Jean Baudrillard (1994) maps the transformation from representation to simulacrum in four ‘successive phases of the image’ in which the last is that "it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum" (SS p.6). The simulacrum is often defined as a copy with no original, or as Gilles Deleuze (1990) describes it, "the simulacrum is an image without resemblance" (p. The simulation is characterized by a blending of ‘reality’ and representation, where there is no clear indication of where the former stops and the latter begins. The concept most fundamental to hyperreality is the simulation and the simulacrum (see Simulation/Simulacra, (2)]. A general understanding of hyperreality is important for it is an issue at the crux of several critical debates within the study of media including semiotics, objects and space, the spectacle, performativity, the examination of mass media, Platonism, resistance, and the structure of reality. That said, this article will attempt to extrapolate a common understanding of the hyperreal based on the work of several theorists. There is no static definition of hyperreality, and the interpretations employed by theorists vary on some of the most essential terms. The slippage of reality, its elusiveness encountered even in a basic search for a definition, is an element of the hyperreal – a condition in which the distinction between the ‘real’ and the imaginary implodes. This problem is not unique to the word ‘reality,’ indeed almost all words and signs are only able to refer back towards the internal exchange of other signs in order to produce a theoretical anchor. The Oxford English Dictionary defines reality foremost as "the quality of being real or having an actual existence" and supplements this with a definition of real as "having objective existence," and finally to exist as having "place in the domain of reality." These conventional definitions of reality represent a larger problem in the attempt to locate the real on the most basic level, for they are wholly circular, a set of signifiers reflecting back at each other lacking the grounding necessary to render meaning. Translator's Note: Jacques Lacan's 'Four Fundamental Concepts of Pyscho-analysis'. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity. Sand Diego and New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1983.Įnzensberger, Hans Magnus, "Constituents of a Theory of the Media," contained in Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation / ed.
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