Simulations - Jean Baudrillard

Simulations - Jean Baudrillard

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Short Description

Full bibliographic data for Simulations

Title

Simulations

Authors and contributors

By (author) Jean Baudrillard, Translated by Paul Foos, Translated by Paul Patton, Translated by Philip Beitchman, Translated by P. Foss

Physical properties

Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 169
Width: 114 mm
Height: 178 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight: 181 g

Audience

General/trade

Language

English

ISBN

ISBN 13: 9780936756028
ISBN 10: 0936756020

Classifications

BISAC category code:LIT004190
Dewey:111.1
LCification:BD336.B38
Nielsen BookScan Product Class:T8.6
BICMainSubject:HP
BISAC category code:LIT006000
Dewey:194
BISAC category code:PHI016000

Publisher

AUTONOMEDIA

Imprint name

Semiotext (E)

Publication date

01 June 1984

Publication City/Country

New York/US

Main description

Simulations never existed as a book before it was "translated" into English. Actuallyit came from two different bookCovers written at different times by Jean Baudrillard. The first partof Simulations, and most provocative because it made a fiction of theory, was "The Procession ofSimulacra." It had first been published in Simulacre et Simulations (1981). The second part, writtenmuch earlier and in a more academic mode, came from L'Echange Symbolique et la Mort (1977). It was ahalf-earnest, half-parodical attempt to "historicize" his own conceit by providing it with some kindof genealogy of the three orders of appearance: the Counterfeit attached to theical period;Production for the industrial era; and Simulation, controlled by the code. It was Baudrillard'sversion of Foucault's Order of Things and his ironical commentary of the history of truth. The bookopens on a quote from Ecclesiastes asserting flatly that "the simulacrum is true." It was certainlytrue in Baudrillard's book, but otherwise apocryphal.One of the most influential essays of the 20thcentury, Simulations was put together in 1983 in order to be published as the first little blackbook of Semiotext(e)'s new Foreign Agents Series. Baudrillard's bewildering thesis, a boldextrapolation on Ferdinand de Saussure's general theory of general linguistics, was in fact aclinical vision of contemporary consumer societies where signs don't refer anymore to anythingexcept themselves. They all are generated by the matrix.In effect Baudrillard's essay (it quicklybecame a must to read both in the art world and in academe) was upholding the only reality there wasin a world that keeps hiding the fact that it has none. Simulacrum is its own pure simulacrum andthe simulacrum is true. In his celebrated analysis of Disneyland, Baudrillard demonstrates that itschildish imaginary is neither true nor false, it is there to make us believe that the rest ofAmerica is real, when in fact America is a Disneyland. It is of the order of the hyper-real and ofsimulation. Few people at the time realized that Baudrillard's simulacrum itself wasn't a thing, buta "deterrence machine," just like Disneyland, meant to reveal the fact that the real is no longerreal and illusion no longer possible. But the more impossible the illusion of reality becomes, themore impossible it is to separate true from false and the real from its artificial resurrection, themore panic-stricken the production of the real is.

Biographical note

Jean Baudrillard (1929--2007) was a philosopher, sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist of postmodernity who challenged all existing theories of contemporary society with humor and precision. An outsider in the French intellectual establishment, he was internationally renowned as a twenty-first century visionary, reporter, and provocateur.