Closing down the Social: Baudrillard's Challenge to Contemporary Sociology

Until a few years ago, the work of the French social philosopher Jean Baudrillard was relatively unknown to social scientists in the United States outside a small circle of persons interested in contemporary European cultural criticism. Among American sociologists in particular-apart from those whose first inclination was to view anything emerging from the current intellectual climate in France with some suspicion-the mention of his name was unlikely to produce a response. Today, recent translations into English of a selection of Baudrillard's key texts and interviews are changing this situation somewhat. In 1988 (Baudrillard 1988a), an important compilation of selected writings edited by Mark Poster appeared. And the publication by a major press of his book America (1988b)-a diary of critical reflections on his travels in the United States which has a surrealistic resemblance to the work of de Toqueville a century and a half ago-will certainly gain him a wider audience, although its general reception by mainstream sociologists in this country will not, I think, be sympathetic. Nor will Baudrillard's only self-proclaimed sociological work, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (1983b), which he cites elsewhere as his effort to put an "end to the social, or at least the concept of the social," win him much favor among true believers (cf. Baudrillard 1987, p. 84). The latter will probably dismiss such remarks out of hand. This, however, would be unfortunate for beyond being merely provocative many of Baudrillard's views on contemporary society, culture and social theory are both original and incisive. As a whole they offer an alternative vision of modern life that demands a closer reading. Baudrillard's relative obscurity among social scientists has, on the other hand, been offset by his rapidly growing popularity in dissident, if typically apolitical, circles in America and abroad. There is more than a touch of irony in this development. For one who is deeply disaffected by the commodification of images in the modern mass media, Baudrillard has himself become something of a fashionable commodity these days. He has served as an editor and contributor to ArtForum, perhaps the most visible, if antiseptic, American periodical that has emerged to document the modern art scene. His ideas appear regularly both in the underground press and in academic journals devoted to cultural politics. And when he appeared some months ago in the pages of Rolling Stone one could truly say that Baudrillard had arrived in America. My purpose here is not to examine the irony of Baudrillard's appeal to the "radical chic" element of American society, except, however, to note that his status as a cultural phenomenon of perhaps passing interest now threatens to overshadow his more lasting contribution to the critique of contemporary social theory. Admittedly this prospect does not appear to concern Baudrillard who, rather than trying to rescue himself from such a fate, self-consciously practices what he and fellow traveler Paul Virilio refer to as an "art of disappearance,"-of creating a "theoretical void" for others to fall into while he himself is "forgotten" (cf. Virilio 1980; Virilio 1983, p. 84; Baudrillard 1987, pp. 128-129). Baudrillard never asks that we take him or his ideas seriously, and in public appearances he seems rather bemused about all the attention he receives. '