to Comments on the Verso Press English translation of Jean Baudrillard’s “Requiem for the Twin Towers”

As the English translator and editor of some of Caroline Heinrich’s philosophical work, it falls to me to make a correction to the published translation of her essay “In Search of the Child’s Innocence.” This essay was published in 4 different places: at the AVINUS Press Online Magazine, in the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (IJBS), at choreograph.net, and in the book Framemakers: Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change (Limerick: Daghdha Publications, 2008).

The version published at the AVINUS Press Online Magazine contains the following two paragraphs:
Baudrillard tells the story of the African artist [Michael Richards] who was commissioned to make a sculpture for the front plaza of the World Trade Center. The finished sculpture portrayed the artist himself drilled through by planes. He was killed in his studio on September 11, 2001 along with his sculpture.

Baudrillard speaks of an “amazing intuitive presentiment” — and understands this to be an especially delicate area of intuition. The French thinker was taken to task in the U.S. media for having dared to open such a line of inquiry during the February 19, 2002 roundtable discussion at New York University — broadcast on France Culture on February 23, 2002.24

Footnote 24 reads as follows:

Chris Turner’s Verso Press English translation of “Requiem for the Twin Towers” (in: The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays) does not include Baudrillard’s recounting and analysis of the African artist sculpture story. The published English text was translated from a typescript version that Jean Baudrillard faxed directly from Paris to his superb English translator. The version of “Requiem pour les Twin Towers” that includes the African artist sculpture story was a rewritten text that appeared later in French in the book Power Inferno (Paris: Galilée: 2002). Thanks to Chris Turner for explaining this to me. The German Suhrkamp-published text to which Caroline Heinrich refers was translated from the French Power Inferno version. The passage was also discussed at the February 19, 2003 debate at the “Maison des cultures du monde” in Paris entitled “Pourquoi la guerre?” at which Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, and the journalist Alain Gresh were the principal participants. Baudrillard comments further on Michael Richards’ sculpture on p.117 of The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact (translated by Chris Turner, originally published in French in 2004), New York: Berg, 2005, where the towering thinker also discusses a second artwork that bit the dust under the collapsed towers: the bronze technocrat by J. Seward Johnson.

This is all correct. Chris Turner explained to me the true reason why the African artist sculpture story was omitted from the Verso Press edition of The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays.
The AVINUS Press version of Heinrich’s essay on Nietzsche and Baudrillard was the only version of the publication over which I had full control.

The IJBS version has the main text entirely correct, but omits all 34 footnotes.

Prior to receiving Chris Turner’s explanation, I had mistakenly believed that Verso Press had censored Baudrillard.

Commentators in the American press were so irritated by Baudrillard’s remarks linking the sculpture and the Event of which it was a precognition because they adjudicate the truthfulness or falsehood of a philosopher’s statements utilizing the measuring rod of metaphysical truth. For them, precognition can only be thought as something that “has to happen.” Any “precog” claim is automatically suspect because it implies stopping the future dead in its tracks, putting an end to the future’s openness, and transforming life into destiny.

I had an earlier version of Heinrich’s essay with the following sentence in the main text:

The Verso Press English translation of “Requiem for the Twin Towers” (in The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays) leaves out Baudrillard’s recounting and analysis of the African artist sculpture story. The Verso editors refer mysteriously to another “version of this paper” that was the one that Baudrillard actually delivered in Washington Square.4) (2002b:36).
and the following footnote:

4 – The passage censored by Verso Press was discussed at the February 19, 2003 debate at the “Maison des cultures du monde” in Paris entitled “Pourquoi la guerre?” at which Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, and the journalist Alain Gresh were the principal participants.

Unfortunately, the false accusation that Verso Press censored Baudrillard was retained in the version of Heinrich’s essay published at choreograph.net and in the book Framemakers: Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change.

Fortunately, the false accusation did not appear in the AVINUS version nor in the IJBS version.

I had sent Jeffrey Gormly, the editor of both choreograph.net and of the Framemakers book, the corrected version, but he did not swap out the unfortunate version and swap in the fortunate version due to an organizational mishap.

Jeffrey and I apologize publicly to VERSO Press for the mistake.