Product Description

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 on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure.Baudrillard uses the concepts of the simulacra - the copy without an original - and simulation. These terms are crucial to an understanding of the postmodern, to the extent that they address the concept of mass reproduction and reproduceability that characterizes our electronic media culture.Baudrillard's book represents a unique and original effort to rethink cultural theory from the perspective of a new concept of cultural materialism, one that radically redefines postmodern formulations of the body.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34361 in Books
• Published on: 1994-12-31
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 164 pages

About the Author
Sheila Glaser is an editor at Artforum magazine.

Customer Reviews

Provocative
Baudrillard is indeed modern philosophy's equivalent of Nietzsche, but in this work at least does not live up to that great man. Be prepared for a struggle if you want to read this book; the writer's arguments are painstakingly condensed to the point that it is hard to tell whether he has really justified his observation with evidence.
While the chapters on Clones and Holograms are very interesting, inherently suited as the subjects are to the books concern, in other places the subject matter and arguments do seem the result of whim rather than an attempt to locate truth.
So while this book contains a lot of value, and will certainly change the way the reader interprets the world, Baudrillards style of writing forces the intelligent reader to approach his claims critically and selectively.

Read to enjoy, not to impress your friends
To respond to the previous writer's criticism: The reason this book lacks a coherent, logical structure is that it is a collection of essays. Consequently, one should not be surprised that it is not nicely tied together by an introduction and conclusion.

I seldom agree with Baudrillard, not least because I am never too certain how seriously (given his anti-academic stance and avowed debt to pataphysics) he intends us to take him. However I always enjoy reading him because is such a consummate stylist. The essays in this book are more difficult than some of his work but, nonetheless, very enjoyable.

beautiful nihilism
'Nice' is hardly the word to describe 'The Precession of Simulacra'. Baudrillard, who to my mind is the best contemporary philosopher (along with Deleuze), is also the most entertaining. His perception is incredible, his writing beautiful - and most importantly, his nihilism is profound yet optimistic, in a Nietzschean kind of way. If you haven't read this, you just don't know what's going on.