Estudos culturais L I 2

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Jean Baudrillard … 
 
We live in a world dominated by simulated experiences and feelings, Jean 
Baudrillard believes, and have lost the capacity to comprehend reality as it 
actually exists. We experience only prepared realities--edited war footage, 
meaningless acts of terrorism, the destruction of cultural values and the 
substitution of 'referendum'. 
In Jean Baudrillard's words, 
 
"The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give 
an equivalent reproduction...The real is not only what can be reproduced, but 
that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal...which is 
entirely in simulation." 
 
How does Baudrillard see society? 
 
He contends that the contemporary age is not characterized by absolutes, but 
by 
-the fragmentation of many old ideas once held true 
-chaos 
-ambivalence 
-plurality 
-the rise of relativism (no more “truths”, no longer can we say anything 
absolute or certain about the nature of social life) 
 
How do postmodernists see identity? 
 
Postmodernists claim that identity in the postmodern world is very different 
from identity under modernity. Today there is much more freedom to do what 
we want and be who we want to be, to change our minds frequently and 
‘reinvent’ ourselves from time to time. For example postmodern thinker Connie 
Zweig (1996) argues that there has been a ‘death of the self’. He says that 
“Amid the relativism forced upon us by the experiences of living in a global 
civilization…we are all challenged to look again in the mirror and rethink our 
assumptions about who and what we are. We face the discomfort – and the 
depth – of living with uncertainty, paradox, ambiguity, and constant change.”