One of Jean Baudrillards most famous books is arguably The Gulf War did not take place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press , 1995). The book is based on a collection of essays that were published in Libération and The Guardian in 1991. Therein Baudrillard points out a number of characteristics of the Gulf war that in many ways potentialized what was new about war at the time. For example Baudrillard describes how war is changing from real to virtual - through real-time 24/7 broadcasts - resulting in a blurring of boundaries between the media, the military, and the political. He further illustrates how war tends to be a dual relation between adversaries in ways that make it a symbolic challenge. In the Gulf war he finds a surgical war in which the US is fighting its own image in a way which reduces the other to a pixel on a screen in a humiliating fashion. Finally, he also points to how war disappears into technical realization by being filtered through screens, lasers and digital media.1

While highly controversial at the time, these characteristics are now, over twenty years later, common knowledge in the study of war, as well as in the study of Baudrillard. That said, war is one of the topics Baudrillard has returned to again and again in his enormous oeuvre. He has written extensively on the war on terror (The Spirit of Terrorism, London: Verso, 2001), war as going orbital (The Transparency of Evil, London: Verso, 1993), war-porn (The Conspiracy of Art, New York: Semiotexte, 2005), or war as becoming operational and integral (The Intelligence of Evil, New York: Berg, 2005). Yet to this date there is no comprehensive study of what his ideas on war entail or how they relate to other fields. What can we make of Baudrillard’s writings on war? The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies invites papers for a special edition that relate Baudrillard’s thought to the study of war in its broadest sense. Themes may range from topics related to the history of warfare, the military, or war’s relationship with ethics, politics and philosophy. The purpose of this special edition is to push the thought on war further through engaging with Baudrillard’s writing.

Enquires and proposals to Dan Öberg by August 15, 2013 (e-mail: dan.oberg@fhs.se). A colloquium (see separate invitation) will be held in preparation of this special edition in Stockholm, Sweden on October 11, 2013. Participation in the workshop is not mandatory for participating in the special edition. Papers due November 30 2013 (expected publication 2014).

The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, founded in 2004, is a peer-reviewed, open access, non-profit, transdisciplinary publication. It has published work by Giorgio Agamben, Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Peter Singer, Slavoj Žižek and others. In 2008 the Times Higher Education Supplement applauded the IJBS for producing a high quality open access academic journal on the Internet.