Challenge, and not desire, lies at the heart of seduction…

Challenge, and not desire, lies at the heart of seduction. (p. 57)

Sourced, The Ecstasy of Communication (1987)

Other Jean Baudrillard Quotes

There is no aphrodisiac like innocence. - View Quote Details on There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.
Not only does reality resist those who still criticize it, but it also abandons those who defend it. Maybe it is a way for reality to get its revenge from those who claim to believe in it for the sole purpose of eventually transforming it: sending back its supporters to their own desires. ( essay -”Radical Thought”) - View Quote Details on Not only does reality resist those who still criticize it,…
Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. Admittedly, there is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval. This form of travel admits of no exceptions: when it runs up against a known face, a familiar landscape, or some decipherable message, the spell is broken: the amnesic, ascetic, asymptotic charm of disappearance succumbs to affect and worldly semiology. - View Quote Details on Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to…
The close-up of a face is as obscene as a sexual organ seen from up close. It is a sexual organ. The promiscuity of the detail, the zoom-in, takes on a sexual value. (p. 43) - View Quote Details on The close-up of a face is as obscene as a…
Seduction is the world’s elementary dynamic… All this has changed significantly for us, at least in appearance. For what has happened to good and evil? Seduction hurls them against one another, and unites them beyond meaning, in a paroxysm [sudden outbreak of emotion] of intensity and charm. (p. 59) - View Quote Details on Seduction is the world’s elementary dynamic… All this has changed…
The discourse of truth is quite simply impossible. It eludes itself. Everything eludes itself, everything scoffs at its own truth, seduction renders everything elusive. The fury to unveil the truth, to get at the naked truth, the one which haunts all discourses of interpretation, the obscene rage to uncover the secret, is proportionate to the impossibility of ever achieving this. …But this rage, this fury, only bears witness to the eternity of seduction and to the impossibility of mastering it. (p. 73) - View Quote Details on The discourse of truth is quite simply impossible. It eludes…
This realistic image, however, does not catch at all what really is, but what should not be - death and misery - what should not exist, from our moral and humanistic point of view. And at the same time making an aesthetic and commercial, perfectly immoral use and abuse of this misery. Images that actually testify, behind their pretended “objectivity”, of a deep denial of the real, and of an equal denial of the image - assigned to present what does not even want to be represented, assigned to the rape of the real by burglary. - View Quote Details on This realistic image, however, does not catch at all what…
Marxism is therefore only a limited petit bourgeois critique, one more step in the banalization of life toward the “good use” of the social! - View Quote Details on Marxism is therefore only a limited petit bourgeois critique, one…
Take provocation, for instance, which is the opposite and the caricature of seduction. It says: “I know that you want to be seduced, and I will seduce you.” Nothing could be worse than betraying this secret rule. Nothing could be less seductive than a provocative smile or inciteful behaviour, since both presuppose that one cannot be seduced naturally and that one needs to be blackmailed into it, or through a declaration of intent: “Let me seduce you” (p. 67) - View Quote Details on Take provocation, for instance, which is the opposite and the…
For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all the real, coincide with their simulation models. - View Quote Details on For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators…