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The dust cover of this, the third volume in the Cool Memories series, proclaims Jean Baudrillard "the most important French thinker of the past twenty years." Readers of this book may well be puzzled by this claim. There is no doubt that in places Baudrillard displays, if not brilliance, an ability to conceptualize history and society in thought-provoking ways. But this book is uneven and, in and of itself, it hardly justifies the rather lofty claims made on Baudrillard's behalf.
Part of the problem here is the format. As the title suggests, this book is not, as so many others of Baudrillard's are, an essay in social theory. Rather, it is a collection of Baudrillard's rather diverse reflections from the period 1991-1995 (although the title page suggests that it is between 1990 and 1995). None of these entries is longer than a few paragraphs. Some are just one sentence. At times Baudrillard waxes poetic: "The cool, crisp feel of the pillow in summer is the cool, crisp feel of despair," at others, ironic: "The imbroglio of safety and death. In Quebec, where the use of safety belts has considerably lowered the death rate from road accidents, there is a shortage of organs for transplant." At other times still, this book resembles a diaristic self-analysis: "These women who are unreal in so far as they are a fetishized part of myself. Hysteria of feminine projection, without which I would still be prey to that worse part of myself: masculine hypochondria." None of this really seems to have much to do with social theory at all. Thus, having been seduced into reading (or even buying) this book by the acme of academic marketing (the claim that herein lies the wisdom of yet another major French theorist) readers will be forgiven for feeling somewhat cheated. For this mish mash of dubious poetry, more dubious self-analysis, and other diverse Baudrillardiana is at least as prominent, here, as his more serious theoretical reflections.
Yet even if one is able to keep the theoretical and critical concerns of this...