Comments on: Baudrillard passes. Do anthropologists care?

By: jeremy hunsinger

jeremy hunsinger — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:08:20 +0000

hmm, actually his critique of consumer society is grounded in something entirely different than debords, though they do overlap and have the same conclusions. baudrillard’s critique is primarily semiological, based on the critique of binarity and its relation to capital.

By: Seth

Seth — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:28:11 +0000

But Baudrillard borrowed liberally from his contemporaries: his critique of consumer society is in many ways a simplified version of Guy Debord. And Derrida produced a critique of binary semiotics around the same time, drawing on Peirce’s much earlier work.

For a typical desultory reference to Baudrillard in a work of serious cultural anthropology see Simon Harrison’s excellent “The Politics of Resemblance” (J. Royal Anth Inst, 2002) p. 216.

By: jeremy hunsinger

jeremy hunsinger — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:17:40 +0000

The question with baudrillard is less ‘what effect will he have?’ than ‘why aren’t you footnoting him, as those are clearly his ideas?’ his work is so expansive in critical anthropology that people don’t even cite it any more, they just assume his insights into sign systems, consumer society, design, etc. are common knowledge as they have been parsed through his respondents and interpreters since the late 60’s. Yes, many people dismiss baudrillard’s later works, but few can help realizing, after reading his early works where certain corrections of mauss originated, where the attacks on binary signs and the politics of binarities in western culture arose, and there are other insights, but people tend to only read them in the third or fourth generation now.

By: orange.

orange. — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:12:32 +0000

“What sort of impact will Baudrillard be remembered as having in the long turn? And what do anthropologists think of his work? My impression is: not much.”

Which anthropologists are you talking about?

“Maybe this means the 80s really are over?”

The 80s “being over” seems–at least–as hard to argue as the 19th century “being over”. Perhaps you could make some of your implications explicit..?

“.. he really ought to be remembered as the guy who inspired The Matrix.”

From my non-representative point of view this honour is due to Lem.

By: Rex

Rex — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 07:57:12 +0000

Full URL for the Sturtevant essay looks like its
http://www.sturtevant.com/wcs/william_curtis_sturtevant_anthropologist.html

By: Jason Baird Jackson

Jason Baird Jackson — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 02:30:57 +0000

The only real link is the fact that they were roughly age mates and both have passed in the same season, but Smithsonian anthropologist William C. Sturtevant has also just died. He had a very significant impact on several areas of research (linguistic anthropology, museum anthropology, ethnohistory, history of anthropology, ethnobotany, Native American studies etc.) and he played a remarkable role as a leader in the field, including service as AAA president, American Ethnological Society president, American Society for Ethnohistory president, and Council for Museum Anthropology president. I have posted an obituary for him on the Museum Anthropology blog (museumanthropology.blogspot.com) and a detailed biographical essay by William Merrill is now posted at http://www.sturtevant.com/. I hope that it is o.k. that I took this opportunity to note his passing here in this context.