Baudrillard and the Media: A Critical Introduction

by William Merrin

'Baudrillard and the Media' is the first in-depth critical study of Jean Baudrillard's media theory. Rejecting the common positioning of Baudrillard within the discipline as a postmodernist it argues instead for the necessity of a fuller reading of his ideas and critical project.

Merrin offers an overview and evaluation of his key arguments and themes, focusing especially upon the organising principle of his his theory of symbolic exchange and critique of the semiotic and of simulation. Upon this basis the book also resituates Baudrillard within media theory, developing an original, critical re-reading of his relationship with McLuhanism and arguing for the significance instead of hitherto neglected influences such as Boorstin.
Emphasizing his critical value and contemporary relevance, 'Baudrillard and the Media' also provides the most detailed exploration yet of Baudrillard's theory of the non-event, considering its applicability through case studies of his controversial analyses of the Gulf War, of 9/11 and the Afghan and Iraq Wars and of his own appearance in the film The Matrix. Considering also Baudrillard's discussion of cinema, his theory and personal practice of photography and his critique of new media, the book concludes with an evaluation of his place within media and communication studies and an argument for his importance for this field.
Students and scholars of the media, and media theory in particular, will welcome this clear and comprehensive study.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2005

About the author

William Merrin is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies at Swansea University. He is the author of Baudrillard and the Media (2005). His research and teaching interests centre on media theory, new media, cyberculture, media history, and popular music.

Reviews

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A great and (still) badly needed survey of Baudrillard's media theory. Merrin's reading of Baudrillard hinges on symbolic exchange (like in Jean Baudrillard: Against Banality) and the influence of Durkheimian sociology (like in Baudrillard's Bestiary: Baudrillard and Culture), and leverages Baudrillard to challenge the reigning coding/decoding theory of media consumption from British cultural studies, the classic theory of media events in Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History, and even McLuhan (Merrin instead suggests that Boorstin and his book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, though Baudrillard rarely mentions it, is a more important influence). Throughout the text, but especially in the introduction, Merrin also provides a very useful account of the reception of Baudrillard's work in media studies and academia as a whole. Some of Merrin's criticisms of Baudrillard connect (such as his argument that Baudrillard's fatal, ironical readings of events are too effective, which Baudrillard himself was forced to concede after books like The Gulf War Did Not Take Place), while others don't (Merrin suggests that Baudrillard mistakenly views the mass as a purely passive consumer of the dominant code, which isn't nearly the whole story in In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities). It would also have been nice to see Merrin explore why Baudrillard downplayed symbolic exchange in his work after the 1980s; it seems like something that must be confronted if you are going to take his later work, and not just Symbolic Exchange and Death, seriously as Merrin does.