Baudrillard, Translingual Poet

Abstract

This article examines Jean Baudrillard’s status as a translingual writer, particularly through his performance of “Motel Suicide” (1996a) at the 1996 conference “Chance: Days in the Desert” in Nevada. It argues that Baudrillard’s bilingual (French-English) performance stages ideas about translation that had become increasingly crucial to his theoretical project. Offering the first close reading of the performance itself, this article begins by retracing Baudrillard’s theoretical engagement with cultural translation, particularly through his translingual experiences in the U.S. This framework explains not only how he found himself in this role of performer in the American west, but also how the performance articulated a vision of translingual exchange, translation, and polyvocality as critical responses to a sense of alienation in the modern era.

Keywords:

• Jean Baudrillard (author)
• translation
• translingualism
• performance studies
• America
• Motel Suicide (title)

Notes

1 See in particular essays by Anne Laurent, “Cette Bière n’est pas une Bière,” published originally in Théâtre/Publique, Revue du Théâtre de Gennevilliers (July–August 1991), translated here by Mike Gane and G. Salemohamed; and Jacques Henric and Guy Scarpetta’s interview “America as Fiction,” originally in Art Press (May 1986), translated by Nicholas Zurbrugg.

2 “Chance: Days in the Desert, November 8–10, 1996, starring Jean Baudrillard and Allucquère.” The program’s copyright titles it “Baudrillard in the Desert.”

3 Manuscript faxed on 31 October 1996. Sylvère Lotringer Papers and Semiotext(e) Archive, MSS.221, Series IIA, Box 13, folder 36. Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

4 Letter to Sylvère Lotringer (22 December 1983), Sylvère Lotringer Papers and Semiotext(e) Archive, MSS.221, Series IA, Box 1, folder 53. Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

5 My thanks to Tara Hart, archivist at the Whitney, for locating the original audiocassette and digitizing the lecture for me. Throughout the lecture, Baudrillard was careful to situate himself as someone ill-equipped to make evaluative statements about any movement’s aesthetic value. There was no Q&A period following the lecture. Because of the lecture’s popularity, Lotringer staged a repeat performance at Columbia University; one hypothesis is that Baudrillard’s oft-quoted line, if not inaccurate, was part of the Q&A at Columbia.

6 Access to the complete recording can be found here: https://www.ubu.com/sound/baudrillard.html (accessed 29 August 2023).

7 “Motel-Suicide,” typed manuscript. Sylvère Lotringer Papers and Semiotext(e) Archive, MSS.221, Series IA, Box 1, folder 53. Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

8 In Baudrillard’s oral recitation, he removes his reference to Zarathoustra, which had been present both in the Turner translation and in the original French: “Passer comme le vent de la fin du jour / Finir comme une idole éclairée de tous côtés / Sourire à cette lumière diffuse qui enveloppe les objets de la dénégation / Saluer le point de non-retour / Zarathoustra. Éthique du crépuscule” (Baudrillard 1987b, 127).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara Kippur

Sara Kippur is Associate Professor of French and Chair of the Department of Language & Culture Studies at Trinity College (Hartford, CT). She is the author of Writing It Twice: Self-translation and the Making of a World Literature in French (Northwestern University Press, 2015) and co-editor of Being Contemporary: French Literature, Culture, and Politics Today (Liverpool University Press, 2016). Her articles have appeared in venues such as PMLA, MLN, and Yale French Studies, and she is currently completing a new monograph titled Projects for a Revolution in New York: How French Literature Became American.