![]() ![]() The next idea from this piece I want to examine entails the deluge of information produced by a networked, connected society. It’s precisely as Talking Heads reminds us: “Facts just twist the truth around.”. Our political climate is an amalgamation of “facts” (alternative, or not) reified insofar as they are (rapidly) diffused.Ī platform like Twitter, then, red is a multiverse container, possessing an infinite number of ecosystems each bespoke with their own logic, rules, heroes and enemies. This sequence is especially relevant to our current media ecosystem. As Baudrillard puts its: “…even the most contradictory - all true, in the sense that their truth is to be exchanged” (13, emphasis mine). Furthermore, the “simulation” undergirding this phenomenon is reified merely through that fact that its disseminated. In the case of a high-stakes robbery, for instance, identical tweets from the accused will invariably elicit two different responses to two different groups of people. And, I buy that when the basics of a situation (the who/where/when) are made public, respective groups apply their preconceived biases and explications to them. Well, to start, he writes, “a single fact can be engendered by all the models at once” (13). For instance, in the aftermath to a public tragedy such as a terrorist strike, Baudrillard contends that the totality of explanations of its origins (Organization A states it was Group X, Organization B states it was Group Y) are “simultaneously true.” How can this be? The first aspect of this work that stands out to me sees Baudrillard voicing an interesting proposal about how we understand and discuss events and historical occurrences. Let’s look at some of the applications of these concepts, starting with Baudrillard’s views on how information spreads and what inheres truth. ![]() We are bereft of representation and reality in their stead, an alterior construction. We’re witness to a landscape that produce itself with no original reference point - no “origin or reality” (3). This phenomenon deludes us into subscribing to a set of facts and assumptions that doesn’t have a bearing on any real objects. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist hereĪnd there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - thatĮngenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it Real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. No longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. This paragraph is worth studying closely as we wrap our heads around the “hyperreal,” the other important concept coined in this work: “Hyperreality”įrom there, Baudrillard situates Borges’ tale in our current epoch. We move, in succession, from:Īn imitation of reality that masks the essence and makeup of that reality, to, finallyĪ pure simulation that’s entirely detached from all aspects of reality.īaudrillard points to a fable from Borges, wherein cartographers produced a map of an Empire with such exactitude and attention to detail that they managed to (virtually) terraform the mass they were aimed to delineate, as a rendering of simulation. To start, let’s define that key term, “simulacram,” We can understand the “simulacram” as the mangled hyper-representation of what was once once an identifiable facet of reality. I’ll touch on some key terms and then move towards my thoughts on a few of Baudrillard’s conjectures. ![]() ![]() It’s a heady, challenging treatise that integrates examples from popular culture (film, novels, current events) into a sweeping investigation of semiotics, cybernetics, and information theory. Simulcra and Simulation is a provocative examination of the state of reality (or lack thereof) with respect to the modern political economy and media atmosphere. Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulation ![]()
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