
The Perfect Crime
Jean Baudrillard(Author)
Verso Books (Publisher)
Published on 17. August 1996
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-1-85984-044-3 (ISBN)
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Description
In this book, perhaps the most cogent expression of his mature thought, Jean Baudrillard turns detective in order to investigate a crime which he hopes may yet be solved: the 'murder' of reality. To solve the crime would be to unravel the social and technological processes by which reality has quite simply vanished under the deadly glare of media 'real time.'
But Baudrillard is not merely intending to lament the disappearance of the real, an occurrence he recently described as 'the most important event of modern history,' nor even to meditate upon the paradoxes of reality and illusion, truth and its masks. The Perfect Crime is also the work of a great moraliste: a penetrating examination of vital aspects of the social, political and cultural life of the 'advanced democracies' in the (very) late twentieth century.
However, whether stripping away the layers of hypocrisy which surround our smug perceptions of the former Yugoslavia, or deploring the New European Order characterized by 'white fundamentalism, protectionism, discrimination and control', the moraliste is also the deft and disturbing social theorist. Where critics like McLuhan once exposed the alienating consequences of 'the medium', Baudrillard lays bare the depredatory effects of an oppressive transparency on our social lives, of a relentless positivity on our critical faculties, and of a withering 'high definition' on our very sense of reality.
But Baudrillard is not merely intending to lament the disappearance of the real, an occurrence he recently described as 'the most important event of modern history,' nor even to meditate upon the paradoxes of reality and illusion, truth and its masks. The Perfect Crime is also the work of a great moraliste: a penetrating examination of vital aspects of the social, political and cultural life of the 'advanced democracies' in the (very) late twentieth century.
However, whether stripping away the layers of hypocrisy which surround our smug perceptions of the former Yugoslavia, or deploring the New European Order characterized by 'white fundamentalism, protectionism, discrimination and control', the moraliste is also the deft and disturbing social theorist. Where critics like McLuhan once exposed the alienating consequences of 'the medium', Baudrillard lays bare the depredatory effects of an oppressive transparency on our social lives, of a relentless positivity on our critical faculties, and of a withering 'high definition' on our very sense of reality.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 203 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
383 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85984-044-3 (9781859840443)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions

Persons
Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) began teaching sociology at the Universite de Paris-X in 1966. He retired from academia in 1987 to write books and travel until his death in 2007.