18/12/2025
"As for academia, I was always a traitor to it from the outset. I was never really part of it. I was in teaching because that was the only practical possibility. I never felt like a pedagogue, even if I didn’t always find that role unpleasant. I’m not a researcher either. I was always split off from the educational institution. I played the renegade to some extent. The university authorities replied in kind and I didn’t rise through the profession. And in fact that’s all over now, I’m out of it. There were some good moments. It was good to be there in 1968. But I’ve simply passed through the university. I’d say the same of the wider intellectual milieu.
There were people I liked – Sartre, then Barthes, but practically no one after that. I’m objectively part of that world and, if I don’t have any references or role-models, I don’t have any disciples, school or networks around me either. I’ve never had any followers inside the academic institution. This isn’t betrayal, but a strategy of ‘hanging loose’ and of freedom that was there from the outset."
(Jean Baudrillard, From hyperreality to disappearance)
"As for academia, I was always a traitor to it from the outset. I was never really part of it. I was in teaching because that was the only practical possibility. I never felt like a pedagogue, even if I didn’t always find that role unpleasant. I’m not a researcher either. I was always split off from the educational institution. I played the renegade to some extent. The university authorities replied in kind and I didn’t rise through the profession. And in fact that’s all over now, I’m out of it. There were some good moments. It was good to be there in 1968. But I’ve simply passed through the university. I’d say the same of the wider intellectual milieu.
There were people I liked – Sartre, then Barthes, but practically no one after that. I’m objectively part of that world and, if I don’t have any references or role-models, I don’t have any disciples, school or networks around me either. I’ve never had any followers inside the academic institution. This isn’t betrayal, but a strategy of ‘hanging loose’ and of freedom that was there from the outset."
(Jean Baudrillard, From hyperreality to disappearance)
