Editing Simulacra and Simulation

{{short description|1981 book by Jean Baudrillard}}
{{distinguish|Simulation hypothesis|Simulated reality}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2020}}
{{Infobox book| <!-- See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels]] or [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Books]] -->
| name          = Simulacra and Simulation
| title_orig    = Simulacres et Simulation
| translators   = Paul Foss, Paul Batton & Philip Beitchman
| image         = File:Simulacres et Simulation.jpg
| caption       = Cover of the first edition
| author        = [[Jean Baudrillard]]
| illustrator   =
| cover_artist  =
| country       = France
| language      = French
| series        =
| subject       = [[Simulacra]], [[semiotics]]
| publisher     = Éditions Galilée (French) & [[Semiotext(e)]] (English)
| pub_date      = 1981
| english_pub_date = 1983
| media_type    = Print ([[Paperback]])
| pages         = 164 pp
| isbn =  2-7186-0210-4 |isbn_note= (French) & {{ISBN|0-472-06521-1}} (English)
| dewey= 194 19
| congress= BD236 .B38
| oclc= 7773126
| preceded_by =
| followed_by =
}}
'''''Simulacra and Simulation''''' ({{langx|fr|Simulacres et Simulation}}) is a 1981 [[Philosophy|philosophical]] [[treatise]] by the [[philosopher]] and [[cultural theory|cultural theorist]]  [[Jean Baudrillard]], in which he seeks to examine the relationships between reality, symbols, and society, in particular the significations and symbolism of [[culture]] and [[media (communication)|media]] involved in [[Social constructivism|constructing]] an understanding of shared existence.

[[Simulacra]] are copies that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original.<ref>{{cite web
|first1=Robert
|last1=Goldman
|first2=Stephen 
|last2=Papson
|url=http://it.stlawu.edu/~global/glossary/simulacra.def.html
|title=Simulacra definition
|work=Information technology
|publisher=[[St. Lawrence University]]
|location=Canton, New York
|date=30 August 2003
|access-date=4 August 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200627011355/http://it.stlawu.edu/~global/glossary/simulacra.def.html
 |archive-date=27 June 2020 |url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Simulation]] is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time.<ref name="definition">{{cite book
| first1=Jerry
| last1=Banks
| first2=John S. II
| last2=Carson
| first3=Barry L.
| last3=Nelson
| first4=David M.
| last4=Nicol
| title=Discrete-Event System Simulation
| publisher=[[Pearson Education]]
| location=London, England
| date=2001
| page=3
| isbn=0-13-088702-1}}</ref>

==Summary==
===Definition===
{{blockquote|...The [[simulacrum]] is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.<ref name="isbn0-7456-0586-9">{{Cite book
  | title=Selected writings
  |author1=Poster, Mark |author2=Baudrillard, Jean | publisher=Polity
  | location=Cambridge, UK
  | year=1988
  | isbn=0-7456-0586-9}}</ref>
}}

''Simulacra and Simulation'' is most known for its discussion of symbols, signs, and how they relate to contemporaneity (simultaneous existences).<ref>{{cite journal|first=Ross|last=Abbinnett|title=The Spectre and the Simulacrum: History after Baudrillard|journal=Theory, Culture & Society|publisher=[[SAGE Publications]]|location=Thousand Oaks, California|volume=25|issue=6|date=1 November 2008|pages=69–87|doi=10.1177/0263276408095545|s2cid=146741752 }}</ref> Baudrillard claims that current [[society]] has replaced all reality and meaning with [[symbol]]s and [[Sign (semiotics)|signs]], and that human experience is a simulation of reality.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Douglas|last=Kellner|title=Baudrillard, Semiurgy, and Death|journal=Theory, Culture & Society|publisher=[[SAGE Publications]]|location=Thousand Oaks, California|volume=4|issue=1|date=1 February 1987|pages=125–146|doi=10.1177/026327687004001007|s2cid=144010126 }}</ref> Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that nothing like reality is relevant to people's current understanding of their lives.{{citation needed|date=November 2019}} The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of [[culture]] and [[media (communication)|media]] that [[Social constructivism|construct]] perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which human life and shared existence are rendered legible. (These ideas had appeared earlier in [[Guy Debord]]'s 1967 ''[[The Society of the Spectacle]]''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm | date=1967| title=Society of the Spectacle | publisher=marxists.org|accessdate=28 May 2019}}</ref>) Baudrillard believed that society had become so saturated with these simulacra and human life so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was becoming meaningless by being infinitely mutable; he called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra".<ref>{{cite book|first=Jean|last=Baudrillard|author-link=Jean Baudrillard|title=Simulations|url=https://archive.org/details/simulations0000baud|url-access=registration|publisher=[[Semiotext(e)]]|location=Los Angeles, California|date=1983|isbn=978-0936756028|pages=[https://archive.org/details/simulations0000baud/page/1 1]–30}}</ref>

=== Stages ===
{{unreferenced section|date=December 2018}}
''Simulacra and Simulation'' delineates the sign-order into four stages:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Baudrillard |first=Jean |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7773126 |title=Simulacres et simulation |date=1981 |publisher=Galilée |isbn=2-7186-0210-4 |location=Paris |oclc=7773126}}</ref>
# The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where people believe, and may even be correct to believe, that a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order".
# The second stage is perversion of reality, where people come to believe that the sign is an unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearance—it is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us, but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
# The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the sign ''pretends'' to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery", a regime of [[Semantics|semantic]] algebra where all human meaning is conjured artificially to appear as a reference to the (increasingly) hermetic truth.
# The fourth stage is pure simulacrum, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers' lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, "[[Hyperreality|hyperreal]]" terms. Any naïve pretension to reality as such is perceived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental.

====Second order====
{{unreferenced section|date=September 2014}}
<!-- Merged from second-order simulacra https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second-order_simulacra&oldid=795562497-->
Part of the three order simulacra, the '''second-order simulacra''', a term coined by [[Jean Baudrillard]], are [[symbol]]s of a non faithful representation to the original. Here, signs and images do not faithfully show reality, but might hint at the existence of something real which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.<ref>Baudrillard 1994 [1981], Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press, p. 6</ref>

The first-order simulacra is a faithful copy to the original and the third order are symbols that have become without referents, that is, symbols with no real object to represent but that pretend to be a faithful copy of an original. Third-order simulacra are symbols in themselves, taken for reality, and a further layer of [[symbol]]ism is added. This occurs when the symbol is taken to be more important or authoritative of the original entity, authenticity has been replaced by copy (thus reality is replaced by a substitute).

The consequence of the propagation of second-order [[simulacra]] is that, within the affected context, nothing is "real", though those engaged in the illusion are incapable of seeing it. Instead of having experiences, people observe spectacles, via real or [[metaphor]]ical control screens. Instead of the real, there is simulation and simulacra, the [[Hyperreality|hyperreal]].

In his essay ''The Precession of the Simulacra'', Baudrillard recalls a tale from a short story by [[Jorge Luis Borges|Borges]] in which a king requests a map (i.e. a symbol) to be produced so detailed that it ends up coming into one-to-one correspondence with the territory (i.e. the real area the map is to represent); this references the philosophical concept of [[map–territory relation]]. Baudrillard argues that in the [[postmodern]] epoch, the territory ceases to exist, and there is nothing left but the map; or indeed, the very concepts of the map and the territory have become indistinguishable, the distinction which once existed between them having been erased.

Among the many issues associated with the propagation of second-order simulacra to the third-order is what Baudrillard considers the termination of history. The method of this termination comes through the lack of oppositional elements in society, with the mass having become "the [[silent majority]]", an imploded concept which absorbs images passively, becoming itself a media overwritten by those who speak for it (i.e. the people are symbolically represented by governing agents and market statistic, marginalizing the people themselves). For Baudrillard this is the natural result of an ethic of unity in which actually agonistic opposites are taken to be essentially the same. For example, Baudrillard contends that [[moral universalism]] (human rights, equality) is equated with [[globalization]], which is not concerned with immutable values but with mediums of exchange and equalisation such as the global market and [[mass media]].

=== Degrees ===
''Simulacra and Simulation'' identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:
# First order, associated with the premodern period, where representation is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item. The uniqueness of objects and situations marks them as irreproducibly real and signification obviously gropes towards this reality.
# Second order, associated with the [[modernity]] of the [[Industrial Revolution]], where distinctions between representation and reality break down due to the proliferation of [[mass production|mass-reproducible]] copies of items, turning them into commodities.  The commodity's ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the authority of the original version, because the copy is just as "real" as its [[prototype]].
# Third order, associated with the [[postmodernity]] of [[Late Capitalism]], where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation vanishes. There is only the simulation, and originality becomes a totally meaningless concept.<ref name="PH">{{cite book|first=Paul|last=Hagerty|title=Jean Baudrillard: Live Theory|chapter=Simulation and the Decay of the Real|publisher=Continuum|location=London, England|date=2004|pages=[https://archive.org/details/jeanbaudrillardl0000hega/page/49 49–68]|isbn=0-8264-6283-9|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/jeanbaudrillardl0000hega/page/49}}</ref>

=== Phenomena ===
Baudrillard theorizes that the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in several phenomena:<ref>{{cite web
| url=https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/postmodernism/modules/baudrillardsimulation.html
| title=Modules on Baudrillard: On Simulation
| first=Dino
| last=Felluga
| work=Introductory Guide to Critical Theory
| date=2003-06-25
| access-date=2015-08-04}}</ref>
# Contemporary media including [[television]], [[film]], [[printing|print]], and the [[Internet]], which are responsible for blurring the line between products that are needed (in order to live a life) and products for which a need is created by commercial images.
# [[Exchange value]], in which the value of goods is based on money (literally [[denomination (money)|denominated]] [[fiat money|fiat currency]]) rather than usefulness, and moreover usefulness comes to be quantified and defined in monetary terms in order to assist exchange.
# Multinational [[capitalism]], which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials and the processes (including the people and their cultural context) used to create them.
# [[Urbanization]], which separates humans from the [[Nature|nonhuman world]], and re-centres culture around productive [[throughput (business)|throughput]] systems so large they cause [[Marx's theory of alienation|alienation]].
# [[Language]] and [[ideology]], in which language increasingly becomes caught up in the production of power relations between social groups, especially when powerful groups institute themselves at least partly in monetary terms.

=== 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" />}}

==Reception==
{{expand section|section|date=February 2023}}

=== Academia and pop culture ===
The work has sparked interest in academia, with many researchers building upon the concept laid down by Baudrillard. 

Many have applied Baudrillard terminology to the study of modern and contemporary works of fiction.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Tramboo |first=Dr Ishfaq |date=2021-01-01 |title=Hyperreality in Media and Literature: An Overview of Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation |url=https://www.academia.edu/84672067/Hyperreality_in_Media_and_Literature_An_Overview_of_Jean_Baudrillard_s_Simulacra_and_Simulation}}</ref> 

Some specific examples include:

* [[Day Zero (novel)|Day Zero]], a novel by [[C. Robert Cargill]], examined in "Simulacrum And Hyperreality in Cargill's Day Zero: A Critical Postmodern Study"<ref>{{Cite journal |last=1Abdul Munim Khan, 2Aleem, 3Riasat Ali |first=1Rana, 2Amina,  3Faiza |date=January 2024 |title=Simulacrum And Hyperreality in Cargil's Day Zero A Critical Postmodern Study |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377716562_Simulacrum_And_Hyperreality_in_Cargill's_Day_Zero_A_Critical_Postmodern_Study |journal=Khaldunia - Journal of Social Sciences}}</ref>
* The [[Matrix movie|Matrix]] movie, which is considered to be an 'interpretative grid' for Baudrillard's theory<ref>{{Citation |last=Lutzka |first=Sven |title=SIMULACRA, SIMULATION AND THE MATRIX |date=2006-01-01 |work=The Matrix in Theory |pages=113–129 |url=https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789401201292/B9789401201292-s007.xml |access-date=2025-03-11 |publisher=Brill |language=en |isbn=978-94-012-0129-2}}</ref> and was issued to the cast as a required reading,<ref>{{Cite news |last=Rothstein |first=Edward |date=2003-05-24 |title=Philosophers Draw On a Film Drawing On Philosophers |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/24/movies/philosophers-draw-on-a-film-drawing-on-philosophers.html |access-date=2025-03-11 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> much to Baudrillard's disappointment with the final product,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Philosophy |first=The Living |title=Why Baudrillard Hated The Matrix |url=https://www.thelivingphilosophy.com/p/why-baudrillard-hated-the-matrix |access-date=2025-03-11 |website=www.thelivingphilosophy.com |language=en}}</ref>
* [[Ex Machina (film)|Ex-Machina]] (2014) and [[Venom (2018 film)|Venom]] (2018) in the matter of [[techno-orientalism]]<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wong |first=Angie |date=2022 |title=Simulacra and SimulAsian: The Culture of Hollywood's Yellow Peril |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/881621/summary |journal=Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée |volume=49 |issue=1 |pages=208–221 |issn=1913-9659}}</ref> 
* finally, and most broadly, to [[science fiction]] as a genre<ref>{{Cite web |title=In Response To Jean Baudrillard (Hayles, Porush, Landon, Sobchack, Ballard) |url=https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/55/forum55.htm |access-date=2025-03-11 |website=www.depauw.edu}}</ref>

In Baudrillard's Obscenity,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sobchack |first=Vivian |date=1991 |title=Baudrillard's Obscenity |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240087 |journal=Science Fiction Studies |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=327–329 |issn=0091-7729}}</ref> [[Vivian Sobchack]] notes:<blockquote>There's nothing like a little pain to bring us (back) to our senses—and to reveal Baudrillard's apocalyptic descriptions of the postmodern techno-body as dangerously partial and naively celebratory. Baudrillard's techno-body is a body that is ''thought'' always as an ''object'', and never ''lived'' as a ''subject''. Thus it can bear all sorts of symbolic abuse with indiscriminate and undifferentiated pleasure. This techno-body is a porno-''graphic'' fiction, objectified and written beyond belief and beyond the real—which is to say, it is always something "other" than Baudrillard's own body which he lives (even as he refuses to believe it) as "real" and "mine." One's own body resists the kind of affectless objectification that Baudrillard has ''in mind''; rather, it responds affectively to such mortification as he ''imagines'' with confusion, horror, anguish, and pain. Even its defensive or offensive "numbness" is physically and affectively ''lived''—and ''felt''.</blockquote>Thus providing a counter argument to Baudrullard's simulacra, or techno-body, while recognizing the value of the framework.

===Baudrillard himself===
{{see also-text|{{annotated link|Genealogy (philosophy)}}|{{annotated link|The Order of Things|The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences}}|{{annotated link|The Archaeology of Knowledge}}}}
Baudrillard himself noted that many read his writing on the 'three orders' of the image with excessive seriousness. In the [[postface]] of his ''Forget Foucault'' (Original: ''Oublier Foucault''), Baudrillard's interviewer [[Sylvère Lotringer]] suggested that Baudrillard's approach to "The Order of the simulacra" was "pretty close" to that of [[Michel Foucault]] who "wrote the archaeology of things", to which Baudrillard replied: 
{{blockquote|You're talking about the three orders? I could have made a book out of it, others rushed in to find examples. As for myself, without denying it, I don't believe it holds up. For a time I believed in Foucauldian genealogy, but the order of simulation is [[Antinomy|antinomical]] to genealogy.<ref>{{cite interview
| last           =Baudrillard

| first          =Jean
| subject        =

| subject-link   =Jean Baudrillard

| interviewer    =Sylvère Lotringer
| title          =Forget Baudrillard: An Interview with Sylvère Lotringer
| type           =
<!--|book-title=Forget Foucault-->
| work           =Humanities in Society, Volume 3, Number 1
| date           =
| publisher      =[[Semiotext(e)]] Foreign Agents Series
| location       =
| page           =76
| pages          =
| quote          =Lotringer: Your position with respect to Foucault is of the same order. Foucault wrote the archeology of things; you take them to the point of their cryogenicization. In ''The Order of the simulacra'', though your approach was pretty close to his ... <br/>Baudrillard: You're talking about the three orders? I could have made a book out of it, others rushed in to find examples. As for myself, without denying it, I don't believe it holds up. For a time I believed in Foucauldian [[genealogy (philosophy)|genealogy]], but the order of simulation is antinomical to genealogy.<br/>Lotringer: An anti-genealogy then?<br/>Baudrillard: No. If you take this logic to the extreme, what you get is the reabsorption of all genealogy. [...]
| url            =
| format         =
| url-status     =
| archive-url    =
| archive-date   =
| access-date    =
|isbn=978-1-58435-041-5
}}</ref>}}

==See also==
*[[Welcome to the Desert of the Real#Etymology|Desert of the real]]
* [[Desert (philosophy)]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
{{wikiquote|Jean Baudrillard#Simulacra_and_Simulation_(1981)|Simulacra and Simulation}}
* [[wikisource:Bacon's Essays/Of Simulation and Dissimulation|Bacon's Essays/Of Simulation and Dissimulation]] by philosopher [[Francis Bacon]]
* [http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/55/baudrillard55art.htm Jean Baudrillard: Two Essays]
* {{Cite web |title=In Response To Jean Baudrillard (Hayles, Porush, Landon, Sobchack, Ballard) |url=https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/55/forum55.htm |access-date=2023-02-19
|publisher=[[Science Fiction Studies]]
|website=www.depauw.edu
|author=N. Katherine Hayles
|author-link=N. Katherine Hayles
|author2=David Porush
|author3=Brooks Landon
|author4=Vivian Sobchack
|author-link4=Vivian Sobchack
|author5=J.G. Ballard
|author-link5=J.G. Ballard
}}

{{Jean Baudrillard}}
{{Authority control}}

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