Jean Baudrillard 1929-2007, French social theorist and cultural critic. Trained as a sociologist, he taught at the Univ. of Paris X, Nanterre, from 1966 to 1987 and was a prolific writer. Influenced by
Marxism
, Roland
Barthes
, Thorstein
Veblen
, Marshall
McLuhan
, and others, he began as a critic of the consumer society, arguing in such works as
The System of Objects
(1968, tr. 1996),
The Mirror of Production
(1973), and
Symbolic Exchange and Death
(1976, tr. 1993) that the individual acquires meaning though objects, which are valued for their symbolic cultural significance (rather than their usefulness or monetary worth) and the world is marked the implosion of economics, ...