When Fatal Strategies was first published in French in 1983, it represented a tu
rning point for Jean Baudrillard: an utterly original, and for many readers, utt
erly bizarre book that offered a theory as proliferative, ecstatic, and hallucin
atory as the postmodern world it endeavored to describe. Arguing against the pre
determined outcomes of dialectical thought with his renowned, wry, ambivalent pa
ssion, with this volume Jean Baudrillard mounted an attack against the "false pr
oblems" posed by Western philosophy. If his Marxist days were firmly behind him,
Baudrillard here indicated that metaphysics had also gone the way of sociology
and politics: the contemporary world demanded nothing less than Pataphysics, Alf
red Jarry's absurdist philosphy that described the laws of the universe suppleme
ntary to this one. In effect, with Fatal Strategies, Baudrillard became Baudrill
ard. In his extrapolationist manner, Baudrillard sought to replace Western philo
sophy's circular arguments with a ritualistic Theater of Cruelty. Using this lin
e of thought developed in Fatal Strategies, Baudrillard went on, throughout the
1980s, to find new and shatteringly accurate ways of discussing American corpora
tocracy, arms build-up, and hostage taking. Fatal Strategies asserts a profound
critique of American politics, and it is an important step towards his examinati
on of evil.Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a philosopher, sociologist, cultural
critic, and theorist of postmodernity who challenged all existing theories of c
ontemporary society with humor and precision. An outsider in the French intellec
tual establishment, he was internationally renowned as a twenty-first century vi
sionary, reporter, and provocateur. His Simulations (1983) instantly became a cu
lt classic and made him a controversial voice in the world of politics and art.
