Simulations

Jean Baudrillard 1981 Simulations - Mechanised reproduction has divided us from original/authentic objects; 'Simulacra' refers to the copy without an original. There is difficulty in distinguishing between what is real and what is not. Media influences have blurred the distinction between what is real and what is imaginary.
'Simulation refers to the collapse of this distinction between real (Original, innate, substantive) and simulated (constructed, imaginary). The result is a society/culture of hyperreality.'
What I think Baudrillard is saying is that we have allowed ourselves to become so absorbed by the media that we no longer live in a society of 'reality', our simulated world means we have no means of differentiating between fake and real. We are literally living in the hyperreal and there is no way of avoiding this. We watch our televisions about 'fake' people and their 'fake' lives and are completely drawn in; we discuss this with our friends talking as though the people we are discussing are real, even to the extent where actors have been assaulted for having a 'bad' character. This shows again the way in which we do live in a simulated world. Media influence has taken away the reality and replaced it with 'things'; objects, imaginary lives, copies of things that do not even exist, this causes us to live in a state of hyperreality.
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''Reality' has been replaced by the hyperreality of our simulated world ... it is the techno,logies of simulation themselves that rule.' (Roberts 2000:153)
Simulation:
-the process in which representations of things come to replace the things being represented . . . the representations become more important than the "real thing"
-4 orders of simulation:
    1. signs thought of as reflecting reality: re-presenting "objective" truth;
    2. signs mask reality: reinforces notion of reality;
    3. signs mask the absence of reality;
            -Disneyworld
            -Watergate
            -LA life: jogging, psychotherapy, organic food
    4. signs become simulacra - they have no relation to reality; they simulate a simulation
            -Spinal Tap
            -Cheers bars
            -new urbanism
            -Starbucks
            -the Gulf War was a video game
(http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/jean_baudrillard_and_hyperrealit.htm)

Science Fiction

P K Dick stated that science fiction is about 'a society that does not in fact exist, but is predicted on our known society - that is our known society acts as a jumping-off point for it ... this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptuial dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author's mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader's mind, the shock of dysrecognition'. (Dick 1981 'My Definition of Science Fiction')
Broderick also gives us a definition of Science Fiction, he concludes that 'Science Fiction is that species of storytelling native to a culture undergoing the epistemic changes implicated in the riseand supercession of technological modes of production, distribution, consumption and disposal. It is marked by (i) metaphoric stategies and metonymic tactics, (ii) the forgrounding of icons and interpretative schemata from a collectively generic 'mega-text' and the concomitant de-emphasis of 'fine-writing' and characterisation, and (iii) certain priorities more often found in scientific and postmodern texts than in literary models: specifically to the object in preference to the subject.' (Broderick (1995) in Roberts, A. (2006), Science Fiction, London: Routledge)

Hyperreality

Bennett and Royle state that 'the desirabilityof a given product is in a sense branded into our consciousness and unconscious. This leads to the world of what Jean Baudrillard calls the hyperreal, in which reality is fabricated by technology'. (2009:283-284) This statement in Bennett and Royle explains fully the way in which we are 'taken over' and absorbed in to the media. Hyperreality is the way in which simulacra has completely replaced the true reality of life. Postmodernism has almost ensured that we almost lose sense of what our reality is, or if there is such a thing as reality. The way in which we are manipulated by the media by adverts and billboards etc not to mention the huge advance in technology has left us with the question; what exactly is reality?


Hyperreality:
-a condition in which "reality" has been replaced by simulacra
-Borges
-Baudrillard argues that today we only experience prepared realities-- edited war footage, meaningless acts of terrorism, the Jerry Springer Show
The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. . . The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal. . . which is entirely in simulation.
Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible.
  
Division between "real" and simulation has collapsed
 -stage a fake hold up
-circular referentiality:




M.C. Escher:


T.V. verité: microscopic simulation that allows the "real" to pass into the "hyperreal"
-t.v. replaces real interaction by simulating it
(http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/jean_baudrillard_and_hyperrealit.htm)

Many theories of postmodern literature link together. The process of defamiliarisation can be linked to Baudrillard’s simulation theory which in turn preceded the theory of hyperreality. The theories correspond with each other ultimately creating the confusion of postmodernism, by making the familiar unfamiliar then creating a sense of desire for the unfamiliar we are in fact moving in to the world of the hyperreal and creating a blurred vision between the real and the fictional.

Themes & Techniques

Techniques:

*        metafiction *        non-linearity *        frame-breaking *        chinese box worlds *        mise-en-abyme; trompe-l’oeil *        intertextuality *        author as character *        historical and 'transworld' characters

*        polychronotopes *        irony *        parody *        pastiche *        genre mixing *        palimtexts *        bricolage *        palimsestic

*        fusion of high/low art *        mixed styles *        self-reflexivity *        self-consciousness *        open-endedness *        picaresque *        fictioning

Themes:

*        mirrors; glasses etc. *        fairs; circuses; sideshows; carnivals; theatres *        characters as performers *        cinema; screens *        historiography *        literary fantastic/SF tropes *        fragmentation/splitting of characters *        uncertainty/contradiction

*        marginalised characters *        hybrid, cyborg, fluid characters *        paranoia, schizophrenia, conspiracy theories *        postmodern condition (advanced media/technology; ecological disintegration) *        polymorphousness/androgyny *        labyrinth/maze

Metafiction

The relationship between fiction and reality is blurred. We are forced to acknowledge that what we are reading is not reality yet at the same time it feels like reality because the author is addressing us the reader.

Metafiction focuses on the construction of meaning not the representation of meaning, this shows us how the text we are reading is constructed, we are made fully aware that we are being manipulated by the media; we are ourselves both controlled and constructed just as the novel is.

Critics and Authors

• Jean Baudrillard
• John Barth - Lost in the funhouse
• Michael Drolet
• Michel Foucault
• Jacques Derrida
• Jean-Francois Lyotard
• Fredric Jameson
• Phillip K Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
• Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber
• Manuel Puig - Kiss of the Spider woman
• Linda Hutcheon

Introduction to Postmodernism

There is great difficulty in providing a specific definition of the term postmodernism. The difficulty lies in the fact that most definitions tend to define what postmodernism is not rather than what it is. There is also the issue that almost every literary critic differs in their definition of the term. 

Below are some of the definitions used by leading literary theorists:

• Postmodernism can be defined as a mode of thought or a strategy that as Jameson notes is the 'cultural dominant' of the late 20th century.

• Postmodernity is then defined as as a historical epoch ( 1960's-present) and/or social reality marked by late capitalism, globalisation, advanced technology and the media. Drolet in The Postmodern Reader states that 'Postmodernity and the postmodern are the sociological and historical expressions of postmodernism' (Drolet (2004:123), The Postmodern Reader

(Moe's definition of Postmodern - 'Weird for the sake of weird')