Sadie Plant (Re: postmodernism and neoclassical economics

[Michael Hoover]

> I was just reading some early Baudrillard, from when he was still something
> of a Marxist, and it's not half bad. When did he really go around the bend?
> And what does your average Baudrillard fan really like? Surely not what I
> was reading (i.e., written before The Mirror of Production).
> Doug

agree with you about early B...

have _The System of Objects_ (1968) and _Consumer Society_ (1970) - his
attempts to extend marxist critique beyond mode of production - ever been 
fully translated into English?...

_Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign_ (1972) - B's attempt to 
supplement marxism with a radical theory of language - wasn't fully 
available in English until 1981, long after he'd abandoned any pretense 
to affinity with marxism...

B initiates case against marxism with _Mirror of Production_ (1973, Eng. 
trans., 1975)...with_Symbolic Exchange & Death_ (1976, not aware of full 
Eng. trans.), he abandons whatever was 'still left' and embarks on path 
of fatalism...

as Tony Smith suggests, B claims to be beyond productivism, beyond needs 
& truth, beyond ideology, and beyond revolution - see _In the Shadow of 
Silent Majorities (1981, Eng. trans., 1983),  _Simulations_ (1983),
_Forget Foucault_ (1987)...

as for average B fan, I'll guess collected essays in _America_ (1986, 
Eng, trans., 1988) and _Cool Memories_ (1987), hyperbole quotient
is really jacked up in both...Michael Hoover (trying to recall who
it was that said Forget Baudrillard)