Bou Drill Ard

7/28/2019 Bou Drill Ard

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Jean Baudrillard(1929-2007)

French sociologist,cultural theorist, author,political commentator

His best known theoriesinvolve hyperreality and

simulation


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Simulacra and

SimulationJean Baudrillard


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Influences Structuralism, Marxism, Sociology

Transitions through different schools ofthought

Labelled: Post-structuralist, Post-Marxist,Post-Modernist

Offers one view of postmodern conditionamong several others (Lyotard, Jameson)


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Simulacres et Simulation

Published 1981 (Editions Galile) / English translation1994 (University of Michigan Press)

Series of short essays written at different times, applies &extends theory from the first essay, The Precession o f

Simulacra


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How to read S&S It provides both a theory about how we construct andsimulate reality, and a social/cultural critique

Theoretical DimensionDraws together sociology, media studies, semiotics,history, and philosophy. Though about reality, S&S is not

strictly a work of metaphysics

Critique DimensionApplication of theory to criticize aspects of American

culture, consumer culture, TV, capital, science, and

politics


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How to (mis)readBaudrillardBaudrillard is known for his:

Aphoristic writing

Hyperbolic statements

Politically charged examples


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S&S in a nutshell

Today, reality has been replaced by s ign systemsthat recodify andsupplant the real. Simulat ionprecedes and determines the real.

Mass media shapes these symbols as agents of representation, notcommunication. 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 identityhaving 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)


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What is Simulation?

Simulation is the active process of replacement of the real.

Whereas dissimulation (pretending) leaves the principle of realityintactSimulation 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 hyperreal i ty(Baudrillard 1)


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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


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Simulation vsSimulacrum

Simulation refers to a process in motion,

whereas simulacrum (plural simulacra)

refers to a more static image


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Simulation is a 4 step process of

destabilizing and replacing reality

1. Faithful - The image reflects a profound realityPortrait

2. Perversion - The image masks and denatures a profound realityIcon

3. Pretense - The image masks the absence of a profound realityDisneyland

4. Pure - The image has no relation to any reality whatsoever,it is its own pure simulacrum.

The ultimate Matrix


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Causes of Simulacra(um)

Media culture Economics: Exchange-value, multi-nationalcapitalism, urbanization

Language and Ideology


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Hyperreal: A world of simulacra where nothingis unmediated (i.e.-without previous meaning,

without intermediary mass media)

Media and medium mediate our experiencewithout our noticing.

We know that we are living in a mediatedworld, but as a result of the ubiquity of the

simulation life is now "spectralised...the event

filtered by the medium--the dissolution of TVinto life, the dissolution of life into TV".

What is Hyperreal?


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Hyperreal Example TheAmericanDream as a simulacrum of?

Culture and media create and perpetuate thehyperreal.

Whatever experiences in our lives that aremediated are all simulations. Whatever is

mediated is what is simulated.

Freedom from Want. Norman Rockwell, 1943


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Reality television as

hyperreal

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

authenticity


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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?


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

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