Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
49th out of 143 books
—
515 voters
Simulacra and Simulation
The first full-length translation in English of an essential work of postmodernism.
The publication of Simulacra et Simulation in 1981 marked Jean Baudrillard's first important step toward theorizing the postmodern. Moving away from the Marxist/Freudian approaches that had concerned him earlier, Baudrillard developed in this book a theory of contemporary culture that relies
Paperback, 1st edition The Body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism, 164 pages
Published
February 15th 1995
by University of Michigan Press
(first published 1981)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
3,000)
Basically the idea is just that people increasingly base their lives around collective ideas of things -- and those ideas can readily shift around and become something detached from reality -- rather than the things themselves. And that creates a free floating idea of society and the universe that supercedes concrete reality in its consequences.
Totally, completely rad. I can just see people smoking bongs not getting this completely, but postmodernism IS the dominant episteme in the West... according to Chela Sandoval however, Jameson was right that Postmodernism is complicit with various colonial ideologies, and we must we wary of it in 2011... but, Baudrillard wrote this in 1981 (yea, that's the year I was born! How cool to be born when such a rad thinker like Baudrillard was doing his best stuff!) anyway - sort of think that postmode...more
Some authors have a gift of being able to explain complex matters in simple terms. Baudrillard, on the other hand, seems to have the complete opposite - explaining essentially simple (although nontheless interesting) concepts in overly complex terms. While the core message of his essays is thought provoking and engaging, the text itself is so full of jargon, unnecessarily convoluted language, and a fair amount of repetition. If you are anything like myself you will spend an hour reading, rereadi...more
Jul 19, 2011
Tyrran
marked it as to-read
This book cannot be read like a Haruki Murakami novel, one to enthrall you during relaxation. This book is more like study material, each sentence of Baudrillard's can be heavily read into and some sentences require extended knowledge on the subject (to my dismay it forced me to endure a Jorge Luis Borges short-story). What piqued my interest to this book initially was from another book I read "Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix" by David Gerrold (I should howeve...more
Completely agree with everything said in Shiv's review, as quoted:
"Some authors have a gift of being able to explain complex matters in simple terms. Baudrillard, on the other hand, seems to have the complete opposite - explaining essentially simple (although nontheless interesting) concepts in overly complex terms. While the core message of his essays is thought provoking and engaging, the text itself is so full of jargon, unnecessarily convoluted language, and a fair amount of repetition. If y...more
"Some authors have a gift of being able to explain complex matters in simple terms. Baudrillard, on the other hand, seems to have the complete opposite - explaining essentially simple (although nontheless interesting) concepts in overly complex terms. While the core message of his essays is thought provoking and engaging, the text itself is so full of jargon, unnecessarily convoluted language, and a fair amount of repetition. If y...more
French postmodernists and poststructuralists really are an insufferable bunch.
There are indeed very interesting and sound theories contained within this book. With that said, these theories are mired in layer upon layer of pretentiousness, gobbledygook ("officialese") and Baudrillard's penchant for repeating himself paragraph after paragraph for chapters on end. It all makes for an extremely burdensome and frustrating read. This is unfortunately always the case with postmodernists (Derrida and F...more
There are indeed very interesting and sound theories contained within this book. With that said, these theories are mired in layer upon layer of pretentiousness, gobbledygook ("officialese") and Baudrillard's penchant for repeating himself paragraph after paragraph for chapters on end. It all makes for an extremely burdensome and frustrating read. This is unfortunately always the case with postmodernists (Derrida and F...more
A little light reading before bedtime.
I kind of loathe postmodernism. I find it to be polite nihilism at it's very best, a type of free floating responsibility remover that would make Dionysus go "DAMN" at worst. But out of all the boring, meaning free, jackassery I've had to read this semester, Bauldrillard's has been the least gorge rising.
Last of The Existentialists Right here baby.
I kind of loathe postmodernism. I find it to be polite nihilism at it's very best, a type of free floating responsibility remover that would make Dionysus go "DAMN" at worst. But out of all the boring, meaning free, jackassery I've had to read this semester, Bauldrillard's has been the least gorge rising.
Last of The Existentialists Right here baby.
Feb 06, 2008
Stephanie
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Philosophers and anyone with an open-mind
This is the kind of book that you find yourself bringing up in conversations all the time. It is applicable on so many levels; once you grasp the concept, it really grasps you back. It is relevant to me as an anthropologist, archaeologist and psychologist, but I would classify it more as a philosophy book. Bottom line: This book will do you good.
Any attempt at reviewing this would in itself be a hyper-duplicating verb/execution thingie. If everything is illusion, hyper-illusion/reality/and such, then my question is: how is this different from Buddhism?
Seriously, I found this pretty interesting, even if I didn't understand some of the meanderings that took you down dark academic alleyways.
Seriously, I found this pretty interesting, even if I didn't understand some of the meanderings that took you down dark academic alleyways.
This extremely disturbing book felt strangely familiar, like finally meeting this person everyone has always been talking about; but funny that everyone would be my own thoughts, views, ruminations. And I'm not sure if I actually enjoyed the meeting.
Do we live a copy of a truth; do we strive to fulfil, and conform to, an ideal that belies its origin?
Baudrillard does not beat about the bush; bleak, grim, but to-the-point he sketches the construct which is taken for reality; a parody preferred abo...more
Do we live a copy of a truth; do we strive to fulfil, and conform to, an ideal that belies its origin?
Baudrillard does not beat about the bush; bleak, grim, but to-the-point he sketches the construct which is taken for reality; a parody preferred abo...more
This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. There is a strong element of poetry to the way Baudrillard writes. I don't completely understand this book, but that is no reason to subtract stars from one of the greatest books of the 20th century. I am currently a graduate student in sociology and this is one of those rare works that is both a blessing and a curse to read for a sociology student. I walked away with a sense that sociology has essentially come to a close and Baudrillard's...more
a gem or two (the first essay in particular), but most of it is too trapped in its own flashy, alienating referents (ohohohoho) to sound like anything more than an extended fart noise.
While S&S contains some very intriguing ideas and concepts, Baudrillard bogs the book down with his overly complex writing style that is more akin to the 18th century than to last century. But, this seems to be a hallmark of philosophers -- they can't feel important unless the average person cannot understand what they are saying.
I'd give this book a 2, but the concept of society embracing and living in simulations (and disimulation, which is possibly the more intriguing of the two concepts)...more
I'd give this book a 2, but the concept of society embracing and living in simulations (and disimulation, which is possibly the more intriguing of the two concepts)...more
Not so much a review as an illustration of why I like his thinking so much. A couple of excerpts from his book:
If we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts—the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction testifying to a pride...more
The Man Who Hates Everything helps define the hopelessness and helplessness of the postmodern world. He succeeds brilliantly; or, considering his goal, horribly.
He starts off strong, putting forth some stunning ideas while taking on God, Disneyland, Watergate, journalism, cinema, and advertising. He starts to stumble when he moves on to technology, and totally loses his thread when he tries to bring in sexuality, animals, and his ridiculous gender politics. He finishes by writing about the subje...more
He starts off strong, putting forth some stunning ideas while taking on God, Disneyland, Watergate, journalism, cinema, and advertising. He starts to stumble when he moves on to technology, and totally loses his thread when he tries to bring in sexuality, animals, and his ridiculous gender politics. He finishes by writing about the subje...more
Say "aleatory" again. Say "aleatory" again. I dare you. I double-dare you, motherfucker.
Okay, aside from that, I really liked this book. Much more entertaining than is the norm for poststructuralist theory: the little passage about theme parks ringing Los Angeles like power stations will stick with me for a while, like a tidbit from a favorite novel. Most of the content here isn't the sort that you can take away and use to live your life, but it's fun and relevant in a vague way. It's weird to s...more
Okay, aside from that, I really liked this book. Much more entertaining than is the norm for poststructuralist theory: the little passage about theme parks ringing Los Angeles like power stations will stick with me for a while, like a tidbit from a favorite novel. Most of the content here isn't the sort that you can take away and use to live your life, but it's fun and relevant in a vague way. It's weird to s...more
Okay, now. You realise that I bought this only because of "The Matrix". I knew who Baudrillard was, of course, and I'd read other books by him. But I had to have this one just as a kind of pop culture icon--- a kind of souvenir from the po-mo gift shop.
That said, it does make a good precis of some Baudrillard's key ideas, and it's reasonably straightforward about a mass-democracy late-capitalist mass-media world's view of what constitutes the socially real. So--- worth reading, and worth having....more
That said, it does make a good precis of some Baudrillard's key ideas, and it's reasonably straightforward about a mass-democracy late-capitalist mass-media world's view of what constitutes the socially real. So--- worth reading, and worth having....more
As a personal introduction to Baudrillard, S&S dives straight to the deep end of post modern philosophy. Baudrillard embarks on an ephemeral rant that is surprisingly concise and poignant. By no means a choice for holiday reading... but definitely thought provoking and filled with intrigue and understanding of what was and has become modernity. In particular his understanding of marketing and consumerism were of particular interest, where for me Baudrillard's notion of simulacra, simulation...more
I knew the following before I started reading: you have to work with the text in order to understand it.
What stuns me so much about this text is that it was written in 1981, and so many of its concepts apply to our world today. Jean Baudrillard precipitates everything from precursors to Facebook in discussing social practices, the “war” on terrorism, reality TV, surveillance, and many other things. So many of the practices and models in this text explain how our society is structured today.
Baudr...more
(8/10) Baudrillard is one of those guys who getts dismissed a lot as an obscure French academic, and he is all three of those things. But I think there's a kind of beauty to his writing that makes it more than just jargon. Baudrillard describes the world around us in terms of apocalyptic science fiction, drawing our eye to the way the horrific and the banal intersect in a world of illusion. The kind of juxtapositions and forceful rhetoric that he uses remind me more than a bit of J. G. Ballard,...more
When life imitates art, it can make for fun small talk—how curious that a man named Walter White was arrested in Alabama for selling meth, just like the character Walt White from Breaking Bad! Sometimes it can spark a deeper curiosity—amazing that yet another political news story follows a narrative from West Wing! Eventually we might even ask with some seriousness why life imitates art: is it purely coincidental, or are artists as prescient as they are expressive, or are people habituated to mi...more
May 09, 2013
Ian
is currently reading it
"Ramses does not signify anything for us, only the mummy is of inestimable worth because it is what guarantees that accumulation has meaning. Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view" (Baudrillard, pgs. #9–10).
"… Los Angeles is surrounded by these imaginary stations that feed reality, the energy of the real to a city whose mystery is precisely that of no longer being anything but a network of incessant, unreal circulation—a city of incred...more
"… Los Angeles is surrounded by these imaginary stations that feed reality, the energy of the real to a city whose mystery is precisely that of no longer being anything but a network of incessant, unreal circulation—a city of incred...more
"Postkultūrinė filosofija? Kažkokios naujos būties apraiškos, ar naujo būties pjūvio aprašymas? Manau, kad antra. Kažkodėl man išnyra akmens įvaizdis: akmuo, su viduje slypinčiais intarpais, gyslelėmis. Jie buvo visą laiką, tačiau akiai atsiveria tiktai tiktai padarius akmens pjūvį. Tai, ką autorius aprašo savo knygoje, visą laiką slypėjo būtyje, tiesiog autoriaus dėmesio skalpelis būtent taip per ją praslydo. Tokie žodžiai kaip "fraktaliniai objektai" (109 p.), "holograma" (123-128 p.) nerodo į...more
Mar 06, 2013
William Holm
added it
I finally finished this one. I've been reading it when on travel for almost two years and I must say it is rather boring. I started reading it since it is often referred to, notably in connection with the movie Matrix. I do not think that many people who refer to it actually have read it. For me it was a "know-thy-enemy" experience. Baudrillard is a major figure among the postmodern philosophers and my opinion about that group concurs with Swedish philosopher Sören Halldén who have dismissed the...more
This treatise is by far, one of the most thought provoking written works of the twentieth century. A philosophical look into the realm of what is perceived to be reality, is really mistaken for hyper-reality and what is symbolic, is devoid of all meaning. Society at large has become stagnate and has been neutralized by all forms of media.
Although, that which is now deemed a phantasm plaguing society from ever experiencing any form of evolution again, it has become a new "reality" embraced by the...more
Although, that which is now deemed a phantasm plaguing society from ever experiencing any form of evolution again, it has become a new "reality" embraced by the...more
Jan 09, 2009
Kyle
marked it as to-read
Before I delved into the initial essay, I started with what I hoped would be lighter essays, Apocalypse Now and Crash. Both were decent works, the former a classic of film and the latter a decent book with a difficult subject matter, not only to present but also to criticize. Baudrillard on Apocalypse Now is essentially Baudrillard on the Vietnam War since he doesn't recognize that the film portrayed the war negatively. It would've probably been better had he been talking about Platoon for all i...more
There’s not much point in trying to engage critically with a work already as thoroughly excavated as this one, so I’ll gloss over the actual substance of the thing - “Knock Knock, Neo”, Borges probably said it better, Procession of Simulacra is the absolutely essential essay and a lot of the rest of the book it is meandering bullshit which wanders ever further from the mother ship without explaining why, blahblahblah. There are already plenty of reviews which correctly make this point so I won’t...more
The main essay "Precession of the Simulacra" was pretty difficult for me, but I feel like I understood and enjoyed a lot more getting into the shorter essays applying his theory to specific subjects. Finishing the entire book took about a month of picking it up and putting it down. Probably because these are the subjects I am interested in in general, I particularly enjoyed the following:
"Hypermarket and Hypercommodity"
"The Implosion of Meaning in the Media"
p.80 "Information devours its own co...more
"Hypermarket and Hypercommodity"
"The Implosion of Meaning in the Media"
p.80 "Information devours its own co...more
After loathing _The Vital Illusion_, I had to be pushed to read this, and I'm glad I was. While about a quarter of it is content-free raving, the rest is quite brilliant, insightful, subversive. It's astonishing how much better his analysis fits our world than that of the 1970s he was writing about: digital media, Facebook, memes, security theater, permanent war against anyone but our enemies - he saw the genesis of these things and their root causes a generation ago. A remarkable and essential...more
If you don't know that The Matrix is more or less based on this book (the book that Neo stores the disk in that he gives to his friend at the beginning of the first movie is, indeed, Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation), then learn that now and become interested in the original notions that influenced the Hollywood blockbuster.
While the book's ideas and concepts are fascinating, easy to follow, and fairly relevant to our lives, it might be hard to read this whole book because Baudrillard does...more
While the book's ideas and concepts are fascinating, easy to follow, and fairly relevant to our lives, it might be hard to read this whole book because Baudrillard does...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matrix Trilogy | 7 | 51 | Mar 10, 2013 04:52pm |
Jean Baudrillard (27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.
Jean Baudrillard was also a Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he taught an Intensive Summer S...more
More about Jean Baudrillard...
Jean Baudrillard was also a Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he taught an Intensive Summer S...more
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”
—
104 people liked it
“the neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.”
—
20 people liked it
More quotes…
I've just started a series of postings on my blog which engage with the work of Baudrillard, so I thought you might be interested to have a look.
t...more
Aug 02, 2010 02:59pm