Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Gary Genosko -- Part I. Young Baudrillard -- The Novels of Italo Calvino -- Review of William Styron's Set This House on Fire -- Germany: Is it a New World? -- Review of Uwe Johnson's The Border: Toward the -- Seventh Spring of the German Democratic Republic -- Part II. Critique of Mass-Mediated Life -- Review of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media -- Technique as Social Practice -- Review of Henri Lefebvre's Taking a Position: -- Against the Technocrats -- Ephemeral and Durable -- Dialectical Utopia -- Utopia: The Smile of the Cheshire Cat -- Police and Play -- Mass )Sociology of( -- Part III. The Poetry of Theory -- Stucco Angel -- Part IV. Political Bankruptcy on the Left and Right -- The Divine Left -- Dropping Out of History: Interview with Sylvere Lotringer -- Our Theatre of Cruelty -- Part V. Ironic Aesthetic Disorders -- Barbara Kruger -- Olivier Mosset: The Object that is None -- Enrico Baj, or Monstrosity Laid Bare by Paint Itself -- The Transparency of Kitsch: A Conversation with Enrico Baj -- Index