Simulacrum

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

The contemporary use of the term simulacrum was popularized by the French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007). Applying a background in both Marxism and semiotics to an examination of the rapidly growing dominance of electronic mass media, Baudrillard found the semiotic assumption of the connection between the signified and the signifier to be increasingly inadequate in facilitating an understanding of the emerging forms of cultural communication. The simulacrum then, is an offshoot of a commodity-driven tendency to simulate what is considered venerable, genuine, real, or valuable in both monetary and nonmonetary terms. However, where the motivation to simulate or imitate is often understood to be grounded in an interest in preserving or extending the virtues of authenticity or “the genuine article,” where this refers to either a collection of admirable personal virtues or to material artifacts of great cultural significance, the simulacrum posits the effective extinguishing of any such modernist or structuralist motivations. Instead, cultural expression creates what Baudrillard refers to as a hyperreal order, an order characterized by a perceived overemphasis on, and a preoccupation with, presentation at the expense of a more traditional understanding of representation.

Insofar as what is presented to us is conventionally understood to be representative of and so in the service of something else—for example, advertisements for the purpose of increasing profits, a campaign speech in the interest of political power, demonstrations in pursuit of social justice, or art in the service of beauty or larger “truths”—the simulacrum suggests an order reduced to and largely transfixed by the immediacy of multiple presentations. What is threatened by a hyperreal order, therefore, is both the critical capacity to investigate in order to understand the connections between what is presented and the underlying truth or truths of our cultural surround and, more fundamentally, any assurance that doing so could or even should culminate in reliable insights into the nature of the social order.

In short, the point of the simulacrum is not simply to awaken and re-energize this diminishing critical capacity. This is because from the standpoint of the simulacrum the only real truth is that the legitimacy of these underlying truths has been so thoroughly undermined that the traditional commitment to their revelation is no longer justified. The problem that animates and provokes an investigation guided by the insights of the simulacrum, then, is the conviction that our contemporary cultural practices and forms of expression effectively both conceals and diverts us from this truth.

Application

Within the context of a case study of a particular cultural phenomenon an awareness of the essential features of the simulacrum recommends that the conventional cultural knowledge related to the phenomenon must be as closely examined as the phenomenon itself. This is because the point of the examination is less to increase the available knowledge of the topic at hand than to achieve a deeper appreciation of the fate of contemporary culture itself. As such, the examination of conventional cultural knowledge and attitudes surrounding a phenomenon serves as a point of entry into a discussion of both the mechanics and the effects of contemporary cultural communication. The attraction of employing the idea of the simulacrum as a method for case study research, therefore, suggests a commitment to both the timeliness and urgency of this discussion.

...