Jean Baudrillard: "Procession
of Simulacra"
Provider:
Brian Chen
October 22, 1998
Thesis:
We are living in a world dominated by mass media, images, signs, and
any other simulacra. It is a realm of hyperreality and simulations
where truths no longer exist.
- Baudrillard's idea of
the "new universe" is that of communication.
- About "Procession of Simulacra":
A. Simulation:
- " . . . the generation
by models of a real without original or reality: a hyperreal" (253).
- " . . . a hyperreal, the
production of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a
hyperspace without atmosphere" (254).
- " . . . characterized
by a procession of the model, of all models around the merest fact
(?) ¡Xthe models come first, and their orbital (like the bomb) circulation
constitutes the genuine magnetic field of events" (264).
- Dissimulate/Simulate and
Representation/Simulation: (254, 256)
Dissimulate
|
Simulate
|
to
feign not to have what one has. |
to
feign to have what one hasn't. |
implies
a presence. |
implies
an absence. |
leaves
the reality principle intact: the difference is always clear; it
is only masked. |
threatens
the difference between 'true' and 'false,' between 'real' and 'imaginary.' |
¡@
Representation
|
Simulation
|
starts
from the principle that the sign and the real are equivalent. |
starts
from the utopia of this principle of equivalence, from
the radical negation of the sign as value, from the signs reversion
and death sentence of every reference. |
tries
to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation. |
envelops
the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum. |
B. The Four Phases of
Images:
- The image is the reflection
of a basic reality;
- The image masks and perverts
a basic reality;
- The image masks the absence
of a basic reality;
- The image bears no relation
to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (256)
C. Baudrillard is opposed
to science:
- 1. "science never
sacrifices itself; it is always murderous" (257).
- 2. "The confinement
of the scientific object is the same as that of the insane and the
dead" (258).
¡@
D. Baudrillard is oppose
to American culture:
- 1. What is "Disneyland"
?
- a place of illusions
and phantasms;
- a veritable concentration
camp;
- It is there to conceal
the fact that it is the "real" country, all of "real"
America, which is Disneyland.
- Presented as imaginary
in order to make us believe that the rest is real, but of the order
of the hyperreal and of simulation.
- A deterrence machine
set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real.
- 2. What does "Watergate"
suggest?
a. Baudrillard's Marxist
idea: "Power is unjust, its justice is a class justice, capital
exploits us, etc" (263).
b. TV news:
- =>A succession of surface
images, only signifiers to experience.
- =>A collage of fragmented
images of images of images.
- =>The final hyperreality.
=>In it, there is
a postmodernist denial of historicity; the past is treated as
a resource bank of images
for casual reuse, a collapse of everything
into the present.
3. The game of assassination
is a game of power.
"Power . . . produces
nothing but signs of its resemblance" (269).
¡@
E. Baudrillard's argument
on TV media:
- 1. He agrees McLuhan that
the medium is the message¡Xnot content but the form of the media is
of importance.
- 2. The function of TV
and mass media is to prevent response, to privitize individuals, to
place them into a universe of simulacra where it is possible to distinguish
between the spectacle and the real.
- 3. We are in a universe
where there is more and more information and less and less meaning.
- 4. The refusal of meaning
is the only form of resistance possible in a society like ours which
suffers from information overload.
- 5. We are bombarded with
information-rich images.
- 6. What we can to do it
is to accept images only as signifiers, only as surfaces, and to reject
their meanings, their signifieds.
F. What is "IMPLOSION"
?
- derived from Nietzche's
"nihilism" : the rapid erosion of binary meaning-making
structures.
- "The mass"
wants "spectacle," not "reality" or "meaning."
- "The mass"
consumes bourgeois culture; the weight of the mass threatens the
structure.
G. What is "DETERRENCE"
? (275-6)
- comes from the very situation
which excludes the real atomic clash excludes it beforehand like the
eventuality of the real in a system of sign.
- excludes war¡Xthe antiquated
violence of expanding systems.
- the neutral, implosive
violence of metastable or involving systems.
- not a strategy, it circulates
and is exchanged between the nuclear protagonists like international
capital in that orbital zone of monetary speculation, whose flow is
sufficient to control all global finance. (276)
III. Baudrillard's comments:
- Everything is "hyper,"
- in excess of itself.
- Postmodern culture - the
era of consumer culture:
- Traditional distinctions
and hierarchies (?) have collapsed;
- Polyculturalism is acknowledged.
- Kitch, the popular and
difference are celebrated.
IV. Conclusion:
Baudrillard: We live in
the world of simulations. There is no 'real' external to them, no 'original,'
no longer a realm of the 'real' versus that of 'imitation' or 'mimicry'
but rather a level in which there are only simulations.
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