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For most contemporary theorists, the death of postmodern thought as a theoretical impulse and critical divide has become a given. Yet, since the end of the 1990s a variety of important strands of social and political thought—queer theory, feminism, and postcolonialism to name but a few—have taken up and advanced poststructuralist emphases on language and discourse that are derivative of postmodern theory. In this context, the article considers two of the most central and original postmodern thinkers, Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, to illustrate the political entanglements of postmodern and liberal thought. Through this investigation the article illuminates the way these authors' works on the political potencies of language raise important questions for the relevancy of poststructuralist political thought for contemporary critical thinking in the context of the global expanse of neoliberal capital. The article initiates an original dialogue between two poststructuralist authors and raises this to a second engagement with current debates over the crises of critical thought and, by extension, carries contemporary relevance as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, Kip Kline and Kathleen Knight Abowitz use Walker Percy's novel The Moviegoer to examine the existential plight of young Americans today who, as they turn the broad and long corner from youth to adulthood, are engaged in a search for self‐knowledge and identity construction. They are particularly interested in the young adult as "college student," engaged in the work of postsecondary education, autonomous from but often still very closely connected to their family of origin in a culture saturated by late‐capitalist consumerism and commercial media. Kline and Knight Abowitz interpret this novel in order to examine a malaise specific to our current historical moment that may characterize how young people experience institutions such as U.S. colleges and universities as well as the institution of the contemporary American family. They also wish to show that particular themes in existentialism, which can be teased out in novels such as The Moviegoer, can assist our analysis of the contemporary malaise of the college student and provide theorists, educators, and advocates with possible ways of responding to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book City of Quartz from 1990, the urban theorist Mike Davis criticized Bertolt Brecht for having failed to explore the "real-life Mahagonny" and "thriving local labor movement" of Los Angeles while he lived there from 1941 to 1947. For someone who considered himself a dialectical thinker, Brecht showed surprisingly little interest in the specific historical dialectic that had shaped Los Angeles. Shortly after moving there, he had already accepted the myth of the "City of Angels" as a hellish materialization of advanced capitalism. The purpose of this essay, which mostly draws upon Brecht's journal entries, is not to refute Davis's assessment but to take a closer look at Brecht's preconceptions and perceptions of American culture and politics to better grasp why he largely ignored, or refused to engage with, the politically progressive developments and working-class movement in a place where he spent six years of his life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the virtualization of the marriage process that progresses based on religious references in conservative societies by bringing to digital media with reference to Jean Baudrillard's Simulation Theory. Baudrillard who was the most leading philosophers of the postmodern era, asserts that the truth has vanished never to return and that everything has become hyperreal and has been replaced by the truth citing the media as one of those responsible for the process of extinction. Media virtualizes every real thing and enables them to be perceived as real. This irresistible simulation ability of the media makes the change in traditional and conservative societies that are more resistant unavoidable. Conservative societies integrate the media into their lives because of both obligations arising from the needs and the change being unavoidable; and finally, they adopt this new reality style. Virtual reality that has started to pass through the capillaries of the societies via new media technologies isolates religious references, traditional institutions, and cultural norms and makes them a part of itself. Media environments that are designed for users who want to marry within Islamic rules are the most typical examples of related virtualization today. Cultural codes and religious references can be carried to virtual spaces by separating from the true context now; by this means, the religious drawback of conservative users, in spite of a hybrid form, is tried to be minimized. This study that is conducted by considering this reality aims to describe how marriages based on Islamic rules are realized on virtual platforms. Netnography that is a new generation research method was utilized; the data set was established by participant observation technique. When the findings were examined, it was observed how religious or cultural referential codes were carried into the virtual environment after mutation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is marketing virtuous? The concept of marketing aims to "facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment" (Dibb, Simkin, Pride, and Ferrell 1997, p.3) and "enables consumers to choose a brand which seems to have the best potential for satisfaction" (Enis and Cox 1997, p. 89). As Marketing is driven by a desire to satisfy consumer needs (Pride, and Ferrell 2000), one can easily conclude that marketing is virtuous. The problem, of course, is the ontological simplicity of such argument. Today, arguing that consumers are in control over their life and that they can freely write their own stories appears too simplistic. Society and human beings are indeed too complex and too subtle to simply take a pure agentic approach to marketing. Consumers' motivations for buying goods are multiple and hybrid, made of many fragments of personal roles, of history, and of social experiences. The result is intricate and messy; consumer practices are not unified in the pyramidal order, and are not completely congruent with social, ethnic, or geographical groupings. Along with this position, we offer Baudrillard's structural approach to marketing as a conceptual warning, suggesting the need for more reflection and critique on the virtue of marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay will deal with the main characteristics of Ozu’s oeuvre, mainly with the interesting relationship that he established with the cinematographic camera. It will be analyzed the way in which his oeuvre deals with the important transformation that the Japanese society underwent during the second half of the last century. In the second part, the essay will deal with Wenders’ documentary film Tokyo-Ga (1983) and his analysis of social transformations in Japan during the Eighties. Following this framework, the effects of video-electronic images on the socio-technological context analyzed by Wenders will be examined. Further, I will inquire into the way in which simulacra began to populate our reality and seemingly replace the real. To conclude, through some reflections on the media condition highlighted by Wenders in Tokyo-Ga, I will also analyze the passage from the video-electronic condition to our current media condition

This article explores Jordan Peterson’s political project in response to Canada’s legislation of Bill C-16, a bill seeking to add gender expression to the list of grounds for discrimination under the criminal code. Peterson opposes Bill C-16 because it presents, for him, an ideological mode of speech and thought regulation. For Peterson, this bill is the result of the decline of scientific validity and the rise of a postmodernism motivated by the desire to undermine Western civilization. Therefore, this article argues that Peterson’s challenge to postmodern thought as an anti-scientific doctrine is perplexing given the general lack of consensus between his views and those of the greater scientific community. The article presents different theoretical frameworks attesting to the reality of gender non-conforming identities as well as to the consequences of denying these identities, and argues that rather than challenging oppressive systems of governance, Peterson’s project actually mirrors them.

Andy Warhol is Jean Baudrillard's favorite contemporary artist. In Baudrillard's opinion, Warhol was a great transitional figure who has opened a new chapter in the history of art by initiating the trend of commodity fetishism and laying foundations for artistic modernity. He dispelled abstractionism in contemporary art by promoting figurative expressions, established the ready-made style of art, and normalized aesthetic practice in a broader sense. While eliminating the differences between original works and duplications, Warhol also profoundly changed the thinking model and aesthetic trend of artistic creation. He was well versed in creating meaning from meaninglessness, discovering prominence from mediocrity, and producing magnificence from insipidity. However, Warhol described himself as a machine and did not want to write a legend of art. In contrast, he only wanted to hide himself in the machine and to show the tedious and mediocre drama of ordinary life in a technical, neutral, and detached way. In this way, Warhol and his colleagues transformed art into popular art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postfeminism is a slippery, contested, ambivalent, and inherently contradictory term - deployed alternately as an "empowering" identity label and critical theoretical lens. Troubling notions about the past, present, and future of feminism, postfeminism challenges feminist theory. This essay scrutinizes cultural and theoretical themes informing postfeminist discourses. I identify four prevailing themes in extant literature: postfeminist oblivion, self-empowerment, criticality, and feminine pride. I then examine the public discourse and self-asserted postfeminist stance of Kellyanne Conway, former campaign manager and current counselor to President Trump. Conway advocates for an individualistic, depoliticized femininity. I argue that her complacent misogyny bolsters the bizarre imaginary view that feminism has been and remains harmful to women. To demonstrate this postfeminist harm, I employ Baudrillard's theoretical apparatus of simulacra. Baudrillard's notion highlights the strategies of abstraction, simulation, and accompanying models of control that circumnavigate and ignore "the real" (feminism) in favor of "the hyperreal" (postfeminism) (1-2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chuck Palahniuk's 2005 novel Haunted presents a group of wannabe writers confined for a retreat. The description of their interaction during confinement intertwines with the short stories they produce, and in both narrative levels, the writers invariably revisit memories of abuse, loss, social displacement and frustration. While confined, they spend part of their time inflicting pain and mutilation to themselves, aiming at the fabrication of new traumas, which they believe will increase the public's interest in their works and lives. I analyse the representation and fabrication of trauma in Haunted through the manipulation of the body via bruising, (self-inflicted) mutilation, gender and age bending, cross-dressing and exacerbated sexualisation, among others. Jean Baudrillard's concepts of simulation and hyperreality support the fabrication of trauma in the novel, whereas images of bodies changed by trauma are associated to the three phantasies that, according to Baudrillard, haunt the contemporary world: cancer, terrorism and transvestite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is a utopia's function other than as a platform upon which we reflect the reality we already live in? Jimenez Lai, founder of Los Angeles studio Bureau Spectacular, argues that in facilitating criticism, utopias can point the way to solutions for current or future challenges. Drawing parallels between utopian visions in literature and the cartoon caricatures of modern journalism, he presents a series of utopic graphic novels that he has produced which explore issues from hyper density to zero gravity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Jordan Peterson's political project in response to Canada's legislation of Bill C-16, a bill seeking to add gender expression to the list of grounds for discrimination under the criminal code. Peterson opposes Bill C-16 because it presents, for him, an ideological mode of speech and thought regulation. For Peterson, this bill is the result of the decline of scientific validity and the rise of a postmodernism motivated by the desire to undermine Western civilization. Therefore, this article argues that Peterson's challenge to postmodern thought as an anti-scientific doctrine is perplexing given the general lack of consensus between his views and those of the greater scientific community. The article presents different theoretical frameworks attesting to the reality of gender non-conforming identities as well as to the consequences of denying these identities, and argues that rather than challenging oppressive systems of governance, Peterson's project actually mirrors them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In1998, near the midnight of Jean Baudrillard’s philosophical career, Antoon Van den Braembussche asked him how he—a self-proclaimed radical thinker—could rely on the “binary logic of dialectics?” (2017: 274). To this charge, Baudrillard replied by way of a distinction: a distinction between the “binary logic” he was accused of administering, and the principles of “challenge, of antagonism” (2017: 274). This essay explores this distinction that Baudrillard provides, exhuming the respective roles that binarism and antagonism play in Baudrillard’s philosophical imaginary. I argue that it is not necessary to completely eschew binarism when considering Baudrillard’s work because much of it rests on the antagonism produced by two or more separate and autonomous poles. In fact, the antagonism produced by the collision of separate poles sets the stage for what is properly understood as ‘reality,’ in its benevolent manifestation. This is opposed to reality as a galvanizing force, a harbinger of scientism and objectivism, that strives to purge the world of all negativity, the apotheosis of the simulacrum— “integral reality.” To make this case, I illustrate the possible manifestations of benevolent and malevolent antagonism and what purpose the acts of acceptance and refusal serve in them. These distinctions disentangle some of the antinomies found in Baudrillard’s work while setting the stage for a politics of antagonism that may shed light on our present global situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Razón Crítica is the property of La Fundacion Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the creation of (a sense of) reality in Richard Powers’ 2006 novel The Echo Maker and Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra, especially as that latter is applied by Kevin Casper to the 2010 movie Jackass 3D. The focus is on neurology, or perhaps neurophilosophy, rather than literary criticism or film studies, or even Baudrillard’s cultural theory: the various cultural texts are interrogated for what their explicit and implicit neurological theories can tell us about how we “realize” (organize, make real) our selves and/ in the world. Key in this process, the paper shows, are “fiction” for Powers (as it arises out of ubiquitous human “confabulation” as an attempt to impose coherence on the self and the world) and “simulacra” for Baudrillard; both become primary channels of social construction. The Capgras Delusion, which Powers places at the center of his novel, is especially useful in its tracking of the effects damage to our emotional circuits has on the creation of a sense of reality; Powers even seeks to universalize Capgras as a general human failure to accept the kinship of all living things, or what Arne Naess calls “the Self-realization of the ecological self.” This universalized deficit is close enough to Baudrillard’s (faux?-)apocalyptic conception of simulacra subsuming reality into virtuality in postmodernity to make it a useful test for Baudrillard’s jeremiads. Ultimately the paper moves in the direction of icosis as the somatic group plausibilization of normative opinion.

O artigo examina o conflito das imagens na contemporaneidade, a partir da reflexão estética de Jean Baudrillard. Mostra que para Baudrillard a imagem hegemônica na sociedade da simulação total é o simulacro: imagens planas; sem enigma, sem mistério; sem face oculta; nos termos do autor. Partindo desse diagnóstico, o texto conjectura se nessa sociedade hiper-real, é possível, ainda, produzir uma imagem-enigma, uma imagem que “force o pensamento”, no sentido de Gilles Deleuze, algo como o “chegante”, diria Jacques Derrida; algo que “aconteça no acontecimento”, diria Jean-François Lyotard; algo como “o impensado” afirmaria Foucault; algo como uma “possibilidade indefinida” na expressão de Hans-Thies Lehmann; algo que rompa, enfim, com o horizonte do provável, interrompendo toda organização performativa, todo contexto dominável por um convencionalismo; porque somente, assim, na subtração de elementos de poder, é que se liberaria, nesse drama da percepção, a força não meramente comunicativa da imagem, ou, em outros termos, sua biopotência. Nessa direção, analisamos as fotografias de Nan Goldin, Ana Mariani, do fotógrafo cego Evgen Bavcar, e do próprio Jean Baudrillard; além de obras que incorporam diversas mídias como as vídeo-instalações de Bill Viola e Wilhelm Kentridge e o teatro da dramaturgia visual de Hans-Thies Lehmann. Procuramos mostrar, em suma, que essas obras constituem o lugar, por excelência, para o desenvolvimento do drama da percepção, questão que está no centro da reflexão estética contemporânea. Concebem-se assim, essas imagens de resistência ou negatividade no contexto de uma agonística, entendida como o lugar e momento decisivos nos quais se desenvolve uma disputa relativa ao destino da imagem.

Meter as a simulacrum This text presents an attempt to conceptualize the poetics of versification in Kamil Brewiński’s poetic book Clubbing (Kraków 2013), with the background of the critical reception of the book, by the view given by the theory of simulation by Jean Baudrillard. The article is based on two unpublished conference speeches presented at conference on “Twenty First Century in Literature”, 2014) and “Poetry – Culture – Poetry. Contemporary Perspectives”, 2015). Some excerpts were used before in my doctoral dissertation (2015).

With reference to Jean Baudrillard’s theory of consumerism embedded in his scrutiny of power, this paper investigates the possibilities of an authentic self in Haruki Murakami’s novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World within the context of Japanese consumerism in the 1970s and early 1980s. By alluding to the Baudrillardian discourse, I argue that the protagonist’s choice to abandon his shadow at the very end of the novel is closely linked with his attempt to find an authentic self: in other words, an attempt to liberate himself from the power consumerism exerts on him.

Copyright of Electronic Turkish Studies is the property of Electronic Turkish Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article builds on the embryonic inter/trans/anti/disciplinary Trump Studies to generate a theoretical framework for understanding the Brexit outcome and Trump's victory. The consequences for researchers operating in a post-expertise political sphere means that new theories are required to create innovative interdisciplinary solutions to difficult, defiant and troubling social and economic problems. Using Jean Baudrillard's theorization of banality and the double refusal, we consider how higher education researchers remain engaged in public discussions of, about and with 'the silent majority'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anuario Lope de Vega. Texto, Literatura, Cultura is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

What happens to disintermediated, flattened, plural and resistive popular culture when classic rock is corporatized and the audience is middle aged white men? This article is provoked by Bob Dylan's The Cutting Edge, the expensive reissuing of his albums from 1965 and 1966 in 2015, to offer a theorization of digital recording and sharing of analogue unboxing cultures. My interest particularly focuses on the audience of this affluent product and the odd cultural responses from the male audience. How do scholars of popular culture understand this shared enthusiasm for unpackaging consumerist items? The solution posed in this article is the deployment of Jean Baudrillard's theories to understand and manage the cascading simulacrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online poker, like gambling in general, is predominantly a male activity. Thus, poker ads most often depict men as their protagonists. According to Jean Baudrillard, advertising can be seen as a ‘plebiscite whereby mass consumer society wages a perpetual campaign of self- endorsement.’ Ads often use stereotypical imagery for establishing a shared experience of identification with the consumer, and since their role is to sell rather than to portray the realities of life, they often have an exaggerated and monolithic – or, hyperreal – way of representing gender. This article offers an analysis of the ways in which men are portrayed in the ads of Poker Magazine Finland in the volume of 2009 (all six issues), at the peak of the so-called online poker boom.Theoretically, the article draws on postmodern theorists such as Jean Baudrillard and particularly on his concept of hyperreality (exaggerated and media-saturated reality) to analyze the way males are portrayed in the ads in question.

El presente trabajo repasa las ideas expuestas en torno a los conceptos de cultura, simulacro e hiperrealidad desarrolladas por el filósofo Jean Baudrillard a lo largo de su carrera y, en particular, en su libro El crimen perfecto. Las líneas que siguen examinan la vigencia de sus reflexiones en el momento actual, sobre todo en lo que respecta a la relación entre las diferentes manifestaciones culturales con el concepto capital de simulacro propuesto por el francés. Un vínculo en el que la imagen, en tanto que producto y también mediación, juega un papel primordial en la configuración del orden sistémico.

The idea that digitalization, in general, and digital visuality, in particular, can have, alone, subversive or otherwise, emancipative effects on politics is based on the belief that the ideological apparatus supporting hegemonic relations consists of false ideas that the “power of images” can effectively challenge once larger parts of society are given access to this “power”. This idea misinterprets the role of digital visuality by misconstruing the role of ideology,and by positioning visual communication and associated technology in a sort of socio-political vacuum: beyond the reach of ideology and the relations of power supported by it. Based on the insights provided by the classical works of Walter Benjamin and Jean Baudrillard on the visual construction of reality, I argue that an authoritative discussion of the cultural, social and political implications of digital visuality in Western societies invites the intellectual positioning of this process within the broader framework of hegemonic capitalism and the problems of control associated with it. My main point is that in Western societies, the actualization of the subversive potential of digital visuality, as well as that of other forms of communication, requires material conditions that depend on ideology rather than technology. These ideological conditions explain why, for example, digital visuality may be effective in the cultural and socio-political subversion of non-capitalist societies. In Western societies, however, despite the extensive subcultural uses of digital visuality, the subversive potential is fatally reduced (if not nullified) by mechanisms that can be subsumed in what Frederic Jameson called “the cultural logic of late capitalism”. In support of my main argument, I offer some preliminary reflections on the media coverage of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the uses of organized violence in the “Arab Spring” of 2011.

Se estudia la teoría de la seducción de Jean Baudrillard mediante el análisis de la novela Hallucinating Foucault, de Patricia Duncker, para mostrar que el proceso de lectura es un acto seductor y un juego obsesivo entre lector y escritor. Estas características se comprueban con la inversión de las jerarquías presentes, del cambio de roles y de una muerte literal y metafórica. Hallucinating Foucault muestra la complejidad entre lector y escritor, vistos como compañeros de juego, parte de una relación que respectivamente alimenta su imaginación y su creatividad. Jean Baudrillard’s theory of seduction is studied by the analysis of the novel Hallucinating Foucault, by Patricia Duncker, to verify that the process of reading is a seductive act and a compulsive game among readers and writers. These features are shown by the reversal of the hierarchies present, the changing of roles and a literal and metaphorical death. Thus, Hallucinating Foucault shows the complexity between readers and writers, seen as playmates and partners that mutually feed one another’s imagination and creativity.

Librarians should have high sencitive to information overloaded. Deep understanding on Simulacrum Jean Baudrillard’s theory is needed to all. The ability to identify various of real and unreal information should be encouraged to librarians, as the result the end-users can access the needed information, not Simulacrum information. Some activities were taken by librarians in order to anticipate Simulacrum information, for instance, the way how they select any materials that being collected by the library, selecting digital content on its institution repository, literacy information program, dissemination information, etc.

Copyright of Afyon Kocatepe University Journal of Social Sciences / Afyon Kocatepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi is the property of Afyon Kocatepe University (AKU) Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ten years after the death of Jean Baudrillard, this contribution intends to rethink the literary production and thought of this author, from beginnings to later works. The aim is to bring out the most important themes of his thought, highlighting how the concept of simulation can be an important lighthouse for sociological analysis, even today. As we can see in the last part of the paper presented here, the simulation is an explanatory and analytical key to the current transformation phases of Western society. The intent is to articulate the analysis of the concept on two levels: a phenomenological one, which investigates the manifestation of dimensions that characterize the various spheres of social action, and another one that is driven to a macrosocial analysis. In this case, the perspective introduced by the simulacrum would hinge between abstract culture and concrete society, with particular attention to the processes of recursive and reflective influence of society on its own, in integrative and socializing, based on aesthetic pleasure and taste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this article is to consider the role attributed to terrorism by the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, who conducted an extensive study on the nature of terrorism in the West over the course of three decades. His enquiry started with an analysis of the relationship between terrorism and the media, and led to the development of a number of concepts that will be considered in detail in this article. These concepts share the idea that in the West we are currently witnessing a return to what Baudrillard defined as the 'symbolic exchange', a concept which draws on the French tradition of sociological and anthropological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to exhibit main critical approaches to western capitalism in social theory and their directions. This article begins with Marx as the major the critique of western capitalism and shows the major aspects of his critical approach. After Marx, in the 20th century, the direction of the critical approaches to capitalism shifted from political economy to cultural sphere in social theory. Therefore, I focus on Gramsci, the Frankfurt School and Baudrillard to show the main tenets of cultural critique of western capitalism. In the final quarter of 20th century, political economy comes into prominence because of the collapse of the welfare state and diminishing role of the state in the economy under the impact of the neoliberalization process. Thus, I examine David Harvey's critical approach to contemporary capitalism because of that he represents the return of political economy in the critical approaches to capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay will deal with the main characteristics of Ozu's oeuvre, mainly with the interesting relationship that he established with the cinematographic camera. It will be analyzed the way in which his oeuvre deals with the important transformation that the Japanese society underwent during the second half of the last century. In the second part, the essay will deal with Wenders' documentary film Tokyo-Ga (1983) and his analysis of social transformations in Japan during the Eighties. Following this framework, the effects of video-electronic images on the socio-technological context analyzed by Wenders will be examined. Further, I will inquire into the way in which simulacra began to populate our reality and seemingly replace the real. To conclude, through some reflections on the media condition highlighted by Wenders in Tokyo-Ga, I will also analyze the passage from the video-electronic condition to our current media condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the novel "Oracle Night" by the American author Paul Auster is presented. It discusses the character of the author who experiences distorted episodes of hypersimulation and how he tries to incorporate his awareness of these episodes as reality in a new novel.

Contemporary social reality is determined by the mode in which new technologies function. The mass media have become a factor instrumental in introducing a new social order. Jean Baudrillard's theory of simulation may be interpreted as the basis for developing a research method explicating modern phenomena which are caused by an overflow of information. This refers in particular to communication detached from an object reference. Against this background the author explains the process of sign transformation which leads to implosion of sense in communication and to an artificial "production of reality". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the relationship between specific horror and violence spaces linked to a given scenario or degree of visibility. In order to do so, the journey through the iconography of suffering will be outlined: from the torture theater described by Foucault in Discipline and punish, to the triviality, the pornography and the infinite proliferation of images of horror in the contemporary mass culture. According to J. Butler, all images in which the vulnerability of the other is portrayed, work as intelligibility frames. Semantic frames in which the so called "precarious life" emerges. The images produced by the society of the spectacle emerge as our "civilization and its discontents", demanding that we develop and ethical pathos that brings us closer to human life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is an attempt to reconstruct the topographic imagination of Jean Baudrillard. The author interprets his essay, America, placing him in the context of Visions from San Francisco Bay by Czesław Miłosz. Reading America through a spatial perspective allows us not only to see the spatial imagery used to describe the landscape of the New World but also to indicate its hidden symbolism. In other words, through topographical imagery, Baudrillard verbalizes judgments about culture and history. Thus, space becomes an epistemological metaphor and the author's own philosophical dictionary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]