Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents Series by Didier Eribon, George Chauncey, Michael Lucey, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault

On thinking the matter through, it doesn't seem exaggerated to assert that my coming out of the sexual closet, my desire to assume and assert my homosexuality, coincided within my personal trajectory with my shutting myself up inside what I might call a class closet. -- from "Returning to Reims"After his father dies, Didier Eribon returns to his hometown of Reims and rediscovers the working-class world he had left behind thirty years earlier... moreOn thinking the matter through, it doesn't seem exaggerated to assert that my coming out of the sexual closet, my desire to assume and assert my homosexuality, coincided within my personal trajectory with my shutting myself up inside what I might call a class closet. -- from "Returning to Reims"After his father dies, Didier Eribon returns to his hometown of Reims and rediscovers the working-class world he had left behind thirty years earlier. For years, Eribon had thought of his father largely in terms of the latter's intolerable homophobia. Yet his father's death provokes new reflection on Eribon's part about how multiple processes of domination intersect in a given life and in a given culture. Eribon sets out to investigate his past, the history of his family, and the trajectory of his own life. His story weaves together a set of remarkable reflections on the class system in France, on the role of the educational system in class identity, on the way both class and sexual identities are formed, and on the recent history of French politics, including the shifting voting patterns of the working classes -- reflected by Eribon's own family, which changed its allegiance from the Communist Party to the National Front."Returning to Reims" is a remarkable book of sociological inquiry and critical theory, of interest to anyone concerned with the direction of leftist politics in the contemporary world, and to anyone who has ever experienced how sexual identity can clash with other parts of one's identity. A huge success in France since its initial publication in 2009, "Returning to Reims" received enthusiastic reviews in "Le Monde, Liberation, L'Express, Les Inrockuptibles," and elsewhere. less

This book marks an important evolution in Jean Baudrillard's thought as he leavesbehind his older and better-known concept of the "simulacrum" and tackles the new problem of digitaltechnology acquiring organicity. The resulting world of cold communication and its indifferentalterity, seduction, metamorphoses, metastases, and transparency requires a new form of response... moreThis book marks an important evolution in Jean Baudrillard's thought as he leavesbehind his older and better-known concept of the "simulacrum" and tackles the new problem of digitaltechnology acquiring organicity. The resulting world of cold communication and its indifferentalterity, seduction, metamorphoses, metastases, and transparency requires a new form of response.Writing in the shadow of Marshall McLuhan, Baudrillard insists that the content of communication iscompletely without the only thing that is communicated is communication itself. He sees themasses writhing in an orgiastic ecstasy of communications. Baudrillard navigates the Object'smaelstrom with the euphoria of the astronaut reentering Earth's atmosphere with no possibility ofassistance from Mission Control. less

In this shimmering manifesto against dialectics, Jean Baudrillard constructs a condemnatory ethics of the "false problem." One foot in social science, the other in speculation about the history of ideas, this text epitomizes the assault that Baudrillard has made on the history of Western philosophy... moreIn this shimmering manifesto against dialectics, Jean Baudrillard constructs a condemnatory ethics of the "false problem." One foot in social science, the other in speculation about the history of ideas, this text epitomizes the assault that Baudrillard has made on the history of Western philosophy. Posing such anti-questions as "Must we put information on a diet?" Baudrillard cuts across historical and contemporary space with profound observations on American corporations, arms build-up, hostage-taking, transgression, truth, and the fate of theory itself. Not only an important map of Baudrillard's continuing examination of evil, this essay is also a profound critique of 1980s American politics at the time when the author was beginning to have his incalculable effect on a generation of this country's artists and theorists. less

My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role... moreMy intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role.Michel Foucault - Discourse & Truth, Concluding remarks.Six lectures given by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983. less