This book is so needlessly obtuse, that even when Baudrillard makes an interesting argument, it is hard to identify supporting evidence. Maybe he wanted to parallel the simulacrum of a war with the simulacrum of an essay. It's a real shame since he seems on the precipice of making compelling points about the pre-determinedness of the Gulf War. Baudrillard takes as given that, even in 1991, we were living in a post-truth world, and rather than giving the reader any anchoring arguments or facts he simply provides another space in which to float.

Mycket bra bok om det simulakrala i medias 'skildring' av 'kuwaitkriget'. Dvs. att den konstanta strömmen av noggrant kurerad information ger en skev bild av ett sanitärt krig vilket därtill överskuggar den 'verkliga' konflikten.

Always grateful for well-written introductions for these types of texts. Paul Patton does a really superb job summarizing Baudrillard's work and addressing some of its criticisms, while also providing a roadmap for the reader. As far as the text itself is concerned, Baudrillard's provocations are at the very least, worth sitting with and thinking deeply about.

This passage stuck with me:

"...Americans can only imagine and combat an enemy in their own image. They are at once both missionaries and converts of their own way of life, which they triumphally project onto the world. They cannot imagine the Other, nor therefore personally make war upon it. What they make war upon is the alterity of the other, and what they want is to reduce that alterity, to convert it or failing that to annihilate it if it proves irreducible..."

relevant given the current wars in ukraine and palestine

the language seeming to imply that we as the viewers are beholden to the same violence as those experiencing it feels somewhat callous but there's a degree of provocateur-ism that defines these essays

that being said there's a lot to think about in terms of 1. what the purpose of war was; 2. what function war serves now; 3. how we are led to interpret war through flashes of imagery. all in all i think the defining idea is that the concept or theatre of 'war' has come to greatly overshadow the actual conflict that takes place

2.5

Three short essays come together and form interesting point of view on Gulf War, its hyperreal vibe, depicting contradictory consequences of asymmetrical(which scale is hard to imagine) warfare(I feel like quite similar situation occuried during first weeks(month?) of Russio-Ukranian War, when the whole campaign looked like a virtual simulation of war).

Book is worth reading, especially if you're interested in learning game mechanics of nWo.

How can the media represent and misrepresent conflict?

It is a collection of three essays written before, during, and after the Gulf War which argue that the western media representations of the conflict were so far removed from reality that they were able to transform what was essentially an atrocity or a massacre into a conventional war, thus legitimizing it.

DNF - I feel like I got the jist of it after reading the first essay and a half. Some interesting points on how the theatre of war is rather more theatrical now with mass media and advanced technology, but after a while it's a bit repetitive.

Post-modern thinking at its finest.

Philosophy, not conspiracy. Just to start this book doesn't posit that nothing happened in the gulf in 91, rather Baudrillard posits that the physical actions that took place in the gulf were secondary and unrelated to the spectacle of war that was broadcast to the public. This book is kind of a follow-on from his theory of "simulacra and simulation", and goes into why the events on the ground don't entirely match up to their depictions on news media. I found this line of thinking incredibly interesting and sadly incredibly pertinent right now in the midst of two high-profile conflicts that the USA and it's media are involved with.

The book is short, as it is actually just a compilation of 3 essays, but dense. I had to read slow and reread often to pick up what each passage conveyed, and even then I had to watch some YouTube essays from people who are more familiar with reading philosophy. But overall very worth the read

есть интересные идеи, пару цитат сохранил, язык красивый, метафоры, образы, но часто кажется что за ними ничего особенно нет, кроме желания произвести впечатление. такая чисто философия ради философствования. многие вещи я как будто бы уже и так понимал и знал, хотя все равно было интересно их читать. поставил бы 2.7 если бы мог.
путин хотел себе такую же войну, но ничего не вышло, слишком уж все по-другому, книжку он видно не читал.

I have been attempting to find this book for years. I’ve always found the provocative title to be fascinating, and I hoped that reading the source material would give me insight on the farce of the Gulf War.

As it would turn out, my years of searching to get my hands on this book, in English or in French, have resulted in a remarkably anti-climatic conclusion: namely that I understand less about Baudrillard’s theory than I did before I started reading.

I remember reading somewhere that Baudrillard hesitates to place this piece of work in a specific genre, going so far as to say it could one day be read as science fiction. This confusion permeates the three essays that comprise this book. Baudrillard writes in opaque “the thought did occur to me” language that through strange conflations and indulgent analogies drives the reader further and further away from any understanding of the Gulf War.

What I envisioned as a poignant analysis of the surreal media landscape and its pseudo-events read more like the half-baked rantings of an eager undergraduate. If further confusion was his intention, boy did he succeed.