Book

The Vital Illusion

Aren't we actually sick of sex, of difference, of emancipation, of culture? With this provocative taunt, the indomitable sociologist Jean Baudrillard challenges us to face up to our deadly, technologically empowered renunciation of mortality and subjectiv

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Jean Baudrillard (5)

“Our task is clear: we must make that world even more unintelligible, even more enigmatic.”

— Jean Baudrillard, amazon.com

Tagged: The Clearing

“Events, real events, will not even have time to take place. Everything will be preceded by its virtual realization.”

— Jean Baudrillard, amazon.com

Tagged: Reality, Fake News, Simulacrum, Philosophy

“If we discover that not everything can be cloned, simulated, programmed, genetically and neurologically managed, then whatever survives could truly be called 'human': some inalienable and indestructible human quality could finally be identified. Of course, there is always the risk, in this experimen…”

— Jean Baudrillard, amazon.com

Tagged: Progress, Science

“Everyone knows that the light of the stars needs a very long time to reach us; sometimes we perceive it after the star itself has disappeared. This gap between the star as a virtual source and its perception by us, this non-simultaneity, is an inescapable part of the illusion of the world, the absen…”

— Jean Baudrillard, amazon.com

Tagged: Illusion, Reality, The Exception, Don’t Let It All Through

“Critical consciousness, thought in general, perhaps, always comes after the fact, a day too late, like Kafka’s Messiah—or it comes at the close of the day, like Hegel’s owl. It is nothing but retrospective prophecy, or some platonic shadow dancing on the wall of events, in the cavern of history. 'If…”

— Jean Baudrillard, amazon.com

Tagged: Consciousness, Theory