Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulation

"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true." Jean Baudrillard wrote Simulacra and Simulation in 1981, before the internet, before social media, before generative AI. His claim is not the familiar one that media distort reality, or that we are surrounded by fakes. It is stranger and more radical: that signs and images no longer refer to any reality at all. The map now precedes the territory. Copies circulate without originals. Disneyland exists, he argues, to convince us that the rest of America is real — when in fact the "real" America is already hyperreal. For this session, we'll read the first essay of the book: "The Precession of Simulacra". You can find a copy of that essay here. The book is also available on Amazon or at the SF Public Library. If you're feeling lost in French postmodernism, there is a Philosophize This episode on the book that might be helpful