Baudrillard’s Logic Of Criticism Based On The Concept Of Simulation

In his early work up to the publication of The Mirror of Production,Baudrillard defines his Mauss-Bataille original romanticism,which is opposite to the sign-value scene of consumption oriented society.In Symbolic Exchange and Death,Baudrillard changes his critical argument from sign value to simulation,which is the core concept of this major book and the new theoretical scenario.He criticizes the signifier/signified structure of semiology,and expands this deconstructed process to the whole modern rationality.From the view of social history,Baudrillard elaborates a system of the three orders of the simulacrum,defining the historical passage from production to reproduction to simulation,focusing on the criticism statement of hyperreality and social reproduction system.Article is divided into four chapters except introduction,revolving around the key words as hyperreality,seduction,implosion and the masses within the framework of simulacrum-simulation,to set forth the pseudo symbolic exchange condition and the concealed strategies of capitalism.The first chapter expounds the deconstructive meaning of simulation in the logic background of simulacrum-simulation system,as well as the innovative presentation of “the structural revolution of value”.Baudrillard extends the anthroposociology statement of Mauss and Bataille to the generalized dimension of human history,at the same time,after the deconstruction of value order,he describes the objective order of code in the “zero” appearance of hyperreality society.The code order of simulation has the metaphysical principle of digitality and programmaticity,and the cellular space of code is meaningless,which can be abstracted to the structure of seduction,another core concept of Baudrillard,representing the hyperreality scene we all involved in.The second chapter concentrates on the critical logic of simulation theory,standing on the ontological setting of symbolic exchange to unfold the pseudo symbolic scene of seduction,based on the negatory assertion to “sex’s liberation”.The concept of “symbolic exchange” is endowed with different meaning at each stage of Baudrillard’s theory,having undergone the abstract transformation from figurative expression to theoretical criticism.Baudrillard’s statement of seduction can be explained from two respects,regarding the discussion of “disenchanted simulation”and “enchanted simulation”,while the former criticizes the view of “sex’s liberation”and the later can be traced to the logic source of Lacan’s theory of Other which is not present.The third chapter discusses the concealed logic of capitalism in simulation society.The ontological and transcendental form of symbolic value in Baudrillard’s works shows an abstract trend,while the capitalist order presented in different stages have each characteristic,with the process that the logic of his early critique of the object in consumer society is followed as it develops into a critique of sign value,and then converted to the simulation scene.In hyperreality condition,the modern society have been figured into the generation by models,which represents a real without an original referent.The information explosion in post-industrial society represents the typical scene of hyperreality,which have already lead to the exceeding accumulation of meaninglessness residual,with the destined affection of overflow leading to the instant death of “implosion”.This is the revolutionary path in simulation society,representing the transcendence dimension of Baudrillard’s criticism theory,and also has the reference to Lacan’s Other but shows a more radical attitude.The logic of residual accumulation and the following ironic self-conversion model represents the power form and control rule of capitalist reproduction.The fourth chapter explored the revolutionary path of Baudrillard’s criticism theory,as well as the radical,theoretical and nihilistic attitude involved in his statement.The theoretical teleology of Baudrillard is back to the original condition of symbolic exchange,which is referenced from the anthroposociology of Mauss and the general economy of Bataille.In Baudrillard’s theory,getting back to the origination of symbolic can only be achieved by the radical way of death,reflected in the mass scene as “implosion”,the inevitable result of exceeding accumulation and ironic reproduction in the “zero” appearance of simulation.Symbolic exchange has the simulacra logic of symbolic violence,in particular suggests that the radical hallucination of modernist art is also the reference of hyperreality,regarding the capitalist rule in the formality abstraction.The last part of the article makes a commentary on Baudrillard’s criticism methodology,trying to point out the two parallel logics of capital criticism and nihilism in his works since the late 70 th,and provides the way of historical materialism to the criticism of simulation.