Word of the day: simulacrum

History

The first mentions are contained in the Latin translations of the philosophical treatises of Plato, who used the word "simulacrum" in the meaning of "copy of a copy". So, for a philosopher, a simulacrum was a drawing in the sand, a picture and a retelling of a real story - everything that copies an image, which, in turn, is itself a semblance of something larger, global, divine. The word has been used as a philosophical term that has been translated into different languages in different ways over the millennia, and has repeatedly changed the shades of meaning.

The word got into modern language in the first half of the 20th century with the filing of the French philosopher Georges Bataille, who also used it as a term. Bataille believed that the words that we used to call various phenomena are simulacra, since they have nothing to do with the reality that they are trying to designate.

After Bataille, the concept of "simulacrum" was developed by other philosophers (in particular, Pierre Klossowski), but their discussions and theories still did not go beyond the framework of philosophy. As well as the word itself, which sounded only in the leisurely conversations of intellectuals.

Widespread in the sense in which we understand it today, the word received thanks to the culturologist, sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard, also a Frenchman.

It was Baudrillard, who is also called the intellectual guru of postmodernism, who took his word out of scientific works and heated philosophical disputes.

By simulacrum, he began to understand a copy that did not have an original, and transferred this concept to the field of sociology and mass media.

In his 1981 treatise "" Baudrillard states that "we live in a world of simulacra." Labor no longer has a productive function, but is the norm of life (everyone should have an occupation). News, which the media reprints countless times, ultimately have nothing to do with real facts and completely destroy them. In this context, both work and news can be called simulacra.

Gradually, the word began to be actively used in the fields of advertising and marketing, which are engaged in copying and relaying various ideas, images and objects.

Today, a simulacrum can be called an image on a billboard created from scratch in a graphic editor, video art, or a trademark created by analogy with a well-known brand (for example, Alinka chocolate and Adibas sportswear).

The concept of the word (or rather, the image that it calls) is also addressed in Russian modern literature. Victor Pelevin gives a popular definition in his novel "":

A simulacrum is a kind of fake essence, a shadow of a non-existent object or event, which acquires the quality of reality in broadcast. […] In a word, a simulacrum is a manipulation in front of the viewer's eyes, which makes him include in the real landscape some kind of cloud, lake or tower, which are actually cut out of paper and cunningly brought to his very eye.

"Batman Apollo" Victor Pelevin

Usage examples

"In fact, my work was a cunning simulacrum - it didn't exist." Victor Pelevin, "Love for Three Zuckerbrins".
“And let the viewer know - and on a different level he always knows it - that he is not directly present at this scene, which was previously filmed for him by the camera, forcing him, in a sense, to take this place; he knows that this image is flat, these colors are not real, but a two-dimensional simulacrum, applied with the help of chemicals to film and projected onto a screen. " Jacques Aumont, Alain Bargala, Michel Marie, Marc Vernet, Film Aesthetics.