Serge Latouche’s scientific contributions

Consumerism as a Simulacra of Gift. Re-reading Baudrillard 44 Years Later All of Baudrillard’s works revolve around the melancholy disenchantment of Modernity. Yet one finds in The Consumer Society, one of his very first books, all of the elements of the Baudrillard ‘style’: not only an exceptional quality of writing but also a strange fascination for that very thing which is denounced and which leaves the reader perplexed as to the message that is delivered. Of course, if our author explores with such minutia the consumerist festival, it is not to celebrate it but to denounce its imposture and show what is going on behind the scenes. However, the reader’s judgment remains in a sort of suspended uncertainty as a consequence and without a political perspective. The consumerist festival is a decor or simulacra, but it remains that it is truly real in itself, notwithstanding what lies behind the scenes. In the end, Baudrillard’s message seems to be that there is no use resisting the inevitable in which the victim is also the accomplice.