Jean Baudrillard (July 29, 1929 – March 6, 2007) was a French cultural theorist, sociologist, philosopher, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.
Life

Jean Baudrillard was born to a peasant family in Reims, north-eastern France, on July 29, 1929. He became the first of his family to attend university when he moved to the Sorbonne University in Paris [3]. There he studied German language, which led to him to begin teaching the subject at a provincial lycée, where he remained from 1958 until his departure in 1966. While he was teaching Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature, and translated the works of such authors as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht and Wilhelm Muhlmann[4].

Toward the end of his time as a German teacher Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology, eventually completing his doctoral thesis Le Système des objets (The System of Objects) under the tutelage of Henri Lefebvre. Subsequently, he began teaching the subject at the Université de Paris-X Nanterre, a politically radical institution (at the time) which would become heavily involved in the events of May 1968[5]. At Nanterre he took up a position as Maître Assistant (Assistant Professor), then Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor), eventually becoming a professor after completing his habilitation, L'Autre par lui-même (The Other, by himself).