Achim Szepanski: In the Delirium of the Simulation; Baudrillard Revisted

Becoming Press, 2025, softcover, 277 pages, 19.5 x 10.5 cm

From Finance to non-philosophy and radical experimental music, Szepanski is an anomalous and masterful theoretician with one hell of a history.

This is a monumental and extensive work from someone who is arguably the most well-versed scholar of Baudrillard, Deleuze & Laruelle in the German-speaking world, Achim Szepanski, the original founder of Mille Plateaux, Force Inc Music Works and NON. This book is dedicated to Jean Baudrillard, who would be described by Achim as the most radical and advanced stimmung in Philosophy. Through this comprehensive and devouring analysis of Baudrillard’s work, the author presents a gripping account of their own philosophy; alongside his magnum opus Die Ekstasie der Spekulation, this book, In the Delirium of the Simulation, provides the strongest case for what might be called, in light of his passing, Szepanskism or Szepanskian Economics.

As time passed since the loss of our friend, Achim Szepanski, we found ourselves revisiting this book, and we invested time in refining some parts of certain texts, and looking at the translations again. We decided to include three other texts which elaborate in various directions, and we organized a new afterword by Alessandro Sbordoni, which asks what a Szepanskism might be. Lastly, it felt appropriate to draw up a foreword, which helps position the book within a broader context, as well as paying respects to the author’s life.