Editing Simulacra and Simulation (section)

=== Analogies ===
A specific analogy that Baudrillard uses is a fable derived from ''[[On Exactitude in Science]]'' by [[Jorge Luis Borges]]. In it, a great Empire created a map that was so detailed it was as large as the Empire itself. The actual map was expanded and destroyed as the Empire itself conquered or lost territory. When the Empire crumbled, all that was left was the map. In Baudrillard's rendition, it is conversely the map that people live in, the simulation of reality where the people of the Empire spend their lives ensuring their place in the representation is properly circumscribed and detailed by the map-makers; conversely, it is reality that is crumbling away from disuse.

{{blockquote|The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is nothing, marks the decisive turning point. The first implies a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgment to separate truth from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since everything is already dead and risen in advance.<ref name="PH" />}}

When Baudrillard refers to the "precession of simulacra" in ''Simulacra and Simulation'', he is referring to the way simulacra have come to ''precede'' the real in the sense mentioned above, rather than to any ''succession'' of historical phases of the image. Referring to "On Exactitude in Science", he argued that just as for contemporary society the simulated copy had superseded the original object, so, too, the map had come to precede the geographic territory (cf. [[Map–territory relation]]), e.g. the [[Gulf War|first Gulf War]] (which Baudrillard later used as an object demonstration in ''[[The Gulf War Did Not Take Place]]''): the image of war preceded real war. War comes not when it is made by sovereign against sovereign, not when killing for attritive and strategic neutralisation purposes is authorised; nor even, properly spoken, when shots are fired; rather, war comes when society is generally convinced that it is coming.

{{blockquote|Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map.<ref name="PH" />}}