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.