Jean Baudrillard

French sociologist, cultural theorist, author, political commentator His best known theories involve hyperreality and simulation

(1929-2007)

Simulacra and Simulation

Jean Baudrillard

Influences

Structuralism, Marxism, Sociology Transitions through different schools of thought Labelled: Post-structuralist, Post-Marxist, Post-Modernist Offers one view of postmodern condition among several others (Lyotard, Jameson)

Simulacres et Simulation

Published 1981 (Editions Galile) / English translation 1994 (University of Michigan Press) Series of short essays written at different times, applies & extends theory from the first essay, The Precession of Simulacra

How to read S&S

It provides both a theory about how we construct and simulate reality, and a social/cultural critique

Theoretical Dimension Draws together sociology, media studies, semiotics, history, and philosophy. Though about reality, S&S is not strictly a work of metaphysics Critique Dimension Application of theory to criticize aspects of American culture, consumer culture, TV, capital, science, and politics

How to (mis)read Baudrillard

Baudrillard is known for his:

Aphoristic writing Hyperbolic statements Politically charged examples

S&S in a nutshell

Today, reality has been replaced by sign systems that recodify and supplant the real. Simulation precedes and determines the real. Mass media shapes these symbols as agents of representation, not communication. Mass media creates a new culture of signs, images and codes without referential value, and are exchangeable. Contemporary society consumes these empty signs of status and identity having lost the ability to make sense of the distinction between the natural and the simulation.

The era of simulation is thus everywhere...All the great humanist criteria of value, all the values of a civilization of moral, aesthetic, and practical judgment, vanish in our system of images and signs. Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976)

What is Simulation?

Simulation is the active process of replacement of the real.

Whereas dissimulation (pretending) leaves the principle of reality intactSimulation threatens the difference between the true and the false, the real and the imaginary(3).

Simulation is no longer a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreality
(Baudrillard 1)

What is a Simulacrum?

A representational image or presence that deceives; the product of simulation usurping reality A copy without an original

Classical example: a false icon for God Modern example: Disneyland

Simulation vs Simulacrum
Simulation refers to a process in motion, whereas simulacrum (plural simulacra) refers to a more static image

Simulation is a 4 step process of destabilizing and replacing reality

1. Faithful - The image reflects a profound reality Portrait 2. Perversion - The image masks and denatures a profound reality Icon 3. Pretense - The image masks the absence of a profound reality Disneyland 4. Pure - The image has no relation to any reality whatsoever, it is its own pure simulacrum. The ultimate Matrix

Causes of Simulacra(um)

Media culture Economics: Exchange-value, multi-national capitalism, urbanization Language and Ideology

What is Hyperreal?

Hyperreal: A world of simulacra where nothing is unmediated (i.e.-without previous meaning, without intermediary mass media)

Media and medium mediate our experience without our noticing. We know that we are living in a mediated world, but as a result of the ubiquity of the simulation life is now "spectralised...the event filtered by the medium--the dissolution of TV into life, the dissolution of life into TV".

Hyperreal Example

The American Dream as a simulacrum of? Culture and media create and perpetuate the hyperreal. Whatever experiences in our lives that are mediated are all simulations. Whatever is mediated is what is simulated.

Freedom from Want. Norman Rockwell, 1943

reality tv as exhumation of the real in its fundamental banality, in its radical authenticity

Reality television as hyperreal

Reflecting On Baudrillard

Baudrillard is a critical observer. He does not offer solutions. His observations point out the current human condition is based on simulations of the idea of reality. Reality is in the past and is corrupted beyond the point of recognition. Looking back on S & S, what was it? What is the best term for it: theory, critique, aesthetic, or postmodern prophesy?

http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=e3tr0gSNBx4