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Commercial African masks for sale. Source: Wikipedia Thesis This article argues that Jean Baudrillard’s critique of “primitive art” in The Mirror of Production challenges the very foundations of Western art history. According to Baudrillard, museums do not simply preserve cultural difference; they neutralize it by translating symbolic objects into Western aesthetic categories. Ritual masks, icons, tapestries, and ceremonial artifacts become intelligible only after being transformed into “art.” The museum therefore functions not merely as a space of preservation, but as a mechanism of conceptual domestication The Museum and the Question of “Art” One of the most provocative moments in The Mirror of Production appears in Jean Baudrillard’s discussion of so-called “primitive art.” At first glance, Baudrillard seems to be addressing anthropology or aesthetics. In reality, his argument reaches much further. What he ultimately questions is the universality of the category “art” itself. ...

Thesis This article argues that Jean Baudrillard radicalizes Karl Marx’s reflections on self-critique by showing that Western thought universalizes its own categories precisely through acts of criticism, interpretation, and apparent openness toward cultural difference. What appears as dialogue with alterity — anthropology, museums, aesthetic appreciation, or Marxist analysis — becomes a process of conceptual absorption. Ritual objects are transformed into “art,” while Marxism replaces aesthetic interpretation with the language of production. In both cases, difference survives only after being translated into Western systems of intelligibility. The result is not genuine confrontation with alterity, but its domestication. Self-Critique and the Universalization of the West One of the most significant moments in Jean Baudrillard’s The Mirror of Production occurs when he returns to Karl Marx’s Grundrisse , this time not to question labor or historical evolutionism directly, but to in...