Founder of ‘hyper-reality’ Baudrillard dies, aged 77

JEAN Baudrillard, a French philosopher and social theorist known for his provocative commentaries on consumerism, excess and what he claimed was the disappearance of reality, has died.

Baudrillard, 77, died on Tuesday at his home in Paris after a long illness.

A sociologist by training, he is perhaps best known for his concepts of ‘hyper-reality’ and ‘simulation’.

He advocated the idea that spectacle is crucial in creating our view of events — what he termed ‘hyperreality’. Things do not happen if they are not seen to happen.

He believed all values were simulated, a theory picked up by Andy and Larry Wachowski, who included subtle references to Baudrillard in their Matrix trilogy. In the first movie, Neo opens Baudrillard’s book Simulacra and Simulation, which turns out to be only a simulation of a book, hollowed out to hold computer disks.

Baudrillard gained fame, and notoriety, in the English-speaking world for his 1991 book ‘The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.’ In the first Gulf War, he claimed, nothing was as it appeared.

All the sound and fury signified little, he argued.

Born west of Paris in Reims on June 20, 1929, Baudrillard, the son of civil servants, began a long teaching career instructing high school students in German. After receiving a doctorate in sociology, he taught at the University of Paris in Nanterre.