and further. Symbolic Exchange and Death, written in 1976 but surprisingly not translated in English until 1993, is a key text because it sets out in challenging but relatively clear terms Baudrillard's radical approach before his more recent period based upon 'fatal strategies' which travels into the ethereal and obscure. Symbolic Exchange and Death fundamentally operates as a genealogy of our dominant system of political economy and the underlying spectre of a pre-existing Symbolic Order. This involves a catastrophic challenge to Marxian and Freudian thought and traditional social approaches. It develops the earlier works of Michel Foucault and phenomenologists such as R.D. Laing to a more radical stance which begins to turn many widely accepted beliefs on their head. It also demonstrates that Baudrillard is not at all the high priest of postmodernism as was thought in the latter part of the 1980s but is a relentless poststructuralist. Despite Baudrillard's own later consignment of the work to a bygone era of dialecticism, Symbolic Exchange and Death, twenty five years on still retains an explosive potency. Fascinating, controversial and unputdownable - will inevitably draw readers to explore the author's other works.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Recommended introduction to an important cultural theorist,
By chris.webb0@tinyworld.co.uk - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Symbolic Exchange and Death (Paperback)
Jean Baudrillard has an insatiable desire to stay ahead of the game, to push things further and further. Symbolic Exchange and Death, written in 1976 but surprisingly not translated in English until 1993, is a key text because it sets out in challenging but relatively clear terms Baudrillard's radical approach before his more recent period based upon `fatal strategies' which travels into the ethereal and obscure. Symbolic Exchange and Death fundamentally operates as a genealogy of our dominant system of political economy and the underlying spectre of a pre-existing Symbolic Order. This involves a catastrophic challenge to Marxian and Freudian thought and traditional social approaches. It develops the earlier works of Michel Foucault and phenomenologists such as R.D. Laing to a more radical stance which begins to turn many widely accepted beliefs on their head. It also demonstrates that Baudrillard is not at all the high priest of postmodernism as was thought in the latter part of the 1980s but is a relentless poststructuralist. Despite Baudrillard's own later consignment of the work to a bygone era of dialecticism, Symbolic Exchange and Death, twenty five years on still retains an explosive potency. Fascinating, controversial and unputdownable - will inevitably draw readers to explore the author's other works.
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