Notes for Jean Baudrillard Simulations
The
Precession of Simulacra
See
notes for this text in Simulacra
and Simulation.
The Orders of Simulacra
Three orders of simulacra: counterfeit, production, simulation.
(83)
Three orders of appearance, parallel to the mutations of the law of
value, have followed one another since the Renaissance:
-Counterfeit
is
the dominant scheme of the “classical” period, from the
Renaissance to the industrial revolution;
-Production
is
the dominant scheme of the industrial era;
-Simulation
is
the reigning scheme of the current phase that is controlled by the
code.
Structural law of value readily comprehended, epistemological transparent, in electronic computing machinery; thus it is not surprising that Turkle and others associate computer technology with postmodernism.
(83) The first order of simulacrum is based on the natural law of value, that of the second order on the commercial law of value, that of the third order on the structural law of value.
The Stucco Angel
(86)
It is therefore in the simulacrum of a “nature” that the modern
sign finds its value.
Universal substitutability of stucco for other visual objects like universal Turing machine among order of simulacra.
(87-88)
The entire classical era belongs par
excellence to
the theater. . . . Stucco exorcizes the unlikely confusion of matter
into a single new substance, a sort of general equivalent of all the
others, and is prestigious theatrically because is itself a
representative substance, a mirror of all the others.
(89-90) All
of the above precedes the productivist rationality of capital, but
everything testifies already – not in production, but in
counterfeit to the same project of control and universal hegemony –
to a social scheme where the internal coherence of a system is
already at work.
The Automation of the
Robot
The key to second order simulacra is implicating humans in the interface as interlocutors, not just embodied affordances and constraints of the natural and built environment.
(92-93) The automaton is the analogy of man and remains his
interlocutor (they play chess together!). The machine is man's
equivalent and annexes him to itself in the unity of its
operational process. This is the difference between a simulacrum of
the first order and one of the second.
(94) In this way the
interrogation of the automaton remains an open one, which makes it
out to be a kind of mechanical optimist, even if the counterfeit
always connotes something diabolical.
Obviously thinking of real robots, not fantasized near-human-equivalents like those portrayed in science fiction; this could be a panel topic of PCA conference philosophy and popular culture if it has not already happened in years past.
(94) No such thing with the robot. The robot no longer interrogates
appearance; its only truth is in its mechanical efficacy.
(96) We
leave natural law and the play of its forms to enter the realm of the
mercantile law of value and its calculations of force.
The Industrial Simulacrum