Powers of the False and the Problematics of the Simulacrum

Abstract

With postindustrialization and the rise of consumer culture, the status of the model as a transcendent ontological substance has disappeared (Baudrillard, 2002). Signs are detached from their symbolic obligations to “float” in a sea of ambient consumerism. Akin to Deleuze (1983), Baudrillard cites in this movement the collapse of the dualist model/copy hierarchy promulgated by Plato (1992). The transcendent model as the deep actuality from which material life is thought to emanate is evacuated. What remains in lieu of such ontological certitude is a pure virtuality or simulacrum. In Deleuzian (1994) terms, this virtuality is the ontology of immanence. For Baudrillard (1983), what remains is the “more real than real,” the hyperreal unhinged from a transcendent model. In hyperreality, the transcendent image of currere is jettisoned. Yet, the problematics of the simulacrum for an active concept of currere remain to be explored. This exploratory task will form the trajectory of this chapter.