Simulation Hyperreality and the Gulf War(s)

Essay from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography grade: Distinction University of Newcastle upon Tyne (School of English Literature Language and Linguistics) course: Theorizing the Past language: English abstract: How do things stand with the real event then if reality is everywhere infiltrated by images virtuality and fiction? asks Jean Baudrillard in his The Spirit of Terrorism (Baudrillard 2003:27-28) He already seems to know the answer to this apparently purely rhetorical question. Or does he? Baudrillard has become (in)famous for his controversial claim that we are living in an age of simulation and hyperreality or what he calls the 'third order of simulacra' (Baudrillard 1993:50). The following paper will try to disentangle some of Baudrillard's arguments clustering around ideas of the simulacrum hyperreality and simulation. Arguing that the last two gulf wars constitute concrete examples of simulation and hyperreality both in terms of the (hyper)real events on the ground and in terms of the images bombarding our living rooms it will then explore these events in the light of Baudrillard's ideas. In Simulacra and Simulation Baudrillard argues that in our current era of simulation the real is preceded by and generated from models in a free play of signifiers which only refer to other signifiers (Baudrillard 1994:1-2). This constitutes the third order of simulacra in contrast to the 'second order' which was still dominated by production and a market law of value (Baudrillard 1993:50). Baudrillard uses the term value in both its economic and linguistic sense. Drawing on Marx and Sausurre he differentiates between two dimensions of value. First there is a structural aspect corresponding to Marx's idea of exchange value. Each sign within a signifying system or each commodity within a system of exchange can be related to each other sign or commodity - the structural dimension. The second aspect is f