Jean Baudrillard (July 29, 1929 March 6, 2007) (IPA: [ bo.di.

.ja][2]) was a French cultural theorist, sociologist, philosopher, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and poststructuralism.

Life
Baudrillard was born in Reims, north-eastern France, on July 29, 1929. He told interviewers that his grandparents were peasants and his parents were civil servants. He became the first of his family to attend university when he moved to the Sorbonne University in Paris [3]. There he studied German, which led to him to begin teaching the subject at a provincial lyce, where he remained from 1958 until his departure in 1966. While teaching Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature, and translated the works of such authors as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht and Wilhelm Mhlmann[4]. Toward the end of his time as a German teacher Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology, eventually completing his doctoral thesis Le Systme des objets (The System of Objects) under the tutelage of Henri Lefebvre. Subsequently, he began teaching the subject at the Universit de Paris-X Nanterre, at the time a politically radical institution which would become heavily involved in the events of May 1968[5]. At Nanterre he took up a position as Matre Assistant (Assistant Professor), then Matre de Confrences (Associate Professor), eventually becoming a professor after completing his accreditation, L'Autre par lui-mme (The Other, by himself). In 1986 he moved to IRIS (Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socioconomique) at the Universit de Paris-IX Dauphine, where he spent the latter part of his teaching career. During this time he had begun to move away from sociology as a discipline (particularly in its "classical" form), and, after ceasing to teach full time, he rarely identified himself with any particular discipline,

although he remained linked to the academic world. During the 1980s and 1990s his books had gained a wide audience, and in his last years he became, to an extent, an intellectual celebrity[6], being published often in the Frenchand English-speaking popular press. He nonetheless continued supporting the Institut de Recherche sur l'Innovation Sociale at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and was Satrap at the Collge de Pataphysique. He also collaborated at the Canadian philosophical review Ctheory, where he was abundantly cited. He died on March 6, 2007 at the age of 77.