Simulacrum

Simulacrum is a concept derived from the Latin simulacrum ('likeness', 'image') and reaching back to Platonic philosophy, where it denoted a copy of a copy, removed from the ideal form by several degrees. For Plato an image of a thing is already a copy of an idea, and a copy of such an image is a simulacrum, still further from truth and therefore suspect. In classical thought the term carried a pejorative sense, pointing to something false, deceptive and lacking the true essence of the original. In the twentieth century the notion was given new life by French philosophers, above all Jean Baudrillard, whose Simulacra and Simulation (1981) described a culture in which signs and images no longer refer to any reality but only to other signs. For Baudrillard, in the contemporary mediatized world the simulacrum is a copy without an original that displaces and replaces reality (hyperreality). These ideas deeply influenced postmodern art, appropriation and the critique of consumer culture, inspiring artists to examine the mechanisms of reproduction, advertising and mass media.