Jean Baudrillard has passed away at 77

Here is a bio.  Here are obituaries.  It is easy enough to attach his apparently outrageous claims and paint him as a postmodern nihilist.  Looking past the surface, virtually all of his books have at least five startling and insightful sentences.  Here is one:

“Seduction is always more singular and sublime than sex and it commands the higher price”

Or try this:

“At male strip shows, it is still the women that we
watch, the audience of women and their eager faces.  They are more
obscene than if they were dancing naked themselves.”

Here are many others.  I always read him as a moralist.  None of the summaries do him justice.  Baudrillard was a major thinker of our age, and I am sad I can no longer look forward to new books from his hand.

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