主編語

Abstract

Though French thinker Jean Baudrillard died in 2007, his ideas are still widely read and discussed. This issue of the Journal of Taipei Fine Arts Museum (referred to below as the Journal) takes "Baudrillard: Thoughts and Art" as its topic for a collection of essays, including revised versions of papers delivered at a pair of conferences held in France and Taiwan on related topics. In themselves, these two conferences amply testify to the fact that Baudrillard continues to be enthusiastically discussed and that his ideas serve as a major spark for contemporary thought and have not passed away with his person.

The conference that took place in France was held where Baudrillard worked and studied for many years, Université Nanterre, recently renamed Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre. Baudrillard received his doctorate in sociology at Nanterre for his thesis The System of Objects (Le Système des objets) and stayed on at the university as an instructor. 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of Nanterre's founding, and a series of special events and conferences were held commemorating the university's celebrated instructors. The conference on Baudrillard was listed among them. At this conference, a noted scholar of sociology noted that for many years Baudrillard was considered taboo among French sociology departments. If students cited him in doctorate dissertations, they would be rebuffed and asked to delete the references. Against this background, this Nanterre conference, held in late November 2014, represented a renewed acceptance of Baudrillard by the academy and was of immense symbolic importance. The conference was titled "Jean Baudrillard: l'expérience de la singularité." Conducted over the course of three days, its contents were broad, ranging from sociology to cultural theory, from Baudrillard's political critiques to commentary on current affairs, from the style of his writing to his relationship to film and news video imagery. There were a large variety of topics, and each had its deliberators.

For this issue of the Journal, "Baudrillard: Thoughts and Art," we have invited three essays from the 2014 Nanterre conference.^[1] One is by professor Françoise Gaillard, who early on attended Baudrillard's lectures at the University of California, San Diego and has a deep familiarity and understanding of the full body of Baudrillard's thought and style. The topic of her paper continues a discussion between this issue's special theme editor and professor Gaillard begun in 2013 at a conference commemorating Baudrillard at the National Library of France: how can one finally (in the library) classify this unclassifiable personage? At that time our common idea stemmed from his "radical thought" (pensée radicale); I am delighted that she was later able to write it as "Baudrillard: A Decisive Thinker," an essay which offers a comprehensive discussion of his style of thought, as well as her personal interpretation of his notion of "radical thought." Another paper from the Nanterre conference comes from Jean-Paul Curnier. Curnier previously collaborated with Baudrillard on the idea of "insider language," and from this point of view offers his own explanations and interpretations of a series of attacks Baudrillard raised against contemporary art. A former comrade in arms of Baudrillard, he also expounds upon the term "contemporary art" and its historical development in France as a background to these events, which in itself is worthy of interest. Another essay of French origin comes from Baudrillard himself. It is a transcription from a 1999 public dialogue at an exhibition of photography at the art center of the University of Toulouse II - Le Mirai, a university in the southwest of France. The moderator of that discussion, professor Anne Sauvageot, included this documentation in a new book on Baudrillard published in 2014.^[2] At the Nanterre conference, she generously agreed to allow a reprint of this freshly unveiled document, and we are deeply grateful to her for this act of friendship and good will. In this transcription, we can see how Baudrillard responds to the candid questions of the audience. These are questions that were commonly raised about his dual identities, acting both in the role of a thinker and a creator. They are highly representative, and his answers serve to clarify many doubts. Finally in French, Baudrillard's wife Marine Baudrillard also provides a short text. After offering her own special dedication to this issue, she further provides several anecdotes and describes him as he lived in this world. Her memories of Baudrillard are impossible to adequately describe, and though her essay is short, it is extremely precious.

This theme section will also publish four essays in Chinese. Of these, the essays by Chu Yuan-horng, Pascal K. Kao and myself were previously presented in earlier versions as part of "Baudrillard: Thought and Art", a conference organized by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (referred to below as TFAM), which was coincidentally held in a space in the museum's library. The editorial board of this journal expressed its feeling that TFAM should raise standards of scholarship not only by inviting outside board members to stand on the editorial board, but also by promoting internationalization of the journal. As a result, it was proposed that activities involving special themes in combination with scholarship should be held, and that this journal would be able to utilize spaces inside the museum. In this way the power of scholarship can be injected into the museum, improving the quality of research and bringing it on par with other important museums around the world by being fully involved in the production of knowledge and the latest developments. Quite happily, these three essays, with the addition of a fourth submitted essay from Ye Yu-tyan, contain many ideas that intersect with those in the essays mailed over from France, making for a full and highly provocative dialogue. Finally, it is also worth mentioning that these local essays were written by Baudrillard scholars of different generations, thus signifying that a new group of scholars is coming to this topic of research.