One of the central concepts on which
the ideas presented by Jean Baudrillard in "precession of simulacra"
(in Simulacra and Simulation, 1981) are built is that of simulation.
Baudrillard developed his notion of symbolic trade to account for the manners
in which we perceive and organize our world. Following Foucault, Baudrillard
sees the world as governed by impersonal power or a system which decades
control over knowledge of the world which is distributed across society.
Baudrillard identifies three orders of simulacra. The first order of simulacra is that which creates the real
as distinguished from representation – the map, the novel and the painting are
clearly an artificial representation of reality. Baudrillard ties this order of
simulacrum to the Renaissance in which the attempt to accurately represent
reality was the attempt to ratify its existence regardless of representation.
The second order of simulacra according to Baudrillard is that which blurs the
distinction between reality and representation. He ties this development to
industrialization and mechanical reproduction (following Walter Benjamin's
"Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction") which allows for
serial production of representations that eclipses the original. The original
loses its meaning in relation to its copies.
The third order of simulacra is at the
center of Baudrillard's "Precession of Simulacra". For Baudrillard the
real is always already constructed. This imagined real, which we falsely
believe to be actual reality, is what we lose when we move into the third order
of simulacra, that of simulation. Simulation is a real which is shielded
from the difference between reality and representation. This difference is
eroded in (post)modern times while simulation eradicates actual referents and
the real as separate from representation. The referent is then reproduced but
only this time "free" and independent of the sing, what Baudrillard
calls "hyperreality".
As long as we held the distinction
between the real and its representation it was possible to hold on to the
notion that the truth is in the world and not it the image. The real is
constructed through its opposition with representation. But simulation breaks
this distinction down and we can no longer claim that the truth is anywhere to
be found in some objective world.