Product Description

The first full-length translation in English of an essential work of postmodernist thought.

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Product Details

Publisher	University of Michigan Press
ISBN	0472065211
Creator	Sheila Faria Glaser
Author	Jean Baudrillard
Format	Paperback
Label	University of Michigan Press
Dewey Decimal Number	194
Studio	University of Michigan Press
EAN	9780472065219
Number Of Pages	164
Title	Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism)
Publication Date	1995-02-15
Manufacturer	University of Michigan Press

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Customer Reviews

The hyperconformist simulation of pure non meaning.

Review by Mr., 2010-02-15

Read some angry philosophy and check out the alleged inspiration for the matrix??

There is more information in our world but it has increasingly less meaning. This book defines us what we are "Disaffected but saturated." ...."All virtual modes of expression into advertising." We have reached the level of "absolute advertising". The advertisers have developed "neutral equivalent rhetoric".

"To the demand of being a subject he opposes, just as
obstinately, and efficaciously, an object's resistance, that is to say,
exactly the opposite: childishness, hyperconformism, total dependence,
passivity, idiocy. "

It is topics like this that probably made this book interesting to the men who created the movie the Matrix although I believe the author said that the matrix had nothing to do with his book which is interesting in itself.

The part that stayed with me is Baudrillard 's comment on the film Apocalypse Now The Simulacra and Simulation the was the power of that fantastic film. Apocalypse Now was such a fantastic spectacle that the power of special effects is so bewildering it shifts the focus of the war to a simulated event.

Ballered mentions "The Matrix"

"The Father and the Mother have disappeared, not in the service of an aleatory liberty of the subject, but in the service of a matrix called code. No more mother, no more father: a matrix.
My favorite line of the book!!The Destroyer of Intensities Advertising, therefore, like information: destroyer of intensities, accelerator of inertia.

"Artifices of meaning and non-meaning repeated in it without lassitude."


And worse and even more fake the advent of cloning.

"Cloning is thus the last stage of the history and modeling of the body , the one at which reduced to its abstract and genetic formula, the individual is destined for serial propagation."

"Pure non meaning."

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muddled writing

Review by Brandon A. Frankenfield, 2009-03-25

I read this based on the Matrix series, I suspect like most. While some of the under lying ideas were decent, I thought the writing style was painful and made reading longer than necessary. The writing style could be blamed on the translation, but never less it was a bit muddled.

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MA(t)R(i)X : Not Sci-Fi, Post-Marxist

Review by M. Ruiz, 2008-12-27

I read this little book years ago as part of my grad studies. It is amazing to me how accurate many of Baudrillard's observations have proven to be. It's as if he were some kind of Prophet (LOL!). But, seriously, the loss of Reality is embodied in many different ways. Our use of the Internet is the number one example. Many forms of Virtual reality such as Reality TV, Chatrooms, Avatars, Online dating, even the Fashion industry qualify.

As for Desert of the Real, let me give you this example: Just 2 weeks ago I arranged a flight and never had to make any contact with anyone. I ordered my ticket online, printed it out, took it to a self-check-in machine, punched in my numbers, got a boarding pass, and walked on the plane. I have to admit I missed the human contact. But such is the post-Modern condition. Of course, there were people on the plane, but no individual attention, only contact as a group. Another example: Video games, email, Demographics, credit cards and direct deposit, Hollywood (originator of the Virtual), Celebrity culture (ex: Why is it that when they use certain people in a commercial they include the phrase "Real people, not actors"? Aren't actors real?), Paparrazzi, the Digital revolution. I could go on listing the many Virtual worlds we inhabit, but suffice it to say they are self-generating!

If you plan on reading this book, do yourself a favor and forget the Matrix (great movie, though). This is very real, Hyper-Real. Read Marxist ideology and some Existentialist "Being and Nothingness" Sartre, after reading Plato and Kant, and you wont be so put off by the big ideas. Baudrillard describes a world based on economic relationships only, and as such it is a system of objects, based on nothing but Material gains. To many this describes an impoverished system, morally bankrupt and soulless. Baudrillard is suspicious and critical of Capitalist Democracies and Socialism. He sometimes implies that Anarchy is the only way out of this Technocratic Police State we have so far evolved into.

In this scenario the invisible ruling class controls the masses with its House of Mirrors. Baudrillard seems to be saying we either join the Dance of the Marionettes, revel in our liscentious artificiality or smash the Glass House, being careful enough to move out of the way of the falling shards. Shiva must be allowed his Dance of Destruction before Vishnu can be born again to save the world, sayeth Brahma. But even such an allusion to an Ancient religion crumbles in the face of the Hyper-Real.

It is our physical connections to our bodies that we must not negate, negotiate, or re-imagine (but, we do). And that is the exchange-value for our status within this system of objects. It is also the original site of our Loss. Only a jarring blow to the body can wake us from our complacent complicity in doing violence to the Real. Violence is as real as it gets. Do damage to a physical body and there will be a reaction. Do violence to the State as a body and you partake in the Virtual discourse that is Politics.

If only I could truly understand all the delicious ironies and nuances in the French language. Bad translations are all we deserve. Great writing, forever misread, generates even more writing, cleverly said. I suspect the French don't truly want to be translated by the English, but that is an old war and I've always been the paranoid sort.
Not really as dense as many would have you believe. Blinded by the Light is more like it. Keep reading.

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Caveat emptor(s):

Review by Alaric, 2008-07-07

1. The first two chapters are more or less verbatim permutations of his 'Simulations', which this reviewer finds more substantial, though this book contains a few elaborations that are left aching for in Simulations. In every other respect, the first two chapters say little that Baudrillard had not already accomplished in previous publications in greater depth. The possible advantage herein could be lie in that the less extensive use of Semiotical and Marxist concepts may make this more accessible. But this assumes the utility of accessibility. Elsewise, the Semiotext(e) translation of 'Simulations' was more than adequate, you may just want to start there.

2. This text will likely be indecipherable jabberwocky to anyone not acquainted with Semiology and economics. Furthermore, if these thing bore or otherwise hold no relevance to one, there is no real point in reading any of Baudrillard unless one is in possession of a patience willing to wade through some genre specific terminology and verbiage to get some cultural and social analysis out of it; those critiques stand on their own for the most part.

3. The Matrix: low relevance to the film, his earlier writings are more radical.

4. Baudrillard has little reverence for the institutions of Socialism and Democracy, reading this may infuriate or otherwise cause a lapse of faith in those deus ex machinas.

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surprising

Review by Mis G. I. Schofield, 2008-04-25

Fell into this straight away, Used to reading similar but find it hard to read heavy theory, this was surprisingly easy to read, although some of the ideas are extreme, a lot can be taken from them and i look forward to reading every last word. truly tasty

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