Book Review: Grace, Baudrillard’s Challenge

Victoria Grace.
Baudrillard’s Challenge: A Feminist Reading.
Routledge, 2000, 212 pp.
$CDN. 39.95 paper (0-415-18076-7), $CDN. 128.00 cloth (0-415-18075-9)

Baudrillard’s Challenge: a Feminist Reading is in my view a work both surprising and audacious. On reading this book I was doubly surprised. First, this book surprises through its problematic, which broadly seeks to rehabilitate the extremely popular yet very controversial work of the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard in the contemporary anglophone intellectual context. Second, it is surprising in its objectives: at all costs to convince contemporary feminist intellectuals of the validity and epistemological relevance of Baudrillardian theses (simulation, seduction, hyper-reality) for critical analyses of social relations of gender.

While recognizing the extent of the misunderstanding and differences between Baudrillard and the principal spokespersons of feminism on both sides of the Atlantic, Victoria Grace pleads with conviction for the integration of the Baudrillardian approach, which she considers complimentary to the theoretical intentions of contemporary feminism. When I began to read this sometimes arduous and difficult, but very interesting book, I ran into an obstacle: its raison d’être. Having followed in the past the vicissitudes of the unfortunate and often unpleasant confrontation between feminists and Jean Baudrillard, I spontaneously resisted a book on Baudrillard written in the year 2000 by a British specialist from Feminist Studies. In the eyes of this specialist in the Sociology of Culture and Contemporary Social Theory working in a francophone context, the epistemological validity of Jean Baudrillard’s theoretical edifice has never hung in any doubt. Fortunately, the erudition, passion, and theoretical adroitness of Victoria Grace — whose principal advantage is to grasp the nuances and idiosyncratic subtleties of Jean Baudrillard’s work — held my attention and one could even say re-seduced me!

In a highly rigourous and very convincing way, the author pursues unrelentingly the meticulous demonstration of the need to reconsider the place occupied by Baudrillard in the contemporary feminist theoretical tradition. By declaring right away that she is intellectually and emotionally francophile as well as feminist, Ms. Grace engages in a sustained and systematic debate with Anglo-American feminist theorists with a very clear idea in mind: to convince them to make a place (as they have done for other French authors such as Foucault) for Baudrillard in their theoretical pantheon.

It is at this specific level that I find the author’s undertaking most audacious. With the determination and passion typical of a fan she undertakes a fascinating, sustained, and meticulous dialogue with a remarkable number of (especially but not exclusively) contemporary anglophone thinkers. Her erudition is undeniable, her knowledge of the work of Baudrillard impressive, and her political passion tenacious. As she stresses in her introduction, the author engages with Baudrillard’s work. “This is not a book about Baudrillard: it is an engagement with his work,” she tells us on page 3. She remains faithful to this engagement throughout this vast undertaking by discussing and debating with her numerous interlocutors.

On the way, she crosses with assurance and ease the complex and often treacherous territory of Baudrillard’s thought with which she entertains a “mimetic” rapport. It is absolutely necessary to applaud this effort of systematization of Ms. Grace, who thus gives us, above and beyond her original intentions, a highly original synthesis of Baudrillard’s work. In my view, Baudrillard’s Challenge could easily serve as a reference work for any academic course on the thought of Jean Baudrillard. One finds here not only the theses of the great French sociologist but also those of his principal interlocutors, exegists, interpreters and critics both feminist and non-feminist, with whom Ms. Grace discusses in a critical way the different aspect of Baudrillard’s heritage.. Through an impressive network of solid references one rubs shoulders with and knocks against the perspectives of a phenomenal number of authors, who validate the seriousness of Grace’s enterprise and assure the rigour of her argumentation. The names and the works of the authors consulted follow in succession: Iriguary, Chodorow, Butler, Rose, Kristeva, Weir, Braidotti, de Beauvoir, Kirby de Lauretis, Strickland, Fraser, Bordo, di Stephano, Cook, Kellner, Poster, Gane, Tierney, Rojek, Goshorn. Her central hypothesis is that Baudrillard falls between the cracks of the different theoretical and political interests that have mobilized the Anglo-American intellectual scene, including the new left and feminism. Consciously or unconsciously, for ideological reasons or bad faith, these factions have slipped and deviated, according to her, from the work of Baudrillard and its primary objective of putting in place a critical re-reading of contemporary culture with the goal of displacing toward the universe of symbolic exchange and seduction the theoretical frontiers of inherited thought.

Especially in the last two chapters (“The Inévitable Seduction” and “Feminism and the Power Dissolution”) of Baudrillard’s Challenge the approach of Ms. Grace reaches its apex. In these final two parts of the text the two guiding threads of the book — the re-reading of Baudrillard’s work as it is gradually sketched across its principal works from Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe to La Transparence du mal, and the plea for the rehabilitation of Baudrillard’s theses in the feminist theoretical context — are pulled together. The author thus proposes to us the work of the feminist theorist Donna Haraway as a particularly successful example of this project so dear to her heart. Haraway’s 1991 Manifesto for Cyborgs, published in Simian, Cyborgs and Women demonstrates, according to Victoria Grace, the possibility of syncretism between Baudrillardian notions of simulacrum, simulation, hyper-reality, seduction and implosion, and a new feminist critique which transcends the ontological and epistemological rigidities of a feminism which on the reading of this work could be qualified as: historically and culturally ‘disembodied.’

Diane Pacom
Université d’Ottawa
dpacom@uottawa.ca



		Canadian Journal of Sociology Online March - April 2002 Victoria Grace. Baudrillard’s Challenge: A Feminist Reading. Routledge, 2000, 212 pp. $CDN. 39.95 paper (0-415-18076-7), $CDN. 128.00 cloth (0-415-18075-9) Baudrillard’s Challenge: a Feminist Reading is in my view a work both surprising and audacious. On reading this book I was doubly surprised. First, this book surprises through its problematic, which broadly seeks to rehabilitate the extremely popular yet very controversial work of the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard in the contemporary anglophone intellectual context. Second, it is surprising in its objectives: at all costs to convince contemporary feminist intellectuals of the validity and epistemological relevance of Baudrillardian theses (simulation, seduction, hyper-reality) for critical analyses of social relations of gender. While recognizing the extent of the misunderstanding and differences between Baudrillard and the principal spokespersons of feminism on both sides of the Atlantic, Victoria Grace pleads with conviction for the integration of the Baudrillardian approach, which she considers complimentary to the theoretical intentions of contemporary feminism. When I began to read this sometimes arduous and difficult, but very interesting book, I ran into an obstacle: its raison d’être. Having followed in the past the vicissitudes of the unfortunate and often unpleasant confrontation between feminists and Jean Baudrillard, I spontaneously resisted a book on Baudrillard written in the year 2000 by a British specialist from Feminist Studies. In the eyes of this specialist in the Sociology of Culture and Contemporary Social Theory working in a francophone context, the epistemological validity of Jean Baudrillard’s theoretical edifice has never hung in any doubt. Fortunately, the erudition, passion, and theoretical adroitness of Victoria Grace — whose principal advantage is to grasp the nuances and idiosyncratic subtleties of Jean Baudrillard’s work — held my attention and one could even say re-seduced me! In a highly rigourous and very convincing way, the author pursues unrelentingly the meticulous demonstration of the need to reconsider the place occupied by Baudrillard in the contemporary feminist theoretical tradition. By declaring right away that she is intellectually and emotionally francophile as well as feminist, Ms. Grace engages in a sustained and systematic debate with Anglo-American feminist theorists with a very clear idea in mind: to convince them to make a place (as they have done for other French authors such as Foucault) for Baudrillard in their theoretical pantheon. It is at this specific level that I find the author’s undertaking most audacious. With the determination and passion typical of a fan she undertakes a fascinating, sustained, and meticulous dialogue with a remarkable number of (especially but not exclusively) contemporary anglophone thinkers. Her erudition is undeniable, her knowledge of the work of Baudrillard impressive, and her political passion tenacious. As she stresses in her introduction, the author engages with Baudrillard’s work. “This is not a book about Baudrillard: it is an engagement with his work,” she tells us on page 3. She remains faithful to this engagement throughout this vast undertaking by discussing and debating with her numerous interlocutors. On the way, she crosses with assurance and ease the complex and often treacherous territory of Baudrillard’s thought with which she entertains a “mimetic” rapport. It is absolutely necessary to applaud this effort of systematization of Ms. Grace, who thus gives us, above and beyond her original intentions, a highly original synthesis of Baudrillard’s work. In my view, Baudrillard’s Challenge could easily serve as a reference work for any academic course on the thought of Jean Baudrillard. One finds here not only the theses of the great French sociologist but also those of his principal interlocutors, exegists, interpreters and critics both feminist and non-feminist, with whom Ms. Grace discusses in a critical way the different aspect of Baudrillard’s heritage.. Through an impressive network of solid references one rubs shoulders with and knocks against the perspectives of a phenomenal number of authors, who validate the seriousness of Grace’s enterprise and assure the rigour of her argumentation. The names and the works of the authors consulted follow in succession: Iriguary, Chodorow, Butler, Rose, Kristeva, Weir, Braidotti, de Beauvoir, Kirby de Lauretis, Strickland, Fraser, Bordo, di Stephano, Cook, Kellner, Poster, Gane, Tierney, Rojek, Goshorn. Her central hypothesis is that Baudrillard falls between the cracks of the different theoretical and political interests that have mobilized the Anglo-American intellectual scene, including the new left and feminism. Consciously or unconsciously, for ideological reasons or bad faith, these factions have slipped and deviated, according to her, from the work of Baudrillard and its primary objective of putting in place a critical re-reading of contemporary culture with the goal of displacing toward the universe of symbolic exchange and seduction the theoretical frontiers of inherited thought. Especially in the last two chapters (“The Inévitable Seduction” and “Feminism and the Power Dissolution”) of Baudrillard’s Challenge the approach of Ms. Grace reaches its apex. In these final two parts of the text the two guiding threads of the book — the re-reading of Baudrillard’s work as it is gradually sketched across its principal works from Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe to La Transparence du mal, and the plea for the rehabilitation of Baudrillard’s theses in the feminist theoretical context — are pulled together. The author thus proposes to us the work of the feminist theorist Donna Haraway as a particularly successful example of this project so dear to her heart. Haraway’s 1991 Manifesto for Cyborgs, published in Simian, Cyborgs and Women demonstrates, according to Victoria Grace, the possibility of syncretism between Baudrillardian notions of simulacrum, simulation, hyper-reality, seduction and implosion, and a new feminist critique which transcends the ontological and epistemological rigidities of a feminism which on the reading of this work could be qualified as: historically and culturally ‘disembodied.’ Diane Pacom Université d’Ottawa dpacom@uottawa.ca http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/cjscopy/reviews/baudrillardeng.html March 2002 © CJS Online version français