Baudrillard's Illusions

Abstract

Anglo-American and European feminists have approached the work of Jean Baudrillard, but have rarely engaged with his ideas. Baudrillard's discussion of `seduction' has been a significant deterrent, mainly because of feminism's imperative to distance itself from the figure of the `seductive feminine'. Sympathetic to this imperative, this essay attempts to identify where Baudrillard's writing problematically links the notion of seduction to sacrificial processes. Such a linkage is argued to be a weakness. There appears to be a `blind spot' in relation to gender; a failure to see that the murder of a sacrificial victim exemplifies a murder of singularity rather than its reinstatement and invigoration. Baudrillard's notion of seduction is important to feminist theory, and commensurate with its fundamental aspirations to oppose the eradication of otherness and alterity. The challenge, however, is to identify elements of his discourse whereby this opposition falters; I argue this is evident in the connections between gender, seduction and the sacrificial.