Simulacra and Simulation

Simulacra and Simulation
ISBN: 9780472065219
Publication Date: 1 December 1994

The first full-length translation in English of an essential work of postmodernism.

The publication of Simulacra et Simulation in 1981 marked Jean Baudrillard's first important step toward theorizing the postmodern. Moving away from the Marxist/Freudian approaches that had concerned him earlier, Baudrillard developed in this book a theory of contemporary culture that relies on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure.

Baudrillard uses the concepts of the simulacra - the copy without an original - and simulation. These terms are crucial to an understanding of the postmodern, to the extent that they address the concept of mass reproduction and reproduceability that characterizes our electronic media culture.

Baudrillard's book represents a unique and original effort to rethink cultural theory from the perspective of a new concept of cultural materialism, one that radically redefines postmodern formulations of the body.

About the Author

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, commentator and photographer. He was known as one of France's leading postmodernist thinkers and covered a diverse range of subjects. His best known works include Simulacra and Simulation, America and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.