<\/p>\n
I had some trouble understanding Jean Baudrillard\u2019s article and what he means by Simulacra.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s one of those articles that I start off thinking \u201cI got it!\u201d and then the more I read I realize that I don\u2019t get it.\u00a0 <\/span>But I noticed he explains in his description of the representations of reality, \u201cno more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept; no more imaginary coexistensivity: rather, genetic miniaturization is the dimension of simulation.\u201d For some reason that reminded me of the 500+ photos that I have saved on my memory card.\u00a0 <\/span>The memory card can be seen as a \u201cminiature\u201d of different realities, photos of my family, my friends and myself in different occasions that can be \u201creproduced,\u201d duplicated, and even shared with others.\u00a0 <\/span>These digital pictures are now even substituting the tangible ones that we used to keep framed around the house and that are compared with the \u201cmap\u201d Baudrillard mentions that was once used to represent reality. His explanation also made me think of Plato\u2019s theory on art being an imitation of life that is thrice removed from reality.\u00a0 <\/span>Baudrillard suggests a new dimension to the whole notion of art and imitation, and mostly focuses on an absence of reality that proliferates a new and different, I am hesitant to call, reality.<\/p>\n As to House of Leaves, I was curious to know if there was a certain method for reading this book or whether it\u2019s best to go along with the shifts in narratives and the interruptions.\u00a0 <\/span>I personally can\u2019t stand elaborate footnotes because of the distractions they create when I\u2019m reading and I tend to ignore them and maybe go back to some of them at the end of a chapter.\u00a0 <\/span>With this book, I felt an obligation towards these footnotes, even though I know they are mostly made up information, and I also decided to read both narratives along side because I thought it would give me the necessary \u201cfeel\u201d of the layering and the fragmentation in the book.\u00a0 <\/span>As if the book wasn\u2019t fragmented enough, I tried reading parts of Baudrillard\u2019s article along with the book. \u00a0<\/span>Maybe not a smart move but I was initially put off by the article\u2019s difficulty and decided to take that approach.\u00a0 <\/span>Going back to the point I mentioned, I noticed the same idea somewhat \u201cechoed\u201d by Zampano in chapter 5.\u00a0 <\/span>His \u201codd murmuring\u201d about the significance of echoes in a way resonates, I think, with what Baudrillard was saying about what he calls simulacra.\u00a0 <\/span>Zampano explains the mythological history of Echo and concludes that Echo\u2019s repetitions were colored \u201cwith faint traces of sorrow or accusation never present in the original\u201d (41).\u00a0 <\/span>In a way it could be taken as an example of one of Baudrillard\u2019s \u201csuccessive phases of the image\u201d which is that it \u201cmasks and perverts a basic reality\u201d that will eventually lead to it baring no relation to any reality and would have \u201cits own pure simulacrum.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Zampano explains that Echo\u2019s voice then \u201cpossesses a quality not present in the original, revealing how a nymph can return a different and more meaningful story, in spite of telling the same story\u201d (42).\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had some trouble understanding Jean Baudrillard\u2019s article and what he means by Simulacra.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of those articles that I start off thinking \u201cI got it!\u201d and then the more I read I realize that I don\u2019t get it.\u00a0 But I noticed he explains in his description of the representations of reality, \u201cno more … Continue reading “Representation as itself a simulacrum” Baudrillard<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[33,32,26,35,36],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-5-mzd","tag-baudrillard","tag-house-of-leaves","tag-race","tag-reality","tag-simulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}