Simulacra and Simulation Author: Jean 0 Baudrillard | Language: English | ISBN:
0472095218 | Format: EPUB
Simulacra and Simulation Description
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French
- Series: The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism
- Hardcover: 164 pages
- Publisher: University of Michigan Press (April 1, 1995)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0472095218
- ISBN-13: 978-0472095216
- Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 5.5 x 9.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
This is by no means an easy text to read. For those unfamiliar with postmodern tropes-and especially those who have never read Baudrillard before-this text may seem especially daunting. I recommend that these people start with the essay entitled 'Simulacra and Science Fiction'. In this essay, Baudrillard details the three orders of simulacra: the first, natural simulacra, are operatic, founded on images, and aim at the restoration of "the ideal institution of nature made in God's image"; the second order are both productive and operative, based on energy, and work toward "a continuous globalization and expansion [and] an indefinite liberation of energy"; the third order, the simulacra of simulation, are "founded on information [and] total operationality, hyperreality, [and the] aim of total control" (121). The differences between the various simulacra exist in the distance between the real and the imaginary exhibited by each order. This illuminating interstice provides the locus for projecting critical activity and idealism. The first order maximizes the projection, allowing the utopia to stand in direct opposition to the real. The second order reduces this projection. Baudrillard describes it as a hyper-productive universe in which "science fiction adds the multiplication of its own possibilities" (122). As all previous models implode, the third order of simulacra witnesses the complete disappearance of the projection between reality and the imaginary as it becomes reabsorbed in simulation. To Baudrillard, this is the world in which we live: no more real, no more imaginary, no more fiction, just an endless regression of lost meaning with no foundation, or rather an endless precession of simulacra.
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