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A review by casparb
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
5.0
O a text that shifts, refocuses thinking of the world. One of few that I feel is able to genuinely perceive societal trajectory.
I'm not sure that I've perfectly absorbed it. What I have taken has been phenomenal. But I'm quite confident that Simulacra and Simulation will be even better on the reread it entirely merits.
Baudrillard's character comes through wonderfully in his writing too. It's not always easy, and sentences at times feel endless. I do love it for that - the text's oblique style feels deserved.
"Through I don't know what Möbius effect, representation itself has also turned in on itself, and the whole logical universe of the political is dissolved at the same time, ceding its place to a transfinite universe of simulation, where from the beginning no one is represented nor representative of anything any more, where all that is accumulated is deaccumulated at the same time, where even the axiological, directive, and salvageable phantasm of power has disappeared. A universe that is still incomprehensible, unrecognisable to us, a universe with a malefic curve that our mental coordinates, which are orthogonal and prepared for the infinite linearity of criticism and history, violently resist. Yet it is there that one must fight, if even fighting has any meaning anymore. We are simulators, we are simulacra, we are concave mirrors radiated by the social"
In a sense, I suppose it flatters the reader. I can't help but feel that Baudrillard is, in his (orthogonal) way, something approaching correct. About this world and those down the line.
I'm not sure that I've perfectly absorbed it. What I have taken has been phenomenal. But I'm quite confident that Simulacra and Simulation will be even better on the reread it entirely merits.
Baudrillard's character comes through wonderfully in his writing too. It's not always easy, and sentences at times feel endless. I do love it for that - the text's oblique style feels deserved.
"Through I don't know what Möbius effect, representation itself has also turned in on itself, and the whole logical universe of the political is dissolved at the same time, ceding its place to a transfinite universe of simulation, where from the beginning no one is represented nor representative of anything any more, where all that is accumulated is deaccumulated at the same time, where even the axiological, directive, and salvageable phantasm of power has disappeared. A universe that is still incomprehensible, unrecognisable to us, a universe with a malefic curve that our mental coordinates, which are orthogonal and prepared for the infinite linearity of criticism and history, violently resist. Yet it is there that one must fight, if even fighting has any meaning anymore. We are simulators, we are simulacra, we are concave mirrors radiated by the social"
In a sense, I suppose it flatters the reader. I can't help but feel that Baudrillard is, in his (orthogonal) way, something approaching correct. About this world and those down the line.