International academic journal "Baudrillard Now"
“The problem is what’s behind the request – they don’t like what I have to say, but they come to me anyway, because they need someone to say something different,…
Baudrillard Now: But when, now?
The title and timing of this charter issue in the Summer of 2020 calls out for comment. Not because the question lacks answers—if anything, there are today too many potential responses. In fact my phrasing of this question is inspired by the question asked by another continental philosopher and social theorist at a likewise deeply cathected global moment. During Spring (and especially May) 1968, significant events in disparate locations around the world—most obviously Paris, but also Saigon, Chicago, Prague, Rome, Baltimore, Belgrade, Beijing, Biafra, and Port-au-Prince—confronted intellectuals and activists with the sudden realization that the social theory they had inherited was largely inadequate to the worlds they found themselves suddenly thrust into. The moment was both fraught with danger and portent with possibility; for some, revolution seemed closer and more realistic than ever before; for others, established power dropped its mask to reveal the naked face of a menacing brutality. That, of course, was the milieu from which Jean Baudrillard emerged at Nanterre, among a handful of scholars who arguably set out to rebuild and reimagine social theory to better engage the world they found themselves in.
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