Simulacra and Simulation
Jean Baudrillard · 1981
OVERVIEW
Jean Baudrillard's 1981 book, translated into English by Sheila Faria Glaser in 1994. It argues that signs have detached from what they once referred to, and that culture now circulates copies with no original behind them.
The often-quoted structure is four stages: an image reflects reality, then masks it, then masks its absence, then bears no relation to any reality at all. The last stage is the simulacrum, and Baudrillard's claim is that it is where we already live.
WHY IT MATTERS
An obvious conceptual namesake: a framework for thinking about representation replacing the real.
CONTEXT
Baudrillard came out of French sociology and the critique of consumer society, and the book sits alongside work by Debord and Lyotard. Its examples are Disneyland, Watergate and the map that precedes the territory.
Its afterlife is strange: it became a film prop and then shorthand, which is a fate the argument more or less predicts. Baudrillard disliked the readings that followed.
WHAT TO NOTICE
- 01Start with the mapThe opening image, a map so detailed it replaces the territory, is the whole book in one page.
- 02The four stagesReflect, mask, mask an absence, refer to nothing. Most disputes about the book are really disputes about which stage something is in.
- 03It is not about fakesA simulacrum is not a bad copy. It is a sign with no original, which is a harder and more useful idea.
- 04Glaser's translationThe English is the 1994 University of Michigan translation. Baudrillard's French is more ironic than the English usually reads.
CONNECTIONS
- THE SIGN DETACHESLearning from Las Vegas / Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour
Published nine years apart and arriving at the same place from opposite directions. Venturi and Scott Brown surveyed the Strip and concluded the sign had replaced the building; Baudrillard concluded the sign had replaced the world.
- THE COPY REPLACES THE ORIGINALThe Substance / Coralie Fargeat
Baudrillard's fourth stage, staged on a body. The film's premise is a replacement that has no original to return to, and the horror comes from the original's continued existence.
- THE MODEL PRECEDES THE WORLDDevs / Alex Garland
A machine that reconstructs any moment so precisely that the reconstruction is treated as the event. Baudrillard's map that comes before the territory, given a server room.
EXPLORE FURTHER
- BOOK / University of Michigan PressSimulacra and Simulation
The publisher of the Glaser translation, which is the standard English edition.