4.03.2006
Simulacra and Simulation (History and Theory of the Body)
Title
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Field
History and Theory of the Body
Summary
What is simulation? "It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hypereal." (1) Simulacrum is the sign of simulation. "It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double,a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes."(2) Simulation is not representation: "Simulation on the contrary, stems from the utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as the reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation attempts to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a fale representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum."(6) Baudrillard gives Disneyland as a model of "all the entangled orders of simulacra...Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real." (12)
The real is a strategy of power, "to reinject the real and the referential everywhere."(22) "Ideology only corresponds to a corruption of reality through signs; simulation corresponds to a short circuit of reality and to its duplication through signs. It is always the goal of the ideogical analysis to restore the objective process,it is always a false problem to wish to restore the truth beneath the simulacrum." (27) Baudrillard then goes on to discuss television: "One must think instead of the media as if they were, in outer orbit, a kind of genetic code that directs the mutation of the real into the hyperreal." (30) He also discusses nuclear war: "The war is no less atrocious for being only a simulacrum - the flesh suffers just the same...What no longer exists is the adversity of adversaries, the reality of antagonistic causes, the ideological seriousness of war. And also the reality of victory or defeat, war being a process that triumphs well beyond these appearances."(38) "Simulaton is the master, and we only have a right to the retro, to the phantom, parodic rehabilitation of all lose referentials. Everything still unfolds around us, in the cold light of deterrence."(39) Ok, I'll tell it too you straight - I am not so amped on the rest of this book, but I'll mention some of the more interesting stuff and glide over the rest, ok? The next chapter links the loss of history to the birth of cinema - "myth, chased from the real by the violence of history, finds refuge in cinema." (43) History is now neofiguration: "neofiguration is an invocation of resemblance, but at the same time the flagrant proof of the disappearance of objects in their very representation: hyperreal." (45) There follows some short readings of Holocaust, The China Syndrome, and Apocalypse Now. Baudrillard critiques the Beaubourg in the next chapter: "Beauborg is nothing but a huge effort to transmute this famous traditional culture of meaning into the aleatory order of signs, into an order of sumulacra that is completely homogeneous with the flux and pipes of the facede. And it is in order to prepare the masses for this new semiurgic order that one brings them together here - with the opposite pretext of acculturating them to meaning and depth." (65) He continues to consider the position of advertising, the hypermarket and media. Ok here is a good part - the chapter on clones. "This is how one puts an end to totality. If all information can be found in each of its parts, the whole loses its meaning. It is also the end of the body, of this singularity called body, whose secret is precisely that it cannot be segmented into additional cells, that it is an indivisible configuration...From a functional and mechanistic point of view, each organ is still only a partial and differentiated prosthesis: already simulation, but 'traditional.'...It is the genetic formula inscribed in ech cell that becomes the veritible modern prosthesis of all bodie. If the prosthesis is commonly an artifact that supplements a failing organ, or the instrumental extension of a body, then the DNA molecule, which contains all information relative to a body, is the prosthesis par excellence, the one that will allow for the indefinite extension of the body by the body itself- this body itself being nothing but the indefinite series of its prosthesis." (98) There is some talk on holograms (the 3-D simulacra) and a reading of Crash (no, not that Crash, the other one). Also a chapter on science fiction as a contestation between two modes of simulacra, the productive and the simulation. Also a chapter on Animals (interesting to see it after reading the Lippit who comments on Baudrillard) which discusses animal's lack of language and unconscious. A chapter that complicates the complication posed by the remainder as non-binaristic extra (now everything has a remainder, so what does it matter?) Two chapters on the University in ruins (or ruining - and a call to let it decay). And finally, the famous Neo read chapter in the Matrix "On Nihilism" - " If being a nihilist, is carrying, to the unbearable limit of hegemonic systems, this radical trait of derision and of violence, this challenge that the system is summoned to answer through its own death, then I am a terrorist and a nihilist in theory as others are with their weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource left us."(163)
Keywords
Simulacra, Simulation, Sign, Real, Vicissitude, Nihilism, appearance.
Other Thoughts
I know Kung Fu.
"It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.". (1)
"All capital asks of us is to receive it as rational or to combat it in the name of rationality, to receive it as moral or to combat it in the name of morality. Because these are the same, which can be thought of in another way: formerly one worked to dissimulate scandale - today one works to conceal that there is none."(15)
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Field
History and Theory of the Body
Summary
What is simulation? "It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hypereal." (1) Simulacrum is the sign of simulation. "It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double,a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes."(2) Simulation is not representation: "Simulation on the contrary, stems from the utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as the reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation attempts to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a fale representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum."(6) Baudrillard gives Disneyland as a model of "all the entangled orders of simulacra...Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real." (12)
The real is a strategy of power, "to reinject the real and the referential everywhere."(22) "Ideology only corresponds to a corruption of reality through signs; simulation corresponds to a short circuit of reality and to its duplication through signs. It is always the goal of the ideogical analysis to restore the objective process,it is always a false problem to wish to restore the truth beneath the simulacrum." (27) Baudrillard then goes on to discuss television: "One must think instead of the media as if they were, in outer orbit, a kind of genetic code that directs the mutation of the real into the hyperreal." (30) He also discusses nuclear war: "The war is no less atrocious for being only a simulacrum - the flesh suffers just the same...What no longer exists is the adversity of adversaries, the reality of antagonistic causes, the ideological seriousness of war. And also the reality of victory or defeat, war being a process that triumphs well beyond these appearances."(38) "Simulaton is the master, and we only have a right to the retro, to the phantom, parodic rehabilitation of all lose referentials. Everything still unfolds around us, in the cold light of deterrence."(39) Ok, I'll tell it too you straight - I am not so amped on the rest of this book, but I'll mention some of the more interesting stuff and glide over the rest, ok? The next chapter links the loss of history to the birth of cinema - "myth, chased from the real by the violence of history, finds refuge in cinema." (43) History is now neofiguration: "neofiguration is an invocation of resemblance, but at the same time the flagrant proof of the disappearance of objects in their very representation: hyperreal." (45) There follows some short readings of Holocaust, The China Syndrome, and Apocalypse Now. Baudrillard critiques the Beaubourg in the next chapter: "Beauborg is nothing but a huge effort to transmute this famous traditional culture of meaning into the aleatory order of signs, into an order of sumulacra that is completely homogeneous with the flux and pipes of the facede. And it is in order to prepare the masses for this new semiurgic order that one brings them together here - with the opposite pretext of acculturating them to meaning and depth." (65) He continues to consider the position of advertising, the hypermarket and media. Ok here is a good part - the chapter on clones. "This is how one puts an end to totality. If all information can be found in each of its parts, the whole loses its meaning. It is also the end of the body, of this singularity called body, whose secret is precisely that it cannot be segmented into additional cells, that it is an indivisible configuration...From a functional and mechanistic point of view, each organ is still only a partial and differentiated prosthesis: already simulation, but 'traditional.'...It is the genetic formula inscribed in ech cell that becomes the veritible modern prosthesis of all bodie. If the prosthesis is commonly an artifact that supplements a failing organ, or the instrumental extension of a body, then the DNA molecule, which contains all information relative to a body, is the prosthesis par excellence, the one that will allow for the indefinite extension of the body by the body itself- this body itself being nothing but the indefinite series of its prosthesis." (98) There is some talk on holograms (the 3-D simulacra) and a reading of Crash (no, not that Crash, the other one). Also a chapter on science fiction as a contestation between two modes of simulacra, the productive and the simulation. Also a chapter on Animals (interesting to see it after reading the Lippit who comments on Baudrillard) which discusses animal's lack of language and unconscious. A chapter that complicates the complication posed by the remainder as non-binaristic extra (now everything has a remainder, so what does it matter?) Two chapters on the University in ruins (or ruining - and a call to let it decay). And finally, the famous Neo read chapter in the Matrix "On Nihilism" - " If being a nihilist, is carrying, to the unbearable limit of hegemonic systems, this radical trait of derision and of violence, this challenge that the system is summoned to answer through its own death, then I am a terrorist and a nihilist in theory as others are with their weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource left us."(163)
Keywords
Simulacra, Simulation, Sign, Real, Vicissitude, Nihilism, appearance.
Other Thoughts
I know Kung Fu.
"It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.". (1)
"All capital asks of us is to receive it as rational or to combat it in the name of rationality, to receive it as moral or to combat it in the name of morality. Because these are the same, which can be thought of in another way: formerly one worked to dissimulate scandale - today one works to conceal that there is none."(15)
"In fact, this whole process can only be understood in its negative form: nothing separates one pole from another anymore, the beginning from the end; there is a kind of contraction of one over the other, a fantastic telescoping, a collapse of the two traditional poles into each other: implosion - an absorption of the radiating mode of causality, of the differential mode of determination, with its positive and negative charge - an implosion of meaning. That is where simulation begins." (31)
# posted by SMRT : 4:41 PM
