INSIDE THE SIMULACRUM: THEDECONSTRUCTION OF REALITY

Abstract

Baudrillard writes of a new category – a virtual reality, a reality which is a double for the real reality and which is generated using powerful media systems. By regarding the media of the information society as ‘machines’ for the manufacture of reality, Baudrillard points to the difference between media reality and the world which surrounds us, as well as the future place and role of humans in nature. He believes that reality, as it has traditionally been understood, is dead. True reality has become skewed by concepts and algorithms, distorted to the extent that it cannot be straightened out, brought back to its original position. All physical and all social concepts arise as a product of the functioning of the models refiguring the elements of reality. With the patterns which refigure time and space, matter,energy- man has modeled the world he lives in. The reality with man in its centre is hyper-produced reality, a simulacrum, reality obscured by signs and symbols. The simulacrum as a product of the model which precedes all reality, for man at least, is contained in representation. By endless representation, man draws contours, boundaries of reality, he creates reality.