hey everyone drop yourselves in for a tricky one today the concept of the simulacra came up last time when we talked about Frederick Jameson however the simulacra is most closely associated with French philosopher Jean bodard in no small part because of his 1981 tretis simulacra and simulation as such today we'll be focusing on the concept of the simulacrum now the simulacra the plural form of simulacra the singular is not a term unique to postmodern thinkers in its most basic sense a simulacrum is a copy of an original however it has more negative connotations than a copy take for example the OED definition and I quote the simulacrum is something having merely the form or appearance of a certain thing without possessing its substance or proper qualities now the idea of the simulacrum reaches quite far back into our intellectual history in sophist Plato argues that there are two kinds of images in the world the first is an accurate or faithful representation and the second is one that is distorted or changed in order to seem more real to the viewers now maybe you've seen drawings like this they look real and alive but it's all trickery here's an image of a chalk drawing from one angle in which it appears three-dimensional and another through which the visual trickery of the image can be seen Plato sees the second form of representation simulacra as a kind of sophistry in other words a form of argument that's more concerned with looking and sounding right than to actually accessing any truth as a matter of fact sophistry and Plato's mind is a simulacrum of true knowledge and philosophy vard's philosophy intervenes at this point in simulacra and simulation bodard argues that there are in fact four stages of representation the first two points are the same as Plato's in the third stage however a simulacrum moves Beyond perverting reality to incorporating a pretense of reality the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy even though there is no original to which it corresponds the final stage is what bodar calls pure simulation or pure simulacra images and representations are no longer concerned with any sense of reality the image or copy is all that exists unlike the third stage in which a simulacrum pretends that there is an original in the fourth images and representations are no longer concerned with any sense of reality the image or copy is all that exists people experience a simulated sense of reality of representations of reality rather than reality itself and they are no longer concerned with the disconnection from reality in fact in the postmodern condition bodard argues the simulation surpasses the real and Society begins to produce images of images copies of copies bodard argues at this point in the postmodern condition the original is gone and humans are removed from reality instead they experience the hyperreal so bodar discusses examples of the simulacra and how it works in our culture one of the first things he brings up is exchange value now almost all of us live in an exchange value market um we don't live in a time where we barter uh like services or times for things so this fancy little bill here is worth $10 uh why it's particularly egregious in the US system because we're separated from the gold standard that $10 is $10 not because it's worth $10 it's paper with a 10 on it it's worth $10 because the government says so and I can go into a store like the duck store and buy this mug for this $10 because the duck store and I both agree that this is $10 and it's worth what the government says and this is also worth $10 it's even weirder if you start thinking about credit global capitalism complicates it even more because not only am I paying this weird thing that we both agree is $10 for this mug that's a thing but I know nothing about the processes people time or products that go into making this mug my money when I pay for it goes through the duck store to a bigger Corporation where it becomes part of huge profit margins nobody in that company for example cares about my $10 and they pay people to make mugs but they don't pay anybody to make this mug this mug is made by somebody who got paid a salary or an hourly wage for someone to do a job and probably not to make the mug but to do part of the mug the people who sell the mug and who make the mug don't particularly know who it goes to or where it goes in short even though this is a real mug I'm very disconnected from the reality of it so that might be a little abs let's try something a little easier TV imagine your family sitcom one mom one dad couple kids maybe a pet live in a house in the suburbs right now this family isn't based on a real family it might share a couple similarities or aspects but it's it's not a real family it's a creation of an expectation of a family as we think families should be if this family didn't act like we expect a family to act didn't live in a house like we expect a family to live in didn't fight or cry over the sorts of things we expect families to have feelings over we wouldn't buy it as a family we think of TV as a representation of reality even when it's a story right we expect certain kinds of shows to be a certain kind of real what's really Insidious and tricky though is that this imaginary family that's supposed to somehow represent a reality one that doesn't really exist then in turn begins to shape the way we actually understand real life families we begin to judge how families should look where they should live what kinds of clothes they should wear what kinds of values they should have based on our shared media in short we start judging the real in terms of the fake and don't even get me started on reality TV in fact bodard argues that in the postmodern condition the image is becoming more valuable to society than the original as Andrew Butler summarizes quote we no longer experience life from where we are but from the intersections between us and other individuals who are also under attack with multi- Channel TV the internet dozens of different permutations to choose from at a local coffee bar the individual is bombarded with the rest of the universe end quote because we have lost any sense of the real this experience of the universe can be very troubling resulting in a sort of societal schizophrenia so I'd like to end this lecture by talking a little bit more about postmodernism more broadly Butler argues that science fiction and postmodernism are sort of perfect for each other and this is in no small part due to the generic tropes of Science Fiction things like artificial intelligence cybernetics time travel and its consequences robots the end of the world and encountering the alien other in addition to these major postmodern thinkers in this case especially Jameson and bodard were both fans of Science Fiction reading it and using it as part of their theories another thing I'd like to discuss is the possibly depressing nature of postmodern literary Theory there are things about it that are troubling and frightening however I also wanted to emphasize that there is room for Hope and freedom in the post modern condition by looking through our assumptions of reality and questioning Grand narratives we tend to open up spaces for voices that had otherwise been very marginalized to have a chance to speak and join the discourse it also allows us to Without Shame explore theories and literatures of popular culture like science fiction though many critics believe we've moved beyond the postmodern postmodern literary Theory and philosophy is still very influen quential on many fields including history philosophy sociology cultural studies even science and math as we move on next week we'll be talking about a different Butler Judith Butler this time who is very deeply influenced by postmodern literary Theory and philosophy and uses its theories and Concepts to question one of the most fundamental aspects of our identity gender see you then