The Transparency of Evil

In this, his most important collection of essays since Le systeme des objets, Jean Baudrillard contemplates Western culture "after the orgy" -- the orgy, that is, of the revolutions of the 1960s. The sexual revolution has led, he argues, not to sexual liberation but to a reign of transvestism, to a confusion of the categories of man and woman -- to the "androgenous and Frankenstein appeal of a Michael Jackson." The revolution in art has led to a "transaesthetic realm of indifference." The cybernetic revolution has blurred the distinction between man and machine, while the political revolution has led to a 'transpolitics' that merely simulates old political forms. Such are the points of Baudrillard's compass as he steers his way through the mental landscape of this febrile fin de siecle.