Simulacra and Simulation
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Jean Baudrillard |
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| Original title | Simulacres et Simulation |
| Translator | Sheila Glaser |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Subject | Postmodern philosophy |
| Publisher | Éditions Galilée (French) & University of Michigan Press (English) |
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Publication date
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1981 |
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Published in English
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1994 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 164 pp |
| ISBN | (French) & (English) |
| OCLC | 7773126 |
| 194 19 | |
| LC Class | BD236 .B38 |
Simulacra and Simulation (French: Simulacres et Simulation) is a 1981 philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard, in which he seeks to examine the relationships among reality, symbols, and society.
Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original to begin with, or that no longer have an original.Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time.
...The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of symbols, signs, and how they relate to contemporaneity (simultaneous existences). 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 nothing like reality is relevant to our current understanding of our 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 our lives and shared existence is and are 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 four stages:
Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:
Baudrillard theorizes that the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in several phenomena:
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 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.
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