Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, In Theory: Histories Of Cultural Materialism)

Some favourite quotations: "It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operating double." (p.2) (on god) "This is precisely what was feared by Iconoclasts, who millennial quarrel is still with us today . This is precisely because they predicted this omnipotence of simulacra, the faculty simulacra have of effacing God from conscience of man , and the destructive annihilating truth that they allow to appear - that deep down God never existed, that only simulacrum ever existed, even God himself was never anything but his own simulacrum - from this came their urge to destroy the images." (p.4) "We are fascinated by Ramses as Renaissance Christians were by the American Indians, those (human?) beings who had never know the word of Christ. Thus at the beginning of colonization , there was a moment of stupor and bewilderment before the very possibility of escaping the universal law of the Gospel. There were two possible responses: either admit that this Law was not universal, or exterminate the Indians to efface the evidence. In general, one contented oneself with converting them , or even simply discovering them, which would suffice to slowly exterminate them." (p.10) "Parody renders submission and transgression equivalent, and that is the most serious crime, because it cancels out the difference upon which the law is based," (p.21) "History is our lost referential, that is to say our myth," (p.43) "Neofiguration is an invocation of resemblance, but at the same time the flagrant proof of the disappearance of objects in their very representation: hyperreal." (p.45) "Today, it is the real that has become the alibi of the model, in a world controlled by the principle of simulation. And paradoxically, it is the real that has become our true utopia - but a utopia that is no longer in the realm of the possible, that can only be dreampt of as one would dream of a lost object." (p.123)

海外発送なので心配でしたがちゃんと綺麗な状態で送られてきました。 商品画像からも分かるように日本ではあまり見ない形状、大きさの書籍なので本棚に合うかは見ておいた方がいいです。

I will admit it took me a few weeks to gather my thoughts on this book, particularly because I couldn't understand if it's 4 or 5 stars for me (which is quite meaningless anyways, so let's move on). I think the purpose of theory and philosophy is to come up with ways of looking at life, that make the most sense, or that make life more "understandable". Beaudrillard does exactly that in Simulacra and Simulation, and the relevance of this book to our current timeline could not be understated in a thousand years. I will not lie - this book is hard to grasp. Anyone that tells you otherwise is either a genius or a liar. Some of the articles in this are very coherent and clear, and some are very abstract and confusing. On numerous occasions I found myself treating certain pages as just plain text because I could not understand what the hell is going on. The good news is that I don't think it requires any particular background, except for maybe a very basic grasp of semiology/semiotics. But for the vast majority of the book, there is a point, a very strong point, and as much as I didn't understand some of it (particularly the latter half), I still managed to extract very valuable insights, practically every 2 pages. This is one of the book's greatest strengths - Beaudrillard manages to keep it fresh by approaching the same concept from different angles and there really is beef around the bone - I often found myself thinking about the book while not reading it, which to me is the greatest evidence that a book is truly interesting to me, on some level. Beaudrillard's extremely cynical and pessimistic view is all encompassing - to the point where it seems he fails to see the world in way different than that of the prism of simulacrum and simulation. As much as these raw ratings really don't mean much, I decided to eventually give a 5-star rating simply because of how profoundly profound some of the insights were and how mind-numbingly relevant this book is to world we live in. Beaudrillard wrote this in the 80's - he looked into the future and saw nothing but a grim world deprived of any true meaning. When I say this book is best read critically I mean that you don't have to agree with every single sentence and every single point he makes, to still be able to appreciate the theoretical structure he leans on, and how he meticulous dissects everything in the modern life and exposes the mold and that hides itself from plain sight.

very good..

Very difficult to understand unless you have sone background in related topic.

This is essential reading for anyone interested in postmodern philosophy. Discussion of his proposal that our world has lost all referentials, and predominantly exists in the form of simulacra, or copies without a true original. Examples from Apocalypse Now, Crash, Disneyland, a French modern arm museum, the Holocaust, and the idea of nuclear deterrence, all in the service of the idea that the world has become...well, the Cracker Barrel, hyperreal versions of signs that have lost meaning. I'm sure I have butchered some terms here, which leads me to... ...the text alternates between the poetic and the utterly incomprehensible, in which there were pages where I won't even pretend to understand what Baudrillard was on about. But it sure seems important.

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