"Nothing makes us all philosophers"
Tim Hulse, The Independent , May 11, 1997


"The great philosophical question used to be ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Today, the real question is ‘Why is there nothing rather than something?’"

So writes the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in his most recent book, The Perfect Crime. It’s a contentious view obviously, since most of us would probably agree that the great question of today is actually: ‘Peter Mandelson - why?’ But Baudrillard has never shrunk from expressing controversial opinions. In the past he has put forward the thesis that the Gulf war never actually took place, while The Perfect Crime attempts to explain why reality no longer exists.

The world is split on Baudrillard, or at least the tiny proportion of the world that is aware of his existence. He tends to get a hard time from the mainstream intelligentsia (the heavyweight art critic Robert Hughes called his writing "a thick prophylactic against understanding"), whereas he is revered as the high priest of postmodernism by rock critics, professors of communication studies and young, bohemian types.

I spoke to Baudrillard at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, where he had arrived from his home in Paris to speak on the subject of the millennium. He’s a short, dapper, rather rotund fellow with bushy eyebrows and the kind of Tefal head you would expect to find on the shoulders of one of the world’s great thinkers. Healthily tanned, he looks none the worse for 67 years of deep reflection. A former professor of sociology, he no longer teaches but spends his time writing and traveling.

I have to admit I was nervous about this meeting. Having spent several hours attempting to make sense of The Perfect Crime, I’d finally given up in despair. (I think it was when I reached the bit where he writes, "The absolute rule of thought is to give back the world as it was given to us - unintelligible. And, if possible, to render it a little more unintelligible." He’d certainly succeeded there.) And Baudrillard seemed quite nervous, too, although it has to be said this was probably more to do with a self-consciousness about his halting English than any worries he might have had about locking horns with the intellectual dwarf sitting before him.

I began with the obvious question. Is Jean Baudrillard real? He laughed and took it in his stride. "Maybe I am the artefact of myself," he said and laughed even louder. I think this was a philosophical joke. Then he went on to explain. "Nobody is very identical to himself and neither me, but . . . neither you. Ha ha! The worst would be that people become identical to themselves. That would be very catastrophical. It’s a perpetual game between absence and presence and so on. Then I am not myself and you are not yourself and the world is not itself and, er ... fortunately."

It was becoming clear that Baudrillard is one of those people who writes in the same way that he speaks. We proceeded to discuss other important matters and I’ll just give you the highlights. Reality: "It exists maybe, but I don’t believe in it." The Gulf war: "It was a pure technological event, a virtual event . . . even if there were many thousands dead and so on." Hypersexual sex: not much fun, apparently. And, of course, the meaning of life: "In itself, life has no sense."

Sadly, Monsieur Baudrillard is not familiar enough with the Spice Girls for him to be able to say which one is his favourite. "The Spice Girls? Is it a book?" And then he was off to address a packed house of young bohemian types, who hung on his every word. And the great philosopher’s take on the millennium? "The year 2000 will not take place," he said, "because the history of this century has already come to an end." I suppose in 964 days’ time we’ll know if he’s right.

 

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