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Obituary

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)

Philippe Le Pers reports after the death of the ‘photographer’ philosopher.

On Tuesday March 6th last, Jean Baudrillard passed away in Paris after a lingering disease, at the age of 77.

Baudrillard was born on July 27th 1929 in Reims, into a family of peasants, and he studied German language and literature at the Sorbonne. He taught German at several lycées and translated texts from Bertholt Brecht, Peter Weiss and Marx before he became a lecturer at the University of Nanterre in 1972.

Le Système des Objets (‘The System of Objects’ 1968) straight away showed Baudrillard’s critical attitude towards the consumer society. He described how objects are degraded to ‘functional elements’ of a whole that is supposed to generate a certain atmosphere.

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