Abstract Jean Baudrillard’s notion of the hyperreal celebrates that we have moved beyond the age of metaphysics where the real was the standard of imitations. Now imitations have become more real than the reality they imitate. Baudrillard’s position emerged from critical theory, but maintained that, along with the age of metaphysics, we had moved beyond the “dramas of alienation.” In many of Baudrillard’s works, it seems that exploited people are in effect playing the role of alienated in society. I offer a deconstruction of this dangerous position by relying on literary analyses of Molière’s final play, The Hypochondriac, and Dan DeLillo’s novel, White Noise, as well as Denis Guénoun’s work on the political implications of theater. This deconstruction of Baudelaire’s hyperreal reveals the promise of an aesthetic phenomenological political critique.
Duane H. Davis (Wed,) studied this question.
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