Passwords
In his analysis of the deep social trends rooted in production, consumption, and the symbolic, Jean Baudrillard touches the very heart of the concerns of the generation currently rebelling against the framework of the consumer society. With the ever-greater mediatization of society, Baudrillard argues that we are witnessing the virtualization of our world, a disappearance of reality itself, and perhaps the impossibility of any exchange at all. This disenchanted perspective has become the rallying point for all those who reject the traditional sociological and philosophical paradigms of our age.
Passwords offers us twelve accessible and enjoyable entry points into Baudrillard's thought by way of the concepts he uses throughout his work: the object, seduction, value, impossible exchange, the obscene, the virtual, symbolic exchange, the transparency of evil, the perfect crime, destiny, duality, and thought.
Paperback, 92 pages
ISBN: 9781844676767
January 2011
$15.95 / £8.99
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Other Editions
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Paperback, 96 pages
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ISBN: 9781859844632
November 2003
$20.00
Hardback, 96 pages
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ISBN: 9781859845974
November 2003
$60.00
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Part of the Radical Thinkers series
Reviews
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First prize for cerebral cold-bloodedness goes to French philosopher Jean Baudrillard.
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Provocative...he brings a reading of signs and symbols most will find interesting.
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Discussions
Begin a discussionOther books by Jean Baudrillard
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Impossible Exchange
Jean Baudrillard's now familiar investigations into reality and hyper-reality shift here into a more metaphysical frame. -
America
“A sharp-shooting Lone Ranger of the post-Marxist left.”—New York Times
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The Transparency of Evil
Sex, technology, politics and disease in Western culture, after the ‘orgy’ of the 1960s.
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The Perfect Crime
Baudrillard investigates the murder of reality—“the most important event of modern history.”
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Fragments
Disturbing and vivid meditations on the meanings of objects and sensations.
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The System of Objects
A tour de force of the materialist semiotics of the early Baudrillard.
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The Spirit of Terrorism
Until September 11 we had had no symbolic event on a world scale that marked a setback for globalization itself. -
Cool Memories IV
In this fourth collection of fragments and sketches, Baudrillard’s stance is that of a barely participant observer, rather than an interventionist intellectual.
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Cool Memories
Cool Memories is the other side of America, the disillusioned side, presented in the form of a diary, though not in the classical sense.