Baudrillard’s work of the last two decades has downplayed the position of the critical subject and gone over to the standpoint of the object. Nowhere is this objective (non-)critique which results so clearly played out as in the Cool Memories series. Here again, in this fourth collection of fragments and sketches, Baudrillard’s stance is less that of the interventionist intellectual analysing the world as critical subject than of the barely participant observer—an object among objects, an “internal exile,” watching the world “world itself” with such fierce insistence, yet registering with acuity our general deficit of reality and meaning.

“The most important French thinker of the past twenty years.” — J.G. Ballard

“First prize for cerebral coldblooded-ness goes to French philosopher Jean Baudrillard.” — New York Times on The Spirit of Terrorism

“He uses Disneyland as a central metaphor. The whole of society is now as artificial as the home of Mickey and Minnie.” — Independent on Sunday

Jean Baudrillard is the author of, among other works, America, The Transparency of Evil, The Perfect Crime, Impossible Exchange, and Screened Out, all from Verso.
Publication
April 2003

192 pages

Paper
ISBN-13: 978 1 85984 462 5
£13 / US$20 / CAN$30

Cloth
ISBN-13: 978 1 85984 535 6
£40 / US$60 / CAN$90