The First Dead Philosophers' Carnival (Philosophers' Carnival #60) - Call for Papers

2007 saw the death of philosophers including Jean Baudrillard, Susan Hurley, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Richard Rorty, and Robert C. Solomon.


Dialectic, in association with the Philosophers' Carnival, is hosting the first Dead Philosophers' Carnival (as the 60th Philosophers' Carnival).


The Editors of Dialectic, as hosts of the Carnival, are calling for posts relating to the work of those philosophers who have died in 2007 and those who have celebrated notable anniversaries in 2007. Eligible posts are in no way limited to the philosophers mentioned above. If contributors know of other philosophers that have recently passed, we urge potential contributors to submit posts. Preference will be given to contributions relating to the theme, but interpretation of that theme need not be strictly literal.


The Carnival will commence on the 7th of January 2008.


Submissions will close on the 2nd of January 2008, but don't put forward your posts until after submissions to Carnival #59 have closed (unless you want to be in #59 of course).

Baudrillard and International Politics – Workshop Notice

The University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (United Kingdom) will be hosting a workshop on Baudrillard and International Politics.

The notice states:

The translation and publication of Jean Baudrillard’s The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1995) marked the first significant awareness of Baudrillard’s work among international politics scholars and was the source of a highly engaged debate. In the years since, Baudrillard’s work on the media, simulation, hyperreality, terror, and technology has continued to provide unique insights into contemporary international politics and the discourses in which it is framed.

International politics staff and graduate students at Newcastle University arehosting a half day workshop to explore the value and relevance of Baudrillard’s work for international politics studies and seek papers on the following (and other) themes:

Technology/Media/War
Terrorism
Technology/Simulation/Security
Political discourses of hyperreality
Baudrillard on the USA
The political commitments of Baudrillard’s early scholarship

The workshop will be held, at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, on the 28th of November.

Further details are available from Mr Mark Edward (M.D.Edward@ncl.ac.uk).

Baudrillard est mort II - The Art of Disappearing

‘The Art of Disappearing’, via Eurozine, contains excerpts from a discussion between Jean Baudrillard and an interviewer. Baudrillard, while discussing death and disappearance makes some interesting comments on Foucault’s death ...

Baudrillard est mort

‘“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.”’

This passage – originally from MacFarquhar’s ‘Baudrillard on Tour’ (previously quoted here) – seems an apt obituary.

Others have been authored by Le Monde, The Times, and The Guardian (plus one by Baggini).

Baudrillard Interview - On Simulation

"Are you saying that America represents the ideal of democracy?

No, the simulation of power.

At 76, you are still pushing your famous theory about "simulation" and the "simulacrum," which maintains that media images have become more convincing and real than reality.

All of our values are simulated. What is freedom? We have a choice between buying one car or buying another car? It's a simulation of freedom." - Continental Drift, New York Times (November 20 2005)

MacFarquhar On Baudrillard

"“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.”" - 'Baudrillard On Tour', The New Yorker (28th November 2005).

Baudrillard – Three Posts

With the spate of recent deaths, the title of Greatest French Philosopher has become a contest between Baudrillard and Bernard Henri-Levy. Around here it is a one-way fight; Baudrillard wins by knock-out.

The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (IJBS) is another of the growing number of electronic journals, a group that deserves greater respect and attention. It’s focus, obviously, is Baudrillard, and is presently being published in January and July.

The two previous posts are taken from the July 2005 issue.

Baudrillard – ‘Violence of the Virtual and Integral Reality’

“What happens to the world when it is freed from truth and appearances? It becomes the real universe, the universe of integral reality. Not truth, nor appearance but integral reality. If the world in the past leaned toward transcendence, if it fell on occasion into other rear-worlds (arrières-mondes), today it is falling into reality. From one transcendence in the heights to another one, this time in the depths. It is as it were the second fall of man that Heidegger talks about: the fall into banality – this time though, no redemption is possible. According to Nietzsche, once the true world and the world of appearances are lost, the universe becomes a factual, positive universe, such that it does not even need to be true. This world is as factual as a ready-made. Duchamp’s “fountain” is the emblem of our modern hyperreality. It results from the violent counter-transfer of every poetic illusion into pure reality, the object transferred onto oneself, every possible metaphor cut short.” – International Journal of Baudrillard Studies.