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Simulacra and Simulation
- adamnemecek 9y agoThis really touches on some themes that I've been thinking about. Bought the book immediately.
- vippy 9y agoI read it last year. It is a foundational tract in postmodernism; you WILL see the world differently.
- adamnemecek 9y agoWhat other books would you recommend?
- jolux 9y agoi'm not vippy but the capitalism and schizophrenia series is really good (anti-oedipus and a thousand plateaus).
- vippy 9y agoHegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach. I also recommend Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology, but it's dense, so his film The Pervert's Guide to Ideology is a good stand in.
- cmpxchg 9y agoAgree on everything except Zizek. He's an entertaining provocateur, but there's no way he's at the level of Hegel and Kant. His interviews in the British news media are hilarious though. Hofstadter's book is brilliant, funny, delightful - a real treasure.
- orthoganol 9y agoI'll throw a line to Zizek. In his serious works, he does set out a systematic ontology of reality. I don't fully understand it, if there is even something to fully understand, but along the way he without doubt makes you think, and gives relatively accessible interpretations of a ton of other thinkers. He's not a major philosopher like Kant, but he is much more than a charlatan or provocateur. To his credit, I probably wouldn't have picked up his serious work if his antics hadn't first put him on my radar many years ago.
- vippy 9y agoI appreciate Zizek's cleverness. He demonstrates the kinds of higher-order thought that are possible via application of the dialectical method (though one has to be careful; his analysis of violence could lead the unsuspecting thinker down some interesting paths!) When I said "dense" before, I think I was looking for something closer in meaning to, "Zizek is a Hegelian reductionist, beware." I also appreciate Ayn Rand's committed exploration of rational egoism, also reductionist, though I admit I have not yet been impressed by its implementation.
- huac 9y agoMichel Foucault's "This is not a pipe" is very similar in theme to Baudrillard's work. Deleuze and Guattari (recommended by another commenter) are another pair of giants. I'm currently reading "Deleuze and Guattari for architects" and would strongly recommend it. Actually, most of the Thinkers for Architects [1] books are excellent and accessible. Despite being for architects, I would expect most engineers to benefit from them. [1]: https://www.routledge.com/Thinkers-for-Architects/book-series/THINKARCH https://www.routledge.com/Thinkers-for-Architects/book-serie...
- barrkel 9y agoThe Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord Partially Examined Life podcast did an episode recently on the book. The ideas are related, not quite the same. Contra another commenter, I don't think it's easy to separate Marxist critique of capitalism from spectacle / simulation replacing reality - I do believe that capitalism is responsible for the alienation, the alienation doesn't just apply to the labourer and his output, but also to consumers and what is consumed.
- conatus 9y agoNot really. I'd say that although unorthodox Marxists the situationalists would see themselves as following on from Marx. After all, the whole of The Society of The Spectacle begins with a reformation of the opening to Marx's Capital!
- ue_ 9y ago> The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord Very much this, though I must also recommend his Comments on it, for the reader who has a hard time penetrating the critique. I have a short list of related books at the bottom of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15299592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15299592
- orthoganol 9y agoI believe everyone should give critical theory a fair shot. But I find the majority of the thinkers to have pretty simple ideas that are heavily dressed up and typically exhausting to get through, with little personal benefit, except perhaps social cachet in certain communities. I personally think you're better off grappling with the dead philosophers who critical theory seems to be predominantly in conversation with, like Kant and Hegel. And then add in Marx and Freud. If you believe I am off base, I welcome suggestions of thinkers who are an anti-pattern here.
- ryanmarsh 9y agoHaving read it many years ago (and by read I mean suffered through) I feel the Wikipedia entry is sufficient for understanding the concepts. The book (my copy at least) has no primary sources. You do not need the book.
- adpoe 9y agoI would agree with this. FWIW, the most concise and straightforward critical theorist that I've read is Vilem Flusser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vil%C3%A9m_Flusser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vil%C3%A9m_Flusser There's a short compilation of his essays called "Writings" that is a great place to start, for anyone interested. Most essays are < 15 pages long, IIRC. Very simple, elegant arguments, with little fluff. One of the few philosophers I know whose writing is absent the usual obscurantist cruft.
- GauntletWizard 9y agoI'm of the opinion that critical theory is a brain-trap. It seems deep, but only because it's been dug so far, and in this analogy there's a much deeper dive a ways off but once you've gotten into the hole that Critical Theory has dug it's very hard to get out. I don't think critical theory is particularly insightful, or internally consistent except by which it's proponents fit it. It makes many predictions, but most are true only through the lens of critical theory. Looking in from outside, there's other explanations of all the predictions. Much like Marx: it's an interesting, intriguing theory. But it breaks down at some point, except that people already attached (and it's easy to see why it's an attractive view of the world, simplifying things into a constant struggle against the "oppressor"; the classic narrative) will do great contortions to explain why it's still true, rather than going back to the drawing board. Of course, you can level the same criticism of libretarian ideals, and they do break down. I think libretarians have a more consistent view of why the break down and where, but it's imperfect and I greatly await a more grand, unified theory.
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- hullsean 9y agoperhaps copies of 90's era Mondo 2000 will suddenly become collectors item. i know i'm not parting with mine!
- cmpxchg 9y agoI read the book in college decades ago. It's very famous and he predicted a lot of stuff about media and culture that has become true in the modern era of Internet / social media / YouTube e-celebs / etc. However, his good ideas are cluttered up by the usual sloppy reasoning of postmodernists. He also has an unfortunate obsession with weaving Marxist far-left politics into everything, which is distracting. (Chomsky has the same problem for me.) The book did not change my life, but it is a notable work of late 20th century philosophy.
- supernumerary 9y agoI would recommend Walter Benjamin if you find the politics distracting. Also D.W.Winnicott (http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/winnicott1.pdf http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/winnicott1.pdf). A reconciliation of these two strands are being explored currently by Bernard Stiegler... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technics_and_Time,_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technics_and_Time,_1 I have written about it in relation to Facebook here: https://iainmait.land/posts/20170201-transitional-object.html https://iainmait.land/posts/20170201-transitional-object.htm...
- cmpxchg 9y agoThank you for the suggestions. I will definitely study these.
- adpoe 9y agoWhich Benjamin? I've read some of his more famous articles (i.e. - "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"), but I remember them being very political. Sort of an art-historical and aesthetic-theory application of Marx. Which, personally, I enjoyed. But was surprised to see Benjamin's work referenced in that context. Could be that I'm missing something, or mis-remembering, though. This was years ago, now. =)
- frozenport 9y agoBenjamin is famous for arguing that in an age of mechanically reproducible art, what mattered was the idea in the art which he saw as a method of communication for political purposes.
- sergiotapia 9y agoThis is the book Neo has in his home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6R94keJcHk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6R94keJcHk
- cmpxchg 9y agoNot only that one scene, but a lot of the ideas in The Matrix are inspired by the writings of Baudrillard. That's presumably why the Wachowskis put the book in that scene, a subtle joke.
- grp 9y agoIn [0], Baudrillard himself: "The Matrix is surely the kind of film about the matrix that the matrix would have been able to produce." [0] http://www2.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol1_2/genosko.htm http://www2.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol1_2/genosko.ht...
- qubex 9y agoI wonder if that quote by Baudrillard is an endorsement or a very opaque dismissal. To me it sounds ambiguous. Having slogged through the text I’ve always felt that The Matrix is not so much inspired the actual arguments enshrined within Simulacra and Simulation as much as by what one might reasonably expect the book will argue judging by the title alone.
- saint_fiasco 9y agoThe Matrix misses the point in a very important way. In The Matrix the characters could easily tell apart the real world from the simulation, but the point of Simulacra is that you can't tell it apart from reality, not because there is a conspiracy that conceals it from the masses, but because simulacra replaces reality, conceals that there wasn't really anything "beneath" the simulation in the first place.
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- SkyMarshal 9y agoAlso referenced in The Matrix: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=matrix+simulacra https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=matrix+simulacr...
- makmanalp 9y agoI picked this book up years ago, and it was a terrible slog to get through. The ideas were absolutely fascinating, but the writing is one of the /worst/ I've ever seen. I had to read and reread every single sentence to understand what on earth it was talking about. And once decoded (through reading or supplementary resources), the ideas were not as complex as the text.
- BenGosub 9y agoI've been through this as well, but I think that while for example Focault and co. use complex writing to hide their lack of ideas, if you can look past Baudrillard's complexity he's unmatched visionary. Probably the best critic of capitalism I've ever encountered.
- brianzelip 9y agoWelcome to graduate school in popular culture studies.
- GuiA 9y agoDid you read it in English? The French writing is very... French (flowery, circuitous, full of references to obscure works) so I can see how someone reading a translated version would have a hard time with it (a translation is always a diminished recreation of the original, and the average French person has many years of studying French literature in school to get used to that particular kind of writing).
- jolux 9y agoIt’s so funny that you say that translations are always diminished recreations of the original... I think Derrida would disagree.
- dcposch 9y agoFun fact: in the opening scene in The Matrix, this is the book from which Neo produces the hidden memory card. The Wachowski brothers loved Baudrillard and he was part of their inspiration for their story about a whole society trapped in simulation.
- Top19 9y agoI highly recommend Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. It’s a much more accessible and quite frankly more entertaining (amusing?) than Baudrillard’s work. It was written in the early 80’s but is so relevant it could have been published two weeks ago.
- qubex 9y ago+1 to this. I read Amusing Ourselves To Death in 1999 and it changed the manner I view the world, and have been recommending it ever since.
- AlexAffe 9y ago+1 for Postman. Is Simulacra adding something, or is it really basically the same message?
- qubex 9y agoIt adds something, but the massage must be extracted from reams of throughly baffling postmodern critical theory.
- Tade0 9y agoFor people completely unfamiliar with these concepts(at least the former) and into cars Mr. Regular from Regular Car Reviews explains them beautifully(with some added profanity): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA23qLvl79k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA23qLvl79k The Simulacra and Simulation part starts at about 4:10.