Simulacra and Simulation

Introduction

A collection of short essays published by Éditions Galilée in 1981. Baudrillard starts from a fable by Borges about a map so detailed that it covers the whole empire, and reverses it: today the map precedes the territory. He describes successive phases of the image, from reflecting a reality to masking it, to masking its absence and finally to bearing no relation to any reality at all – the pure “simulacrum” of a “hyperreal” world. His examples include Disneyland, which in his reading exists to make the rest of America seem real, as well as television and news. A copy of the book appears in the film The Matrix (1999); Baudrillard later said the film misunderstood his ideas.

Connections

Builds on

• Mythologies1957 · Roland Barthes
• The Mirror of Production1973 · Jean Baudrillard

Taken up in

• Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance1994 · Gerald Vizenor

More works by Jean Baudrillard

• 1973The Mirror of Production