French Fare

Jean Baudrillard was featured in a Q&A interview in the November 20th edition of the New York Times Magazine. In an exchange with writer Deborah Solomon, the French philosopher talks about the recent riots in France, what's better about America, and how useless French theory is. Highlights from the piece include: 

At 76, you are still pushing your famous theory about "simulation" and the "simulacrum," which maintains that media images have become more convincing and real than reality.

All of our values are simulated. What is freedom? We have a choice between buying one car or buying another car? It's a simulation of freedom.

So you don't think that the U.S. invaded Iraq to spread freedom?

What we want is to put the rest of the world on the same level of masquerade and parody that we are on, to put the rest of the world into simulation, so all the world becomes total artifice and then we are all-powerful. It's a game.

When you say "we," who are you talking about? In your new book, The Conspiracy of Art, you are pretty hard on this country.

France is a byproduct of American culture. We are all in this; we are globalized. When Jacques Chirac says, "No!" to Bush about the Iraq war, it's a delusion. It's to insist on the French as an exception, but there is no French exception.

Click here for the complete interview.

More about Baudrillard and his recent reading in New York City can be found in the 11/28 issue of The New Yorker in The Talk of the Town.