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Dubai, the most extreme example to date of a realized neo-liberal capitalist urban utopia, is perhaps at its point of death. That is to say that, barring suicide, the only hope Dubai's bonded labour – those tricked, forced and exploited into negated lives of low-paid wage servitude – have of losing their chains, given the emirate's resilience to objections and protests from a multitude of commentators and activists, seems to be the stalling of construction, the falling demand for building projects – mega or otherwise – that the latest major financial crisis and economic recession necessitates.

AbstractThe article argues that the lack of convincing empirical evidence for the global economy as being subject to 'command and control' results from that contention being a neo‐Marxist myth. First, imagining the global economy as being subject to 'highly concentrated command' through the function of some major cities as 'strategic sites' for the production of 'command and control' is traced back through several neo‐Marxist authors to narrate its genesis, and to argue that the lack of evidence for that proposition is a consequence of those antecedents envisioning capitalism as a totalizing structure, thus making the assumption that it is subject to control and coordination from a distance. Second, Taylor's interlocking world city network model is forensically examined to explain that it is fallacious because it is a structuralism that, bedevilled by a sorites paradox, contains the further problem of containing no credible evidence for the existence of 'command centres'. Finally, the article moves beyond neo‐Marxism's key concepts by juxtaposing their assumptions with ethnographic results from social studies of finance, a manoeuvre which forges an understanding of cities as socio‐technical assemblages and eventful multiplicities, beyond, inter alia, the baseless assumption that the global economy is subject to 'command and control'.

In December 1992, Baudrillard delivered the lecture "Hyperreal America" at Essex University in the United Kingdom. In his lecture, Baudrillard talked around his now famous book America (published in French in 1986 and in English in 1988) in which he argued that the fascination and catastrophe of America is its hyperreality, which allows the idea and paradox that there utopia has been achieved. The lecture was subsequently translated by David Macey and published in the journal Economy & Society. However, the questions and answers that the talk provoked—and that provided clarification of some of Baudrillard's central arguments about the hyperreality of America—have not been transcribed, and this is what is presented here.

Inspection report of the quarters of the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy by the officer of the day, R. G. Smith, on 5 February 1823.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Not Forgetting Baudrillard -- Interview 1 Too Bad about Patagonia -- Interview 2 Disappearance beyond Disappearance -- Interview 3 After Utopia: The Primitive Society of the Future -- Interview 4 The Possibility of Another Game -- Interview 5 Politics of Performance: Montand, Coluche = Le Pen? -- Interview 6 A Time of Promiscuity -- Interview 7 Forgetting Critiques -- Interview 8 Cover Story -- Interview 9 Symbolic Exchange: Taking Theory Seriously -- Interview 10 Vivisecting the 90s -- Interview 11 Things Surpass Themselves -- Interview 12 On the New Technologies -- Interview 13 I'm Not a Prophet -- Interview 14 Endangered Species? -- Interview 15 Hate: A Last Sign of Life -- Interview 16 Europe, Globalisation and the Destiny of Culture -- Interview 17 Between Difference and Singularity -- Interview 18 The Catastrophe of Paradox -- Interview 19 This is the Fourth World War -- Interview 20 The Matrix Decoded -- Interview 21 Continental Drift -- Interview 22 The Art of Disappearing -- Interview 23 The Antidote to the Global Lies in the Singular -- Select Interviews and Dialogues -- Books by Jean Baudrillard in English -- Name index -- Subject index

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Baudrillard Unplugged -- Interviews -- 1 Is Transgression a Mode of Political Action? -- 2 Dropping Out of History -- 3 Catastrophic, but Not Serious -- 4 The Apathy of the Masses -- 5 The Transparency of Kitsch -- 6 Baudrillard Shrugs: Terrorism and the Media -- 7 Strange World -- 8 The Ex-termination of the Real -- 9 La Commedia dell'Arte -- 10 From Popular Culture to Mass Culture -- 11 The Ecstasy of Photography -- 12 Baudrillard's List -- 13 Viral and Metaleptic -- 14 The Homeopathic Disappearance of Architecture -- 15 For Illusion -- 16 Impossible and Unexchangeable -- 17 The Art of Disappearance -- 18 Solutions for a Post-technological Society -- 19 Apropos of Utopie -- 20 The Murder of Reality -- 21 Alterity as Fate -- 22 Artificiality and Seduction -- 23 The Roots of Evil -- 24 The Mirror of Photojournalism -- 25 Hoping to Resolve the Irresolvable -- Select Journal Special/Theme Issues/ Sections on Jean Baudrillard in English -- Select Books on Jean Baudrillard in English -- Name index -- Subject index