The Hyperreal Shift: Understanding Baudrillard's Legacy

In this introduction to Baudrillard, I look at his thought as it developed from a Marxist framework in Symbolic Exchange and death through to his hyperreal postmodern period exemplified in Simulacra and Simulation. I take an in-depth look at a number of his concepts. First I look at sign-value, which he argued must supplement Marx’s framework of use-value and exchange-value. He then takes this central concept forward arguing that copies of the real – simulacra – became increasingly detached from reality, referencing themselves more than the real and so developing a hyperreality. Postmodernity directs social life through code and simulation. Finally, I look at the concept of Symbolic Exchange; a basis for revolutionary thought that is meant to emphasize social life, ritual, gift-giving, energy expenditure, and neo-aristocratic values. In doing this, Baudrillard hopes to escape from the ‘law of value’, utilitarian logic, and dialectic history typical in much modern thought.

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