An Introduction to Simulation and Simulacra

Introduction

Baudrillard is as pertinent now, as probably he ever was. Perhaps even more now than when he began writing due to his discussions of images and signs and mass consumer culture. Simulation and Simulacra was written in the early 80s, so he didn’t have things like YouTube and social media— and yet he gives a good discussion of how these images come to influence our perception of reality.

Who was Jean Baudrillard?

Baudrillard is associated with three schools of French structuralism and post-structuralism depending on which book you’re looking at. He kind of borders that distinction and is part of what we might call the second wave of Parisian structuralism. For that reason people often call him a postmodernist— which is not incorrect, but we’re not gonna get into that just yet. 

Baurdillard’s colleagues Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida use structuralist methods to interrogate the history of philosophy but Baudrillard turned the methods onto everyday experiences. Like Roland Barthes, Baudrillard writes often on current events, popular entertainment and advertising. 

For that reason, Baudillard can be a little hard to place. He’s been called a sociologist, a cultural theorist and a philosopher. All these are both right and wrong for different reasons but he doesn’t really fit into these neat categories because of the way that he writes. 

Baudrillard is variously called a sociologist, a cultural theorist and sometimes a philosopher.

Baudrillard’s Contribution

Baudrillard’s main contribution is how popular imagery and ideological biases have changed our conception and perception of reality. His style is polemical— which means that he makes claims often in strong or exaggerated terms and they aren’t always thoroughly or systematically argued.  

The reality principle is quite important to Baudrillard. It’s how we understand what words and images mean, and what they reference. So by way of an intro, let’s look at two examples of conditions where the reality- principle has disappeared in our day compared to how you would interpret something historically. 

Example 1: Money

Think of the historically dominant form of money, which had the value of the metal that it’s made from— gold, silver, bronze, copper. I’m oversimplifying a little here but you can see the comparison. Gold is valuable, simply because it’s hard to find and laborious to extract— you have to mine it.

These are tangible, objective qualities of gold and they don’t really change. Our concepts of money and value is far more speculative and free floating. Stocks are an example of this— they fluctuate wildly from day to day based on speculation, news, announcements and things like that. 

Furthermore governments control the value of currencies by adjusting interest rates and controlling inflation. So physical money changing hands, like pieces of gold is no longer the norm. Our money today is mostly just digital information that’s transferred between credit cards and bank machines. Banks can speculate with unreal money and make investments with money that doesn’t physically exist within the bank. 

So we go from money as a precious metal to a modern notion of money with fewer direct properties you can count on to define it.

Example 2: Art

At first art was never made for its own sake, we have ancient statues and cave paintings and totems and things like that from ancient cultures, but they never just made art for its own sake. It wasn’t called art it always had a purpose. For example: religious art.

Religious art was a functional tool in a lot of ways— think of iconography and Christianity. Art was not distinct and separate from religion. 

Then art became used symbolically in the Renaissance. So it no longer had a functional purpose but instead depicted religious themes. So you have Michelangelo painting The Creation of Adam.

Then in the final stage of art (modern art) we have something like Andy Warhol. In modern art, art is no longer for a purpose. It does not depict religious themes (at least not necessarily) and there's no deeper meaning to it. Instead, what does Andy Warhol paint? Basically images from popular culture— Marilyn Monroe, soup cans— the things that you would see if you were watching television. 

So art becomes an artificial reflection in a late capitalist society. It has no deeper purpose anymore.

Conclusion

Baudrillard focus on histories like art and money. He traces the progression of material practices from their origins to our consumer society.

In this way, signs become unmoored from referents. They float around freely so that they can use and be used for anything.

This is what we will discuss in our lectures.