MARCO GARZA

JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Historia del pensamiento poltico

Jean Baudrillard

Jean was one of the most influential philosophers from the modern age and his work
didnt stop there. He was also a sociologist, cultural critic, theorist of postmodernity and a very
prolific author. He was born in Reims, France on July 27, 1929. These werent good times in
France seeing how they were affected by the Great Depression at the beginning of the 30s. The
Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that originated in the United
States with the fall in stock prices and later on with the stock market crash. This in turn affected
the whole world, rich and poor countries, causing personal income, tax revenue, profits and
prices to drop, thus creating a substantial rise on unemployment.

Now these events might not be part of Jeans memories, but the fact that his family had
limited economical resources makes it a very important event in his life. His parents were mere
civil servants whilst his grandparents were peasant farmers. In fact, his family was so poor that
Jean was the first member of his family who had the opportunity to attend to university.

Another very important event that Jean lived through as he grew up was the Second
World War, which began when Jean was only 10 years old. Now from the war we know how
devastating it was and how millions of people were murdered, which is nothing but a horrible
environment for one to grow up in. Following these event came many changes in the worlds
system, beginning with a worldwide spread decolonization process. Now as we all know, at the
end of the Second World War France emerged as one of the victors, hence its veto power position
in the then-newly formed United Nations Security Council. But still that wasnt enough for
France to be able to maintain its colonies, which leads us to another important event in Jeans
life, the Algerian War.

This was a very important decolonization war that was characterized by guerrilla warfare,
maquis fighting, terrorism and torture on both sides. This event is important on Jeans life
because of the fact that it took place throughout the start of his adult life, seeing how it started in
1954, when Jean was barely 25 and ended in 1962, when Jean was 33 years old. So for the most
part of his early life, Jean grew up in a very hostile and sad environment.

Whilst these events were taking place in France, Jean moved out of his parents house in
Reims to Paris, so he could start attending Sorbonne University where he studied German
language and literature. This allowed him to later on start teaching German on several different
universities. As he did so, Jean was already starting to pass on his knowledge, for he started
publishing literature reviews and he also began translating the works of many different authors
such as Peter Weiss, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Soon after that, Jean got his PhD with his

doctoral thesis The System of Objects, under the tuition of some of his first influential
philosophers, Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/biography /

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/baudrillard/
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_matrix04.htm
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/utopia-deferred
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-9/