(no subject)
I think part of the reason why I find it difficult to wrap my head around is that it seems to be geared around end results (seemingly a common theme for post modern/post structuralist thinking) whereas I am more interested in the begining of the road. The destination is marked with inevitability, so why should I care? It doesn't matter if it is only a matter of time. I am much more interested in the genesis. Probably because I have the non-thought instinctual impression that by understanding the original whys and hows, you'll understand and perhaps control the result.
I understand the concept that beginings and ends exist in parralel. I'm just not sure that it really breaks cause and effect.
Obviously, there is the matter of reality and perception thereof. But that brings up the entire argument about objective reality versus subjective reality and I don't want that can of worms right now. Besides which I'd probably end up paraphrasing Descartes and no one needs that.
For the sake of the argument, let's just accept that whatever will happen already exists in the process itself and that, therefore, beginings and ends do exist simultaneously in some fashion. This part, I think, is rather strong.
But if we accept this as fact, then does it not follow that the virtual will always reflect the original? That's where hyper-reality falls down for me.
Because the idea behind simulacra is, as far as I understand it, based on the lack of reality.
Let me backtrack and throw in the Borges short that served as the original illustration.
"...In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography."
(The map is not the territory?)
(Borges also says "The inventions of philosophy are no less fantastic than those of art: Josiah Royce, in the first volume of his work The World and the Individual (1899), has formulated the following: 'Let us imagine that a portion of the soil of England has been levelled off perfectly and that on it a cartographer traces a map of England. The job is perfect; there is no detail of the soil of England, no matter how minute, that is not registered on the map; everything has there its correspondence. This map, in such a case, should contain a map of the map, which should contain a map of the map of the map, and so on to infinity.' Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictions." I wikied "the map is not the territory" because I could not remember who said it and found this interesting bit. Gotta remember to read up on it.)
To get back to it, simulacra. The argument is that we are so saturated by images and signs of all kinds that simulate and recreate reality that we are, in fact, removed from reality and moved into an hyper-reality. Further we get into the idea that this recreation of reality is not actually a recreation of reality but a recreation of successive copies and recreations of reality. Until we are left with only the hyper-real which, in fact, is not reality. That we believe the map is the world.
Whereas a copy has meaning because it references an original by seeking to represent it, the simulacrum has taken the signs of reality but seeks only to simulate more simulacra (more real than real, more human than human).
On some level, I have to agree with that as I find myself confronting the artificiality of the world I live in and, within that, the artificiality of the bubble I isolated myself in. The Real has long been buried and there is truth in the image having become the new reality. Faster and faster, history becomes fiction and fiction becomes history.
But, again, we get trapped in this obsession over the end instead of my own obsession over the beginning.
See, I can accept that the result of the endless simulacra that seek to emulate each other is the disappearance of reality. A convincing image that has basically nothing to do with the original. Fine. I can also accept that this is the current state of affairs.
I just don't think that's the important part of the equation. At some point, it must have referenced reality, didn't it? If so, then at which point does the static of successive generations overtake the reality?
The idea that beginings contain their own end works but I don't feel that it destroy the progression. Though the idea of 2 (and every other number) is contained in 1, there is a definite progression to reach 2. Likely I am missing some concept of obscure math that would help explain why this is not true and that I could then apply to make sense of all this.
Because, as I see it, if there was at any point a reference to reality then it should be possible to go back and find it. No matter how complex the house of mirrors, there was a original before the reflections. We might can mistake the reflection for the original but that doesn't mean that it isn't there, does it?
What's the part that I'm missing?
I understand the concept that beginings and ends exist in parralel. I'm just not sure that it really breaks cause and effect.
Obviously, there is the matter of reality and perception thereof. But that brings up the entire argument about objective reality versus subjective reality and I don't want that can of worms right now. Besides which I'd probably end up paraphrasing Descartes and no one needs that.
For the sake of the argument, let's just accept that whatever will happen already exists in the process itself and that, therefore, beginings and ends do exist simultaneously in some fashion. This part, I think, is rather strong.
But if we accept this as fact, then does it not follow that the virtual will always reflect the original? That's where hyper-reality falls down for me.
Because the idea behind simulacra is, as far as I understand it, based on the lack of reality.
Let me backtrack and throw in the Borges short that served as the original illustration.
"...In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography."
(The map is not the territory?)
(Borges also says "The inventions of philosophy are no less fantastic than those of art: Josiah Royce, in the first volume of his work The World and the Individual (1899), has formulated the following: 'Let us imagine that a portion of the soil of England has been levelled off perfectly and that on it a cartographer traces a map of England. The job is perfect; there is no detail of the soil of England, no matter how minute, that is not registered on the map; everything has there its correspondence. This map, in such a case, should contain a map of the map, which should contain a map of the map of the map, and so on to infinity.' Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictions." I wikied "the map is not the territory" because I could not remember who said it and found this interesting bit. Gotta remember to read up on it.)
To get back to it, simulacra. The argument is that we are so saturated by images and signs of all kinds that simulate and recreate reality that we are, in fact, removed from reality and moved into an hyper-reality. Further we get into the idea that this recreation of reality is not actually a recreation of reality but a recreation of successive copies and recreations of reality. Until we are left with only the hyper-real which, in fact, is not reality. That we believe the map is the world.
Whereas a copy has meaning because it references an original by seeking to represent it, the simulacrum has taken the signs of reality but seeks only to simulate more simulacra (more real than real, more human than human).
On some level, I have to agree with that as I find myself confronting the artificiality of the world I live in and, within that, the artificiality of the bubble I isolated myself in. The Real has long been buried and there is truth in the image having become the new reality. Faster and faster, history becomes fiction and fiction becomes history.
But, again, we get trapped in this obsession over the end instead of my own obsession over the beginning.
See, I can accept that the result of the endless simulacra that seek to emulate each other is the disappearance of reality. A convincing image that has basically nothing to do with the original. Fine. I can also accept that this is the current state of affairs.
I just don't think that's the important part of the equation. At some point, it must have referenced reality, didn't it? If so, then at which point does the static of successive generations overtake the reality?
The idea that beginings contain their own end works but I don't feel that it destroy the progression. Though the idea of 2 (and every other number) is contained in 1, there is a definite progression to reach 2. Likely I am missing some concept of obscure math that would help explain why this is not true and that I could then apply to make sense of all this.
Because, as I see it, if there was at any point a reference to reality then it should be possible to go back and find it. No matter how complex the house of mirrors, there was a original before the reflections. We might can mistake the reflection for the original but that doesn't mean that it isn't there, does it?
What's the part that I'm missing?