Baudrillard grapples with the notion of representation as an empty signifier. He examines cases of historical ethnography, political morality -- particularly in reference to the Watergate scandal -- cultural phenomena such as Disneyland and museum preservation and religious iconography to illuminate the preoccupation with preserving and validating representations of reality. However he explains that representations are more a means to conceal the anxiety of the absence of reality: that the representation has nothing behind it; it is a simulacrum.

Baudrillard questions the results of divinity represented through icons. He suggests that the threat of reducing the idea of God to a mere representation was anticipated by iconographers.

"Fiction" or fantasy becomes a "deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real." Fiction and fantasy in this context function to affirm "truths" and the "real" by proclaiming themselves as nonreal. Through this reversal the categories of nonreality set themselves in binary opposition to the proclaimed "real."

 Thus, Baudrillard asserts that a more accurate way to describe representation is through the simulacrum: "the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal." This article presents several ideas that resonate with those of others we have read in this class. Borges' representation of the maps which precede the actual territory, the maps which in fact construct the terrain it presumes to reflect is Baudrillard's beginning example. Heidegger's concern with technology is echoed in Baudrillard's suspicions regarding the use of science and technology in preserving the past ("museumification"): "the logical evolution of a science is to distance itself ever further from its object until it dispenses with it entirely."

Hyoejin Yoon

  Now that I've had time to research and contemplate the above ideas, I've been able to more clearly formulate what is at stake. For a more concise discussion of dispersing Originality and its concomitant terms, click here.

For a discussion of the relationship between Originality and Ideology, click here and move forward (or backwards, or sideways).
 

Click here to return eternally.