Hyperreality Is Dead: Baudrillard, the Age of Trump, and ’The Gulf War Did Not Take Place’ Revisited

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In this episode, we revisit Jean Baudrillard’s The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, a text that diagnosed the emergence of war as media event, non-event, and managed spectacle. Joining us is friend and returning guest Cameron Carsten, a graduate student in continental philosophy whose work explores the state, power, and the production of reality across Baudrillard and Deleuze. Rather than treating Baudrillard’s claims as prophetic or obsolete, the conversation puts them to work against the present—testing the fate of hyperreality in the age of Trump, AI-mediated images, and escalating political violence. What emerges is a question that now presses harder than ever: has the simulacrum collapsed, or has the real returned with a vengeance?

Cam's blog: https://camtology.substack.com/

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