Simulacrum

In “Plato and the Simulacrum,” Deleuze distinguishes between two types of mimetic images: the icon, which is based on the model-copy relation, and the simulacrum, which is “a copy without a model.” Behind this well-known distinction, however, lies a previously unexplored distinction between the simulacrum and the phantasm. This article examines Deleuze’s treatment of this distinction in The Logic of Sense (1969), “Renverser le platonism (les simulacres)” (1966), and Difference and Repetition (1968). This paper presents a genealogical reading of the traditions that inform Deleuze’s account of the simulacrum, from the Freudian, Lacanian, and Kleinian schools of psychoanalysis, to the French rediscovery of Nietzsche by Deleuze and Pierre Klossowski, whose language of phantasms and simulacra directly influenced Deleuze. It is argued that Deleuze makes a strong distinction in The Logic of Sense between the simulacrum and the phantasm as a critique of the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy. In so doing, he reverses Klossowski’s treatment of the phantasm and the simulacrum. The Platonic concept of the simulacrum is thus linked to Nietzschean pathos and to the broader notion of a “mimetic unconscious.”

The article is focused on social causes of using provocations in advertising as tools of impact, consideration and comparison of provocative advertising and advertising with provocations. Analysis of main features of advertising with provocations, its essence and impact techniques of creolized advertising material that contains advertising. The article also studies riscogenics of provocations in commercial advertising, the role of provocations in building virtual social capital while promoting premium-level goods and services, as well as analysis of impact of social advertising on social actors.
Анализ социальных предпосылок применения в рекламном дискурсе провокаций как средств воздействия, рассмотрение и сравнение провокационной рекламы и рекламы-провокации. Анализ основных признаков рекламы-провокации, характера и механизма воздействия рекламных мультимодусных произведений, содержащих провокации. Изучение рискогенности провокаций в коммерческой рекламе, их роли при формировании виртуального социального капитала в процессе продвижения продуктов и услуг премиального ценового сегмента и в социальной рекламе при формировании новых ментальных установок членов социума.

This short essay attempts to deepen the yet unexplored and uncriticized literature of David Foster Wallace, particularly focusing on the possibility for a "performative literature" to contrast the emerging emptiness of the speech depicted by Baudrillard by using the term "simulacrum".

We live in scandalous times. Every day some new controversy demands our attention, our emotional investment, and, ultimately, our judgment. Many of these routine transgressions will be understood in ‘revelatory’ terms, as peeling back the multiple layers of artifice and spin to reveal an underlying, and oftentimes disturbing, ‘truth’. Others will be recognized as calculated marketing exercises that simply present the strategic face of contemporary capitalism.

Yet these ‘ordinary’ scandals can themselves be seen to be largely derivative of another, altogether more fundamental—and fundamentally rare—form of disruption. Such is the real scandal that accompanies instances of authentic creation. Building on the philosophy of Alain Badiou, Scandalous Times not only argues the case for such ‘real scandal’, but also shows how it is today being abrogated and substituted through the increasing production of novel forms of state-sanctioned controversy.

From Duchamp to Donald Trump, Scandalous Times explores the ways in which areas from art and advertising to politics and social media have come to actively contribute to this ‘static’ fabrication of controversy, all the while arguing for the need to rethink creativity as a radical exception to the state, and not its proxy.

“Alex Ling presents a powerful argument on the nature of scandal and pseudo-scandal today through a concise and lucid account of Alain Badiou’s theory of being and the scandalous event that occasionally irrupts within it, allowing for the possibility of real change. This is a truly striking demonstration of the extraordinary potential of Badiou’s thought for critical theory and cultural studies. It should be studied for its exemplary methodology as much for its original readings and conclusions.” Kenneth Reinhard, Professor of Comparative Literature and English, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

“Alex Ling’s Scandalous Times is a lucid argument that the realm of contemporary scandal is one in which everything changes so everything can stay the same. Against this conservatism, Ling provides a philosophical defence of the real scandal that would overturn our scandalous reality.” Benjamin Noys, Professor of Critical Theory, University of Chichester, UK

“Alex Ling turns a much needed philosophical gaze on scandals, one of those key yet widely misunderstood concepts currently shaping our reactionary political age. Ling’s lucid, challenging and thoroughly engaging analysis forces us to think of our current political moment as one saturated with ‘simulacral scandals’ (or state-sanctioned controversies), both perversely satisfying an inevitable demand for shock and horror in times such as ours, and precluding any real change. Building on Badiouian philosophy, this timely and powerful book is not just a sharp and original account of how to think about scandals and the role they play in our societies, but a guide for how to reimagine them, and explore ways towards new political horizons and ultimately ‘the possibility of real happiness’.” Aurelien Mondon, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Bath, UK

This paper explores hyperreal spatial experiences produced through the dialectics of original and copy in terms of object, atmosphere, and public space. It focuses on two collaborative projects by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), namely Danish Expo Pavilion and Superkilen Urban Park; yet begins by unpacking the authenticity of Denmark’s national symbol, the Little Mermaid Statue - a continuous target of vandalism.

A partir de la constatación de formas no necesariamente alfabéticas del registro y del archivo en las sociedades indígenas, así como de una definición del archivo en tanto aquello que dota de legibilidad y eficacia a estos registros heterogéneos, se plantea la siguiente pregunta: ¿cómo entender la potencia de cierto tipo de objetos que parecen fundar su poder en el hecho de sustraerse a códigos y representaciones? Se propone así una conceptualización de los archivos indígenas opuesta a Palabras clave fetiche afirmativo política simulacro acontecimiento

Ever since Marcel Duchamp devised his 'readymades' in the early twentieth century, the majority of the critical literature on artworks that comprise readymade and found objects focuses on the commodity status of these items and the critique of consumer culture. This session, instead, invites papers that explore the links between found object-based sculpture and its relationship to the economies and technologies of production in industrial and postindustrial metropolitan areas-as Anne Wagner has argued, the history of sculpture is in constant dialogue with the history of technologies of production. From the dominance of industrial zones in early twentieth-century modern cities around the world to the waning of industry, the emergence of service-based economies and the growth of the financial sectors in postindustrial, postmodern urban areas, this panel explores how artistic practices that incorporate found objects negotiate the shifting texture of cities on the level of the street, the neighborhood, the workplace, the local store, real estate and urban life. This panel encourages the participation of art historians, curators, museum professionals, artists and theorists whose work and scholarship encompass the study of readymades, found objects, and simulated everyday objects in modern and contemporary sculpture and explore its links to obsolete and emerging technologies and sites of production in the context of industrial and postindustrial cities worldwide.

* Please send proposals for a paper including title, abstract (250 words maximum) and a short bio to Dr Natasha Adamou at adamou.natasha@gmail.com

For more information concerning the conference, see: http://www.collegeart.org/programs/conference/

The essay explores the ramifications of the potential of digitising consciousness, preserving memory and subjectivity on the distinctive technological ground which enables and facilitates the utopia named San Junipero. This possibility, which broaches ever-louder into public discourse, pronounces the raw hope of sustaining the weave of life without life itself; the hope for a digital life more living than that of the flesh: vita realissima. In this hope, one does not find a mere supplement of life, the blissfully amnesiac shadows of Hades, but a life more living, more real than reality. Yet, something unsettling in the resurrected paradise compels our humanity to cling to the real. We hold on to it principally, being prepared to wager pain and suffering for its sake: this is the reality principle. The essay resignifies the Freudian analysis of the reality principle, which establishes an economy of desire and pleasure in the face of death, through Beaudrillard's exposition of the articulation of the historical contingency that we call reality. It aims thus to examine the significance of the place and function of death in our understanding and experience of the familiar reality of our human destiny, vis-à-vis a reality that promises to be without death, if not without pain and suffering. Accordingly, the essay takes up anew the Platonic project of philosophy as a 'study of death'-as exigent in the post-simulated world as at the dawn of occidental thought.

(1) Einleitung Susan Sontag hat vor über 40 Jahren im Schlusswort ihres Essays Über Fotografie eine "Ökologie der Bilder" gefordert. 1 Eine fundamentale Auseinandersetzung der Beziehungen zwischen Lebewesen (Menschen) und ihrer Bilderwelt (Abbild der realen Dinge) "Wenn es für die reale Welt eine bessere Möglichkeit geben kann, die Welt der Bilder in sich einzuschließen, dann wird es nicht nur einer Ökologie der realen Dinge bedürfen, sondern auch einer Ökologie der Bilder." "Eine kapitalistische Gesellschaft braucht eine Kultur, die auf Bildern basiert. (…) Und sie muß unbegrenzte Mengen an Informationen sammeln, um desto besser die natürlichen Quellen ausbeuten, die Produktivität steigern, die Ordnung aufrechterhalten, Krieg führen und Bürokraten mit Jobs versorgen zu können." Die Grundvoraussetzung für einen funktionierenden Kapitalismus ist also eine gewollte, systemimmanente Bilderflut, welche ihre Funktion in der Visualisierung unserer Träume, Wünsche und Ängste sucht. Sei es um den Konsum anzuregen, die arbeitende Klasse zufriedenzustellen oder aber um bestimmte politische sowie soziale Prozesse voranzutreiben. Sontags Forderung kann man mit Blick auf die aktuelle Bilderflut sicherlich als kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Medien und im speziellen der Fotografie betrachten. Schon der Philosoph Walter Benjamin beschreibt in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jh große Veränderungen und einen Erfahrungs-und Wahrnehmungswandel durch die Möglichkeiten der technischen Reproduzierbarkeit von Fotografie und Text durch die modernen Foto-& Druckverfahren. 2 Und die Möglichkeiten der Digitalisierung der Fotografie im 21. Jahrhunderts haben diese Entwicklung noch einmal in einem nie zuvor gesehenem Tempo beschleunigt. Die Frage nach einer "Ökologie der Bilder" rückt also unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Überproduktion in den Mittelpunkt einer medienkritischen Betrachtung. In einem ersten Schritt soll die Bilderflut anhand von Statistiken numerisch dargestellt werden. In einer weiteren Betrachtung geht es um die Analyse der produzierten Bilder. Welche Fotos werden heutzutage angefertigt und welchem Zweck dienen sie? Und ist Susan Sontags Forderung nach einer Ökologie der Bilder heutzutage noch notwendig oder notwendiger denn je?

In the Medium of Communication: Studies on the Philosophy of Communication. This volume collects my papers written in recent years on contemporary communication phenomena and communication processes in the wider sense, focusing on the analysis of specific issues related to communication (science communication, interdisciplinarity, application, new media, virtuality, simulacrum, comprehension). The inclusion of these thematically divergent essays is motivated by their common conceptual framework. The hermeneutical approach to communication issues allows for the critical confrontation between the two fundamental communicative attitudes, efficient communication vs. understanding communication.
x x x
Ez a tanulmánykötet az utóbbi években keletkezett tanulmányaimat gyűjti össze, amelyek tágabb értelemben vett kortárs kommunikációs jelenségeket és folyamatokat fognak át, egy-egy sajátosan kommunikációs kérdéskör (tudománykommunikáció, interdiszciplinaritás, applikáció, új média, virtualitás, szimulakrum, szót értés) vizsgálatára összpontosítva. A tematikailag szerteágazó írások kötetbe gyűjtését egységes szemléleti keretük indokolja. A kommunikációs kérdéseknek a filozófiai hermeneutika irányából történő megközelítése alapján lehetővé válik a két alapvető kommunikatív beállítódás ‒ a hatékony kommunikáció és a megértő kommunikáció ‒ kritikai szembesítése egymással.

This article sets out to analyze the novel The Song of Ouyang Hai by Jin Jingmai
(1965), and to do so within the paradigm of poststructuralist literary criticism. The
deconstruction of the text helps us to discover its intertextuality and simulacra and to
reveal the contradictions between the author’s ideas and the image of the protagonist as
actually presented to the reader. Through reference to intertextuality, we see that Ouyang
Hai is incapable of thinking and acting independently, he is guided by set phrases and
behavior patterns that he has gleaned from Communist literature. Slogans that pervade
his speech do not represent real actions, but only simulate them, thus creating a hyperreal
environment filled with signs that do not have a prototype in real life, i.e., simulacra.
Ouyang Hai’s maturation, as he acquires political and ideological consciousness is,
in the author’s opinion, the process of his evolution. I argue that, on the contrary, this
transformation leads to the destruction of the image, which is mostly constructed of
propaganda slogans. The image constituting the mere sum of these artificial elements
is no longer an integral whole, it breaks down into its elements – destructs, dismantles,
defragments itself. Finally, Ouyang Hai is not a copy of a real human being, but – in J.
Baudrillard’s words – “its own pure simulacrum.”

Blessed, or cursed, by the largesse of the oil industry, Dubai has been developed as a fully constructed mirage. Its given condition—the desert—allows for the city to be apparently independent from any context, enabling it to fashion, without restrictions, its own interpretation of what it should be. Amidst the frenetic rate of building construction, changes in local lifestyle and the importation of foreign customs, Dubai’s historic architecture has been re-cast in new forms of traditional styles, a generalized reminder of the past, although detached from any specific chronology. Reflecting on texts by Jean Baudrillard and Frederic Jameson, this essay takes the Dubai Mall to be a duplicate of the simulacrum that is the whole of Dubai. In discussing how the Mall mirrors the postmodern condition of the city, it studies the fabrication of Dubai’s contemporary identity, in which representations of Western elements are combined with those of the traditional Arabian medina to establish a recognizable urban environment.

This essay provides a critical understanding of Jean Baudrillard's simulacrum theory and applies it to modern day events in the media. The essay specifically covers the Gulf War and post-9/11 thinking whilst analyses how the media can represent news stories in any construct they like and therefore control audiences in an instant.

Meu encontro com ONde Andará Dulce Veiga? de Caio Fernando Abreu e outros coisas dos anos 90 do século passado...Não há mais boa ou má literatura, bons ou maus filmes. Ou se há, não me importa mais. Há experiência e uma beleza impura. Há o protagonista. Há eu e você que me lê, que me ouve. Isto não basta, mas é um começo. Como a frase num calendário Seicho-No-Ie, os limites entre o sublime e o banal são frágeis: “Agora é o momento decisivo para renascer” (p. 17). Não há mais nomes. Nomes sempre lembram outros nomes, não traduzem identidades, são máscaras na internet, aparências no mercado, ficções na noite e no dia, heterônimos frenéticos, sem história e densidade. O protagonista canta seu nome no final, mas não o diz. O escritor não o diz. Dulce e Márcia e Pedro, tantos outros personagens saem de cena. Agora é a sua vez ou qual é a sua voz?

Ten years ago, I was more interested in giving a response inside "return of the real" (Hal Foster) through the ordinary much more than an alternative to it. It is a theoretical sythnesis that sums up what I have published then more than an analythical piece. Hope it may be useful yet. I am just not so interested in what I was trying to do then

The Free Art & Technology Lab art collective, who had been championing a free and participative culture through their support of open source software,  announced their closure and ‘total defeat’ in 2015 in the face of a loss of a stake in the future of the Internet. In the face of the simulacrum’s logic, Baudrillard took a similar approach through his ‘fatal’ strategy. Is there possibility for the digital technology, the Internet, and the realm of representation to still serve as avenues towards political subversion within what Baudrillard terms ‘the hyperreal’? Has the political sphere, the social, the logic of fact and the order of reason, truly disappeared, or is Baudrillard’s own theory simulational in its creation of a ‘media theology’? Does democracy still have something to offer or does its functionality lay precisely in its failures? Have we truly lost all alternatives, are we stuck in a simulacrum, or does Baudrillard underestimate the subject’s own powers of mediation and agency? Did F.A.T. Lab’s hacktivist tactics wield the media’s own logic against itself, or reinforce the simulational logic of the system they were attempting to topple? F.A.T. Lab and Baudrillard’s strategies of total defeat are the only effective strategies in combating the simulacrum and the Internet as a structure of power. It is in the total defeat that we acknowledge the failure of democracy and capitalism, rather than petitioning to its moral framework which serves to shroud its functional dysfunctionality. As we face of an increasingly absurd sociopolitical reality, perhaps we must also take a stance of ‘total defeat’ and, as per Slavoj Žižek and Jean Baudrillard, find new ‘Master-Signifiers’.

A continuación, propondré una descripción sencilla del significado central de la “encriptación del poder” con el fin de arrojar luz sobre su enfoque, pero sobre todo apuntalar la concreción del concepto y la manera versátil cómo reconfigura profundamente los vínculos íntimos entre el poder, la política, la democracia y diferencia. En otras palabras, la “teoría de la encriptación del poder” ofrece una reconsideración esencial de lo político a través de una refundación ontológica de la diferencia que conduce a una revisión dramática del significado con el que occidente ha simulado la democracia.

The focus of the article is an comparative analysis of the modern sci-fi features
"Blade runner" directed by Riddley Scott and "District 9" by Neill Blomkamp. The
features will be discussed through a framework set by Jean Baudrillard in his work
"Simulacra and simulation". The analysis gives a perspective of the hyperbolic
projection of the simulacrum displayed in "Blade runner" and insight in "District 9"
clashing cultures. Both movies fit and respond well to the framework giving us data
that points us to definitions of a more emotional and intimated simulations in "Blade
runner" and more social and mechanical simulations in "District 9".

This paper explores how the AC franchise can be deconstructed using postmodern theories. It considers the entirety of the series until AC IV: Black Flag and how it is Metafictional, Historeographic and deals with the Cyberspace and Simulacra.

Progressive rock was supposed to be dead since late 1970s, but it looks like it is still alive today, though in much different ways as it was back then. Such diversity of contemporary forms of progressive music has made the definition task of the genre even harder than it originally was, so I tried to figure out which features of prog are perceived as important for the genre by its fans, by posting an empirical survey in strategic locations of the internet. The results (200+ answers) of that survey highlight the presence of a duality in the fandom, which is very similar to the most general one that we can find in music labelled as ‘progressive’ itself. Thus I argue that we can find a distinction between ‘progressive’ and ‘regressive’ music, the latter of which is a result of a revival operation triggered by the supposed death of classic prog in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which is still being emulated today. Both the sub-genres – which I call ‘post-progressive’ and ‘neoprogressive’ respectively – can be read with postmodern lenses: they are both simulacra, but two very different ones. They are both continuations of progressive rock, but one of them is nostalgic and more faithful to the surface of the most successful amongst many forms of progressive rock (symphonic prog), the other one is more faithful to its original philosophy and attitude, and so it is the only one being truly progressive.

Fredric Jameson argues in his work, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, that postmodernity has created a new “depthlessness” in society, or a culture of pastiche where there are no originals, only copies. Like his contemporary, Jean Baudrillard with his work on the idea of the simulacrum, Jameson highly criticized postmodernity for its abandonment of historicity and embrace of the hyperreal. In this paper my purpose is to defend Jameson’s understanding of the weakening of the link to the past through the lens of sociology, explore his thoughts about cultural depthlessness through the idea of the Baudrillardian simulacrum, and show how postmodernity keeps us from moving beyond superficiality to search out deeper truths. Section I presents Jameson’s understanding of postmodernity. In section II, I develop Jameson’s symptoms of postmodern depthlessness. In section III, I undergird Jameson’s claims with a look at Jean Baudrillard’s ideas about the simulacrum. In section IV, I conclude that postmodernity is self-destructing and breeds cultural superficiality.

The authors of this edition propose a novel and inspiring research approach to the subject of plants, which – being a form of life that is different, yet akin to us – is a constant source of nourishment and metaphors, decoration and obsessions. The articles included in this thematic block on plants enter into lively ongoing debates on genetics, feminism, ecology and plant ontology. They are excellent examples of the fact that in Polish philosophical and cultural reflection there was an understanding very early on of the challenges that posthumanism poses to our anthropocentric intellectual habits. Foreign readers will recognize in these Polish reflections a bold willingness to ask ethical and aesthetic questions of great relevance to the modern world that go far beyond the safe, though most likely imagined, limits of what it is to be human.

In this article, I aim to showcase the emergence of the so-called Ancient Astronaut Discourse (AAD) out of religious discourse as well as its continued religious functions despite all differences and pretensions to the contrary (i.e., the concerted effort to resemble legitimate or even superior science, specifically historiography and archaeology). In a second step, I sketch a concise literary history of this emergence itself, as well as the continuous mutual influence between the AAD and the realm of popular culture. This complex intertwinement is exemplified via the rather spectacular case of the "Stargate" science fiction franchise which adapted popular themes and theories from the AAD (in particular its Egyptian front focusing on the pyramids) in the mid-90s. With the success of the movie and the subsequent television shows, the direction of the influence then became strangely reversed: The eponymous Stargate device became integrated into AAD narratives, its fictional origins being silently dropped or explained away by conspiracy theories. I try to account for this development by a methodical approach in the vein of recent studies on fiction-based religions as well as Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality and simulacra. Throughout all these observations, we encounter an imaginary Egypt as providing both the primary building blocks and the general backdrop of ancient mystery from and upon which the AAD's flying pyramids are built.

Over the past few decades, numerous prominent authors in various spheres of design discourse have dissected and discussed the rhetorical potency of type ‘icons’ and how they come to embody cultural connotation. As icons, typefaces offer a universal language system; an expansive visual vocabulary that immediately references what we already know of their context. Iconic typefaces and their letterforms are subject to a process of narrative interpretation where, what we ‘already know of them’ is in a constant process of resignification. Here, critics tend to follow a Barthesian view that, as mythic structures, letterforms’ narratives are continuously used and reused as signification in different contexts.

This widely regarded view presumes that iconic meaning develops intertextually, in a linear progression where one narrative builds onto the next. A postmodern understanding such as this leaves little explanation for instances where symbolism embedded in iconic typefaces develops in unexpected and less referential ways. In this article, I therefore investigate and unpack several other means by which iconic typefaces take on or evolve rhetorical meaning. By referring to several examples throughout, I explore typical perspectives on iconic type in the Barthesian sense, but also trace different processes of signification that inform iconic type. In doing so, I attempt to offer alternative insights into iconic type as a more fluid rhetorical entity so that visual artists, practitioners, writers and theorists might consider alternative aspects of type’s social and cultural significance.

Le voyage dans "Lettres d’Égypte" n’est pas autonome en soi, dans le sens qu’il ne sert pas à nourrir le principe de la découverte. Le voyage sert un but, celui de revisiter le familier. La démarche du voyageur dépend donc de ce qu’il évoque comme souvenir du déjà-connu. Dans le contexte de ce livre, le connu évoqué est continuellement lié à la mémoire de la mort. Ainsi, l’épistolier-photographe fait participer ses amis à son voyage par le recours à l’écriture fictive. La manière dont cela se produit est par l’évocation d’un univers sacré du rituel de la momification.

This dissertation will focus upon on the relation of simulacra and the soul in the philosophies of Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze. It will be argued that the simulacrum plays an important role as it undermines the role of the One and enables an emphasis on multiplicity and plurality in its place. Firstly, Baudrillard’s interpretation of simulacra will be analysed in ‘The three orders of simulacra’ in Symbolic, Exchange and Death and ‘the Hyperreal and the Imaginary’ in Simulacra and Simulation. Secondly, his conception of simulacra and its relation to the soul is examined in ‘Clone Story’ in Simulacra and Simulation, ‘The Final Solution: Cloning Beyond the Human and Inhuman’ in The Vital Illusion, and ‘The Hell of the Same’ in The Transparency of Evil. Thirdly, Deleuze’s interpretation of simulacra will be analysed focusing on Difference and Repetition. Fourthly, its relation to the soul will be examined through his readings of Plato in ‘Plato and the simulacrum’ in The Logic of Sense and the sections on Plato in Difference and Repetition. In conclusion there will be a comparison of their views to ascertain how similar and different their conceptions of the simulacrum are and in relation to the soul. The argument analyses works by Baudrillard and Deleuze in order to suggest further openness and the need for singularities to ensure that any one definition of the soul is not burdened with a particular universality.

For Jean Baudrillard, the age of late capitalism is characterised by an endemic loss of meaning, as “serial repetition” produces a cultural state in which signifiers refer not to actual objects, but to previous signifiers, and thus become increasingly emptied of their original denotation. For Jerrold Hogle, Baudrillard’s simulacrum essentially characterises the majority of Gothic narratives.
This paper explores this relationship through an examination of two novels, Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger (2009) and Ali Smith’s The Accidental (2006), both of which involve spectral intrusions into bourgeois homes during periods of social and economic upheaval. It begins by meditating on representations of conservatism as intrinsically spectral in its attempt to perpetually relive the dead or dying ways of the past in the present. It then considers Fred Botting’s characterisation of the Gothic as an evocation of nightmare, contrasting the aptness of this reading to Waters’ morbid novel with The Accidental, which instead focuses, more optimistically, on awakenings. Finally, it contemplates the Derridean concept of the spectre as that which must be acknowledged to effect change within these novels, examining their characters’ comparative levels of willingness to do so in relation to the extent to which their lives are either corroded or transformed.
Ultimately, this paper argues that a recurrent question posed in Smith’s novel – “Imagine or afraid?” – encapsulates the essential choice with which humanity is repeatedly faced: as our old ways collapse around us, we can either cling to them at our peril, or dare to imagine an alternative future.

This article analyses the conceptions of identity in contemporary times by delving into art practices from the 1970s onwards that deal with topics such as the construction of the self, identity as simulacrum, gender as masquerade, cyberfeminism, the cyborg, the techno-medical body or online identity fluidity. In the information and digital era, new technological, medical and scientific developments like genetic engineering, biotechnology, surgical and hormonal procedures and the Internet permeate our lives, affecting the perception, representation and understanding of the self. Through the analysis of the work of Lynn Hershman Leeson, ORLAN and Francesca da Rimini, this article examines contemporary art practices that reflect on these current issues, mirroring contemporary changes, subverting homogenising and repressive articulations of identity, and considering the new malleability, reproducibility and plurality of the self. These art practices ultimately represent the merging of human and machine, of original and copy, of natural and artificial, of the corporeal and the virtual.

Conclusion: Allow me to begin with the conclusion and work my way back to it. Only in contingency is the world possible, when the world is harnessed in necessity it is simply a simulacrum of the world through a simulacrum of power. Contingency (whose name in politics is democracy), as the infinite extension of intense difference, is necessary in all possible worlds.

Modern sonrası bilim ve teknolojinin etkisi ile ortaya çıkan çürüme/decadence durumu, aydınlanma aklının ön plana çıkardığı üst anlatıların meşruiyetinin sorgulanmasına sebep olmuştur. Kuvvetli modern yapıların ve kurumların gözden düşmesi, postmodern dönemin ortaya çıkmasına zemin hazırlamıştır. Postmodern bilgi anlayışı, esnek, karmaşık ve heterojen bir yapıya sahiptir. Bu yapının en büyük sorunu ise filozoflar tarafından anlamın yadsınması/buharlaşması olarak görülmüştür.
Anlamın kaybını gerçeklik ve görünüş üzerinden ele alan Jean Baudrillard, yapay ve sahte olanın gerçeğin yerini aldığını ve içinde yaşadığımız bu çağın simülasyon çağı olduğunu vurgulamıştır.
Bu tezde Antik Yunan’dan bugüne dek tartışılagelmiş gerçeklik-görünüş diyalektiği üzerinden simülasyon kuramını temellendiren Baudrillard’ın düşüncesine yer verilecektir. Baudrillard’ın gerçeğin imaja dönüştüğünü temellendiren simülasyon kuramına dair kullandığı kavramlar ele alınarak, gerçekliğin hangi alanlarda hipergerçekliğe dönüştüğü incelenecek, bu doğrultuda simüle edilen nesne ve olguların gündelik hayatta hangi şekiller üstünden karşımıza çıktığı irdelenecektir.

In this article, I  analyze the problem concerning the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze in relation to Platonism. The starting point is the first article in the appendix of his Logique du sens, entitled Platon et le simulacre, in which the French philosopher claims the existence of an element inside the platonic hierarchy which may destroy the sense of platonic philosophy itself: the simulacrum. Actually, Deleuze defines the simulacrum as an imitation that does not resemble to the Model; unlike the ‘well-founded’ imitations, it is a ‘not well-founded’ imitation. According to the platonic system, the simulacrum should not exist; but Deleuze says that Plato, after having tried to banish the simulacrum into an indistinct deep end, is finally forced to admit his existence – and it is precisely this existence that brings into question the Platonism.

In the second half of the 20th century, a fascinating revival of ancient Gnostic ideas in American popular culture could be observed. One of the major streams through which Gnostic ideas are transmitted is Hollywood cinema. Many works that emerged at the end of 1990s can be viewed through the ideas of ancient Gnostic systems: The Truman Show (1998), The Thirteenth Floor (1999), The Others (2001), Vanilla Sky (2001) or The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003).

In this article, the author analyses Dark City (1998) and demonstrates that the story depicted in the film is heavily indebted to the Gnostic myth of Sophia. He bases his inquiry on the newest research results in Gnostic Studies in order to highlight the importance of definitional problems within the field and how carefully the concept of “Gnosticism” should be applied to popular culture studies.

Yerlileştirme ve yabancılaştırma çeviri stratejilerine değinen ilk çeviribilimci Schleiermacher’in görüşlerini ve  Romantik akımın çevirinin yabancılaştırılarak aktarılması gerektiğine dair düşünceyi yirminci yüzyıldaki koşullara göre yeniden  ele alan Venuti bunları farklı bir potada eriterek çevirinin görünürlüğü ve görünmezliği kavramlarını ortaya atmıştır. Venutiye göre çevirmen kaynak metni erek kültüre adapte ederek aktardığında, bir diğer ifade ile yerlileştirme çeviri stratejisine başvurduğunda görünmez olmayı ancak yabancılaştırma çeviri stratejisine başvurduğunda görünür olmayı tercih etmektedir. Bir diğer ifade ile çevirmenin görünmezliği çevirinin  orijinal dilinde yazılmış gibi okunması,  görünürlüğü ise çevirinin erek kitle tarafından çeviri olduğu bilinerek okunulması anlamına gelmektedir.  Bu çalışmada, çevirmenin görünür olmayı tercih ederek bir simulatör rolünde çeviri yapmasının mı yoksa görünmez olmayı tercih ederek gerçek bir yazar gibi çeviri yapmasının mı etik olduğu tartışılmış ve çeviribilimsel açıdan en somut araştırma nesnesinin çeviri ürünü olduğu düşünüldüğünde, çevirinin bir bilim dalı olarak olgunlaşmayı sürdürebilmesi ve çeviri metnin de en az kaynak metin kadar orijinal bir metin olduğunu vurgulamak için çevirinin çeviri gibi okunması gerektiği sonucuna varılmıştır. Çalışmada betimleyici yaklaşım uygulanmıştır. Anahtar Sözcükler: Çevirmenin görünürlüğü, çevirmenin görünmezliği, yerlileştirme, yabancılaştrma, Venuti, simulatör.