“The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.” – Jean Baudrillard

I remember a lecture given by Baudrillard at Emory. The crowd had transcripts of Baudrillard’s lecture, in case his accent was too overwhelming for them. People flipped pages like it was the Bible.

I just looked and listened. I had no trouble whatsoever – and after all, he gave the lecture in English, not French.

At one point, he quoted “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right” while making slight gestures from side to side. Because they were focused on the paper before them, not many people saw his slight gestures (nor, I suspect, recognized the lyric). Performative irony.

I laughed out loud, earning disapproving looks from those around me. It reminded me of the old days at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

But Jean Baudrillard looked straight at me, and grinned.

If you are a literalist, don’t even bother trying to read anything by Baudrillard. It will never make sense to you. The question and answer period after that lecture was a parody of the intellectual life toward which I had always worked.

To his critics: Yes, Baudrillard could have been more clear, less aphoristic. Yes, he got both the left and the right to froth – that’s one of the things that made him interesting. But let’s start with a hermeneutics of paying attention, eh? Sigh… I often feel that his detractors haven’t even read the work.

Baudrillard is partially responsible for my marriage. He has already apologized (grin). John has been friends with Baudrillard for years. He had translated some of Baudrillard’s work, and they had been planning a project together… he is even more upset than I am.

Anyway, the early encounters between John and myself were all about arguing about Baudrillard. We had differing interpretations on his views of the viral and evil and reversibility. We began to meet in order to argue about Baudrillard. We met a lot. It took a song by Leonard Cohen to tip the balance, but without Baudrillard we would never have gotten together.

Eventually, we visited Baudrillard in Paris, and posed our questions. That conversation was one of the highlights of my life, and that session did more to solidify the eventual argument of my dissertation than almost anything else. My dissertation, by the way, leaves a lot unsaid.

What isn’t mentioned very much in discussions of Jean is the kind of energy he gives off as a person. When I’ve seen him, he’s been a bit rumpled, often needing a shave and a haircut. He had the most wonderful mischievous grin, and he was hospitable and clearly delighted to see us. What struck me most was his “there”-ness. He was there in a way that is very rare. He made me feel confident, engaged, worthy of being an interlocutor – and a friend. Beyond the incredibly stimulating intellectual/pataphysical discussion, I remember being surprised by Jean’s kindness and charm. I had read his books so feverishly, but I had not understood the tone of voice. The books read differently, later – much more comprehensible, with different rhythms.

His works in progress looked something like the Burroughs “cut-up“, which explains a lot.

I admired his crystal bowl full of lemons, a point of beautiful innocent clarity among all the piles of books and papers. I’ll be buying a bag of lemons later today. We’ve got a beautiful big crystal bowl, and we’ll honor and remember him that way.

When John and I married, Jean gave us a large print of one of his famous photographs as a wedding present.

John has been able to spend more time with him than I have – and of course they have known each other much more closely and for a longer time. I don’t get to Paris very often, and Baudrillard only came to Emory a couple of times.

Jean Baudrillard was, nonetheless, one of those rare people who change something within you – something subtle perhaps – but something real and permanent. I have my disagreements with some of his ideas, but my engagement with them changed me. It was a kind of alchemical synergy.

My dissertation owes a debt to Baudrillard (among others, of course). Of course, that may be why it took so long to write… What I ended up with was a cyborg creature. Perhaps Baudrillard was its eyes.

There was one very unfortunate side-effect of reading his work, and taking it seriously (and playfully and provocatively and ironically). A series of synchronicities occurred which, together with reading a lot of Baudrillard, made me very nervous about the potential “revenge” of the viral. It was a bit like Nietzsche’s abyss gazing back at you.

I can never decide whether Baudrillard is more of a Gnostic or a magician.

I am not sure how Baudrillard’s work will resonate in future. Others may attempt to paint the bigger pictures, to create the spectacle, the more-Baudrillard-than-Baudrillard. Or perhaps he will just disappear.

Still, this death – this “disappearance” of a “simulacrum” – affects me deeply, personally.

There is so much to say, and nothing to say. He’s gone.

Baudrillard on Tour, Nov. 28 2005, From The New Yorker, Talk of the Town

“I don’t know how to ask this question, because it’s so multifaceted,” he said. “You’re Baudrillard, and you were able to fill a room. And what I want to know is: when someone dies, we read an obituary—like Derrida died last year, and is a great loss for all of us. What would you like to be said about you? In other words, who are you? I would like to know how old you are, if you’re married and if you have kids, and since you’ve spent a great deal of time writing a great many books, some of which I could not get through, is there something you want to say that can be summed up?”

“What I am, I don’t know,” Baudrillard said, with a Gallic twinkle in his eye. “I am the simulacrum of myself.”

The audience giggled.

“And how old are you?” the questioner persisted.

“Very young.”

“Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or dispatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.”

“Mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible, and that the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction. The “marketing” immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder.”

“What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world.”

A little background:

• International Journal of Baudrillard Studies
• Baudrillard Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry
• Baudrillard Wikipedia Entry
• This is the Fourth World War: The Der Spiegel Interview With Jean Baudrillard
• The Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview With Jean Baudrillard, translated by Gary Genosko.
• Baudrillard in Cyberspace: Internet, Virtuality, and Postmodernity by Mark Nunes
• Reversibility: Baudrillard’s “One Great Thought” by Dr. Gerry Coulter

More Obit thoughts:

• Jean Baudrillard – Philosopher and sociologist who blurred the boundaries between reality and simulation Steven Poole, Guardian Unlimited
• The shadow of his former self, Julian Baggini

Of course, that’s just a start. I’ve got a shelf of Baudrillard books here. When I can stand it, I’m going to read them all again.