Symbolic Exchange and Death

Excellent book, as always - Baudrillard - one of the most controversial and complex thinkers I know. He tackles topics of death and the way it is used and repressed in our society in order to control individuals contained within the social fabric. I think this book serves as a great entry point to the works of Baudrillard because the concept of symbolic exchange can be quite hard to grasp at first, and it's not really explained in his later, more well-known and popular work, “Simulation and Simulacra.”
The book takes quite some time to get going, however, when the topic of death is introduced in the second half of the book, it quickly gains momentum and snowballs into a huge, complicated, and satisfying argument. Baudrillard provides a lot of food for thought, making this a fundamental work for understanding his later ideas.
In “Symbolic Exchange and Death,” Baudrillard argues that modern society has lost touch with the true nature of death and its role in the symbolic exchange that underlies social relations. Instead, death has been repressed, sanitized, and used as a tool for social control. By denying the reality of death and trying to master it through various technological and ideological means, we have created a world of artificial scarcity and alienation.
Baudrillard suggests that the only way to break free from this oppressive system is to reintegrate death into the social fabric, to recognize its symbolic power and embrace it as a necessary part of life. This means moving beyond the narrow confines of political economy and rediscovering a more authentic mode of existence based on reciprocity, cyclicality, and the acceptance of ambivalence.