define:symbolic
February 27, 2008
Baudrillard and Symbolic Exchange
January 6, 2008
This is my Master’s Thesis on the writings of French sociologist Jean Baudrillard with
special emphasis on his concept of “symbolic exchange“. Largely known as a media
philosopher with a unique style of language and thinking, Baudrillard became famous
with the term simulation – a cultural state where media make for a sign-saturated,
hyperreal environment, where reality is lost. This paper argues that simulation has been
misinterpreted on the grounds of a Platonic phallacy in the discourse around Baudrillard
in the postmodernism debate. Instead, this paper traces Baudrillard’s roots in Emile
Durkheim’s investigations of „collective representations“ and religion among primitive
peoples. Durkheim’s writings on the primitive is presented alongside the media theory of
Marshal McLuhan and his followers as an important background for Baudrillard.
The paper traces Baudrillards windy road to simulation from his earlier writings on
consumerism, across his critique of Semiotics and Marxism to the crucial concept of
critical reversal called „symbolic exchange“. In an attempt to circumvent the
epistemological “desert of the real“ this paper argues that “symbolic exchange“can be
employed as a useful concept to analyse networked communication on the basis of
voluntary and reciprocal human relations. The paper includes references to a large body
of secondary literature and in-depth explorations of Baudrillard’s idiosyncratic
vocabulary.
I offer the complete file for download under a by-nc-nd licence here. Comments, remarks and requests for partial translations are welcome. The file is as yet only available in German.
