Talking about reality...

1. LECTURAS PARA EL DESARROLLO DE UN PENSAMIENTO CRÍTICO. ANTOLOGÍA
Simulacra and Simulation
Philosophical treatise seeking to interrogate
the relationship among reality, symbols, and
society.
Jean Baudrillard
“The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The
simulacrum is true.”
— The quote is credited to Ecclesiastes, but the words do not occur there. It can be seen as an addition, a
paraphrase and an endorsement of Ecclesiastes' condemnation[3] of the pursuit of wisdom as folly and a 'chasing
after wind' - see for example Ecclesiastes 1.16.
Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of symbols, signs, and how they relate to
contemporaneity. Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and
signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality. Moreover, these simulacra are not merely
mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a
reality, they simply hide that anything like reality is irrelevant to our current understanding of our lives. The
simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct
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2. LECTURAS PARA EL DESARROLLO DE UN PENSAMIENTO CRÍTICO. ANTOLOGÍA
perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence is rendered legible;
Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the
constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Baudrillard
called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra".
"Simulacra and Simulation" breaks the sign-order into 4 stages:
The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct that, a sign is a
"reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the
sacramental order".
The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which
"masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearance - it is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and
images do not faithfully show us reality, but can hint at the existence of something real which the sign
itself is incapable of encapsulating.
The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful
copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no
representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no
relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery".
The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever.
Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the
order of other such claims.
Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:
First order, associated with the premodern period, where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for
the real item. The uniqueness of objects and situations marks them as irreproducibly real and signification
obviously gropes towards this reality.
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3. LECTURAS PARA EL DESARROLLO DE UN PENSAMIENTO CRÍTICO. ANTOLOGÍA
Second order, associated with the modernity of the Industrial Revolution, where distinctions between
image and reality break down due to the proliferation of mass-reproducible copies of items, turning them
into commodities. The commodity's ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the original version,
especially when the individual person is only concerned with consuming for some utility a functional
facsimile.
Third order, associated with the postmodernity, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the
distinction between reality and representation vanishes. There is only the simulacrum, and originality
becomes a totally meaningless concept.
Baudrillard theorizes that the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in several phenomena:
• Contemporary media including television, film, print and the Internet, which are responsible for blurring the line
between goods that are needed and goods for which a need is created by commercial images.
• Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money rather than usefulness.
• Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials
and the processes used to create them.
• Urbanization, which separates humans from the natural world.
• Language and ideology, in which language is used to obscure rather than reveal reality when used by dominant,
politically powerful groups.
A specific analogy that Baudrillard uses is a fable derived from On Exactitude in Science by Jorge Luis Borges. In
it, a great Empire created a map that was so detailed it was as large as the Empire itself. The actual map grew
and decayed as the Empire itself conquered or lost territory. When the Empire crumbled, all that was left was the
map. In Baudrillard's rendition, it is the map that people live in, the simulation of reality, and it is reality that is
crumbling away from disuse.
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4. LECTURAS PARA EL DESARROLLO DE UN PENSAMIENTO CRÍTICO. ANTOLOGÍA
The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is nothing, marks the
decisive turning point. The first implies a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still
belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer any God to
recognize his own, nor any last judgment to separate truth from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since
everything is already dead and risen in advance.
It is important to note that when Baudrillard refers to the "precession of simulacra" in Simulacra and Simulation, he
is referring to the way simulacra have come to precede the real in the sense mentioned above, rather than to any
succession of historical phases of the image. Referring to "On Exactitude in Science", he argued that just as for
contemporary society the simulated copy had superseded the original object, so, too, the map had come to
precede the geographic territory (c.f. Map–territory relation), e.g. the first Gulf War (see below): the image of war
preceded real war.
Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the
territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across
the map.
Author(s)
Jean Baudrillard
Original title
Simulacres et Simulation
Translator
Sheila Glaser
Country
France
Language
French
Subject(s)
Philosophy
Genre(s)
Non-fiction
Publisher
Éditions Galilée (French) & University of Michigan Press (English)
Publication date
1981
English
1994
Media type
Print (Paperback)
Pages
164 pp
ISBN
ISBN 2-7186-0210-4 (French) & ISBN 0-472-06521-1 (English)
COMUNICACIÓN. VISUALES. IDA. UAEH. MÉXICO. 2012 4