Definition Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of symbols, signs, and how they relate to contemporaneity (simultaneous existences). Baudrillard claims that current
society has replaced all reality and meaning with
symbols and
signs, and that human experience is 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 nothing like reality is relevant to people's current understanding of their lives. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of
culture and
media that
construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which human life and shared existence are rendered legible. (These ideas had appeared earlier in
Guy Debord's 1967
The Society of the Spectacle.) Baudrillard believed that society had become so saturated with these simulacra and human life so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was becoming meaningless by being infinitely mutable; he called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra".
Stages Simulacra and Simulation delineates the sign-order into four stages: • The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where people believe, and may even be correct to believe, that a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality", this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order". • The second stage is perversion of reality, where people come to believe that the sign is 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 reveal reality to us, but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
Second order Part of the three-order simulacra, the
second-order simulacra, a term coined by
Jean Baudrillard, are
symbols of a non-faithful representation of the original. Here, signs and images do not faithfully show reality, but might hint at the existence of something real which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating. The first-order simulacrum is a faithful copy of the original and the third order are symbols that have come to be without referents, that is, symbols with no real object to represent, but that pretend to be a faithful copy of an original. Third-order simulacra are symbols in themselves, taken for reality, and a further layer of
symbolism is added. This occurs when the symbol is taken to be more important or authoritative than the original entity, when authenticity has been replaced by copy (thus reality is replaced by a substitute). The consequence of the propagation of second-order
simulacra is that, within the affected context, nothing is "real", though those engaged in the illusion are incapable of seeing it. Instead of having experiences, people observe spectacles, via real or
metaphorical control screens. Instead of the real, there is simulation and simulacra, the
hyperreal. In his essay
The Precession of the Simulacra, Baudrillard recalls a tale from a short story by
Borges in which a king requests a map (i.e., a symbol) to be produced so detailed that it ends up coming into one-to-one correspondence with the territory (i.e., the real area the map is to represent); this references the philosophical concept of
map–territory relation. Baudrillard argues that in the
postmodern epoch, the territory ceases to exist, and there is nothing left but the map; or indeed, the very concepts of the map and the territory have become indistinguishable, the distinction which once existed between them having been erased. Among the many issues associated with the propagation of second-order simulacra to the third-order is what Baudrillard considers the termination of history. The method of this termination comes through the lack of oppositional elements in society, with the mass having become "the
silent majority", an imploded concept which absorbs images passively, becoming itself a media overwritten by those who speak for it (i.e., the people are symbolically represented by governing agents and market statistics, marginalizing the people themselves). For Baudrillard, this is the natural result of an ethic of unity in which actually agonistic opposites are taken to be essentially the same. For example, Baudrillard contends that
moral universalism (human rights, equality) is equated with
globalization, which is not concerned with immutable values but with mediums of exchange and equalisation such as the global market and
mass media.
Phenomena Baudrillard theorizes that the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in several phenomena:{{cite web • Contemporary media including
television,
film,
print, and the
Internet, which are responsible for blurring the line between products that are needed (in order to live a life) and products for which a need is created by commercial images. •
Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money (literally
denominated fiat currency) rather than usefulness, and moreover usefulness comes to be quantified and defined in monetary terms in order to assist exchange. • Multinational
capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials and the processes (including the people and their cultural context) used to create them. •
Urbanization, which separates humans from the
nonhuman world, and re-centres culture around productive
throughput systems so large they cause
alienation. •
Language and
ideology, in which language increasingly becomes caught up in the production of power relations between social groups, especially when powerful groups institute themselves at least partly in monetary terms.
Analogies 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 was expanded and destroyed 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 conversely the map that people live in, the simulation of reality where the people of the Empire spend their lives ensuring their place in the representation is properly circumscribed and detailed by the map-makers; conversely, it is reality that is crumbling away from disuse. 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 (cf.
Map–territory relation), e.g. the
first Gulf War (which Baudrillard later used as an object demonstration in
The Gulf War Did Not Take Place): the image of war preceded real war. War comes not when it is made by sovereign against sovereign, not when killing for attritive and strategic neutralisation purposes is authorised; nor even, properly speaking, when shots are fired; rather, war comes when society is generally convinced that it is coming. ==Reception==