Richard G. Smith

David B. Clarke

Originally published between 1968 and 2014, these 25 interviews include material translated into English for the first time and new transcriptions of otherwise unavailable English-language material from now discontinued video and audio sources. The guiding theme of the collection is Baudrillard's engagement with culture. The implications of the implosion of Western culture are dissected and documented in the rich range of material included here.

Uncollected Interviews

Jean Baudrillard: the Disappearance of Culture

Marcus A. Doel

Kate M. L. Housiaux

This reader offers an essential selection of the best work on the Consumer Society. It brings together in an engaging, surprising, and thought provoking way, a diverse range of topics and theoretical perspectives.

The Consumption Reader

Valerie Crawford Pfannhauser

Mobility has long been a defining feature of modern societies, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the various 'stopping places'_hotels, motels, and the like_that this mobility presupposes. If the paradoxical qualities of fixed places dedicated to facilitating movement have been overlooked by a variety of commentators, film-makers have shown remarkable prescience and consistency in engaging with these 'still points' around which the world is made to turn. Hotels and motels play a central role in a multitude of films, ranging across an immensely wide variety of genres, eras, and national cinemas. Whereas previous film theorists have focused on the movement implied by road movies and similar genres, the outstanding contributions to this volume extend the recent engagement with space and place in film studies, providing a series of fascinating explorations of the cultural significance of stopping places, both on screen and off. Ranging from the mythical elegance of the Grand Hotel, through the uncanny spaces of the Bates motel, to Korean 'love motels,' the wealth of insights, from a variety of theoretical perspectives, that this volume delivers is set to change our understanding of the role played by stopping places in an increasingly fluid world.

Hotels and Motels on Film

Moving Pictures/Stopping Places

William Merrin

Associate Professor in Human Geography Richard G Smith

Marcus Doel

Jean Baudrillard was one of the most influential, radical, and visionary thinkers of our age. His ideas have had a profound bearing on countless fields, from art and politics to science and technology. Once hailed as the high priest of postmodernity, Baudrillard’s sophisticated theoretical analyses far surpass such simplistic caricatures. Bringing together Baudrillard’s most accomplished and perceptive commentators, this book assesses his legacy for the twenty-first century. It includes two outstanding essays by Baudrillard: a remarkable, previously unpublished work entitled ‘The vanishing point of communication,’ and one of Baudrillard’s final texts, ‘On disappearance’, a veritable tour de force that serves as a culmination of his theoretical trajectory and a provocation to a new generation of thinkers. Employing Baudrillard’s key concepts, such as simulation, disappearance, and symbolic exchange, and deploying his most radical strategies, such as escalation, seduction, and fatality, the volume’s contributors offer a series of thought-provoking analyses of everything from art to politics, and from laughter to terror. It will be essential reading for anyone concerned with the fate of the world in the new millennium.

David B. Clarke

Books

Your next favorite book is out there