The Vital Illusion

by Jean Baudrillard

Aren't we actually sick of sex, of difference, of emancipation, of culture? With this provocative taunt, the indomitable sociologist Jean Baudrillard challenges us to face up to our deadly, technologically empowered renunciation of mortality and subjectivity as he grapples with the complex issues that define our postmillennial world. What does the advent and proliferation of cloning mean for our sense of ourselves as human beings? What does the turn of the millennium say about our relation to time and history? What does the instantaneous, virtual realm of cyberspace do to reality? In The Vital Illusion--as always--Baudrillard leads his readers to some surprising conclusions.

Baudrillard considers how human cloning--as well as the "cloning" of ideas and social identities--heralds an end to sex and death and the divagations of living by instituting a realm of the Same, beyond the struggles of individuation. In this day and age when everything can be cloned, simulated, programmed, and genetically and neurologically managed, humanity shows itself unable to brave its own diversity, preferring instead to regress to the pathological eternity of self-replicating cells. By reverting to our viral origins as sexless immortal beings, we are, ironically, fulfilling a death wish, putting an end to our own species as we know it.

Next, Baudrillard explores the "nonevent" that was and is the turn of the millennium. He provocatively puts forward the thesis that the arrival of the year 2000 could never take place because we could neither resolve nor leave behind our history, nor could we stop counting down toward our future. For Baudrillard, the millennial clock reading to the millionth of a second on its way to zero is the perfect symbol of our time: history decays rather than progresses. In closing, Baudrillard examines what he calls "the murder of the real" by the virtual. In a world of copies and clones in which everything can be made present in an instant by technology, we can no longer even speak of reality. Beyond Nietzsche's symbolic murder of God, our virtual world free of referents is in the process of exterminating reality, leaving no trace: "The corps(e) of the Real--if there is any--has not been recovered, is nowhere to be found."

Peppered with Baudrillard's signature counterintuitive moves, prophetic visions, and dark humor, The Vital Illusion exposes the contradictions that guide our contemporary culture and rule our lives.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, Essays, Academic

113 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet, with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as hyperreality. Baudrillard wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, critique of economy, social history, aesthetics, Western foreign policy, and popular culture. Among his most well-known works are Seduction (1978), Simulacra and Simulation (1981), America (1986), and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991). His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism. Nevertheless, Baudrillard had also opposed post-structuralism, and had distanced himself from postmodernism.

Reviews

[2fel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I agree very much with some of the basic observations in these essays, however I found the writing style rather distracting from the content. The loose interpretation of scienctific findings don't help either, so many of the conclusions drawn by Baudrillard seem rather unconvincing.

While it might be true that globalist mass culture creates clone-like people, oversaturation with information overloads our capacities to process it, politicization of culture impoverishes it, etc., I can't get on board with the cynical response of artful proliferation of this decline that Baudrillard encourages. See a quote at the end:

"The only justification for thinking and writing is that it accelerates these terminal processes. Here, beyond the discourse of truth, resides the poetic and enigmatic value of thinking. For, facing a world that is unintelligible and problematic, our task is clear: we must make that world even more unintelligible, even more enigmatic."

As aesthetically tempting as this view is, it is only honest to take it if you sincerely believe that the Apocalypse has already happened, of which I am simply not convinced. And I encourage you to think hard about whether you are.

[Gytis Dovydaitis · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's no point to wait or even try to avoid the apocalypse. It already happened. We're doomed. Hail the vital apocalypse!

[LilianaG · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really get it but I agree.

[Ixchel Aguilar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sobre lo que menciona como “ la raza humana y todo el planeta se están convirtiendo ya en su propia realidad virtual, que bajo su vasta bóveda geodésica de información, el planeta ya se ha embarcado en una vía experimental sin retorno. ”
Pienso en este suceso que lleva existiendo con nosotros la mitad de nuestra vida (millennials). El exceso de información en una paradójica cotidianidad donde desdibuja la realidad, pero nos exige que nos veamos naturales, nos hiper conecta, pero yo me he sentido más sola y un poco más incomunicada, con una abrumadora cantidad de información que procesar, que deba ser utilitaria para poder explotarla en las actividades que realizo y una comparativa constante de realidades construidas.
Hemos perdido el acceso a la información real, segmentándola en algoritmos que se adecuen a nuestra forma de pensar. Pero… alguna vez tuvimos acceso a información real? Vemos la vida como somos.
El autor invita a continuar en el camino de cuestionar, poner a prueba hipótesis y que la vida siga siendo tan enigmática como sea posible.

[Waldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The human race cannot bear itself, cannot bear to be reconciled to itself"

ჯოჯოხეთი ჯერ სხვები იყო, ახლა "იგივე", "იდენტურია" ჯოჯოხეთი. მნიშვნელობა დაკარგეს საგნებმა და მოვლენებმა, რადგან უკვე ყველა შესაძლო მნიშვნელობა შეიძლება ჰქონდეთ. რეალობის გვამიც აღარ გვაქვს; რეალობის, რომელიც, ღმერთისგან განსხვავებით, კი არ მოკვდა, გაუჩინარდა. მოკლედ, ყველაფერი დამთავრდა - საკუთარი ლიმიტების მიღმა გავიდა დროც, ისტორიაც, კაცობრიობაც და ახლა ისღა დაგვრჩენია, რომ შოუ მაინც შევქმნათ ჩვენი გადაშენებისა და გაქრობისგან და ასე გადავირჩინოთ თავი, რადგან სინამდვილის გადარჩენა და ამ სინამდვილეში ჩვენი დარჩენა უკვე შეუძლებელია.

ბოდრიარი, როგორც ყველა ტექსტში, ამ პატარაა ესეებშიც შეუდარებელია. ვეთანხმები თუ არა მის დასკვნებს, მაინც მონუსხული ვკითხულობ.

[Eliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cogent, essential lecture in today's rapid ascent into digitization and perfection popularly synthesized in social media platforms. Any creative shaken by the development and implementation of AI in the last few years needs to read this to feel reassured that maybe not all is lost.

We need the weird and bumpy in a world of pale smoothness.

[JUAN CARLOS VILLASEÑOR · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baudrillard habla sobre la realidad en la era de la posmodernidad, en donde la tecnología y los medios de comunicación han creado un mundo de simulacros y simulaciones.

El libro se divide en tres partes.
En la primera parte analiza el concepto de simulacro. Un simulacro es una copia sin original, una imagen que no representa nada real. Actualmente estamos saturados de esto.

En la segunda parte, examina la relación entre la realidad y la ficción. En la actualidad es difícil distinguir claramente la ficción de la realidad, principalmente desde la óptica de los medios.

En la tercera parte, analiza “la ilusión vital” es decir, nuestro concepto de la realidad, que como muchos han dicho, es solo un constructo social y cultural. La realidad se ha vuelto líquida y fluida. La identidad, la verdad y el significado han perdido su solidez, también sostiene que la ilusión vital es una forma de control social.

De esta manera, concluyo qué hay que pensar de manera crítica sobre la naturaleza de la realidad y el papel que desempeñamos en ella.

[Hotspur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this almost 20 years later, I think his central thesis has been startlingly accurate: technology and the instant nature of the internet, have made the real, excessively real, and thus the real (news, any belief of any entrenched industry from medicine to science, etc.) becomes devalued and almost collapses upon its excess.

This book has a very Heideggerian influence, and thus much of the writing is purposefully convoluted and opaque to the point of uselessness. The problem I have with it, is that most of the justification is wrapped up in this Heideggerian language itself, not the exploration of the ideas. Therefore, this could have been a quick 10 page essay, with the exploration of a few central ideas.

5 stars for the ideas, 1 star for the prose.

[Michael Barros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where are all the people who called Baudrillard dramatic?!

Why do people get to hand-wave postmodernism or abstract it into a Lyotardian “no grand narrative” box & then speak about the abstraction?!

Baudrillard’s work is the most compelling in the bunch.

Agents of the excess of reality would have you think otherwise lest they unwittingly seduce you into some pataphysical speculation that could subvert the whole system of operationalization.

Everyone sucks. Everything’s fake. I’m gonna keep drinking coffee and reading Baudrillard until my cognitive simulation (no it’s not a reference, shut up) is so accurate that it can be deployed in any ad hoc manner I come across to speak to me and give me words of wisdom and fear.

Like a post-nihilist Jiminy Cricket who I can conjure up in my mind because he’ll be the only person I know who understands Baudrillard well enough to be interesting to talk to.

And people will say, “you’re talking to an imaginary friend!” And I’ll say, “yeah, and the interaction’s just as real as the one we’re having now!”

And they won’t get it because they haven’t read Baudrillard. So, me and Simullard will have a good laugh and sip virtual tea to the end that can’t come because it’s already occurred.

[Castles · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ecstasy of the social: the masses. More social than the social.
Ecstasy of the body: obesity. Fatter than fat.
Ecstasy of information: simulation. Truer than true.
Ecstasy of time: real time, instantaneity. More present than the present.
Ecstasy of the real: the hyperreal. More real than the real.
Ecstasy of sex: porn. More sexual than sex.
Ecstasy of violence: terror. More violent than violence.…"

This book was published around the year 2000. It’s now 2025, and as I’ve seen it written in one of the reviews here — nobody’s laughing now.

I knew that strange fascination Baudrillard had with human cloning, but in this book it really goes to a peak (social cloning, etc).

Social media, AI, technology, news and politics, all these topics already touched by baudrillard in this original work, I just wonder what he’d say about it all today.

[vorona · Rating 5 out of 5]

VIVE LA GUERRE ÉTERNELLE

In all seriousness though, an interesting read on the saturation of modernity and the way uncertainty (in which he echoes Keats' own idea of negative capability) and the illusory, pensive, idealistic world has to be salvaged from the self-consuming technological abundance that knows only how to count down seconds.

[Knight Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intense, prolific, thought provoking. Baudrillard pushes you to see beyond the external face of scientific and technological advancement, to really focus on humanities role in our own humanism. How to do we approach the future when so much has changed and continues to change.

[Jandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind blowing! Definitely, there's a place for this text in the future of Human History.

[Monojit Biswas · Rating 5 out of 5]

The real event of the Apocalypse is behind us, among us, and we are instead confronted with the virtual reality of the Apocalypse, with the posthumous comedy of the Apocalypse.

[Clavius Zabat · Rating 5 out of 5]

20 años desde que se publicó y es más actual que nunca...

[Efraín Cruz Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

Que necia vanidad la del hombre, que en un mundo a punto de extinguirse sueña con ser eterno.

[Misael Moreno · Rating 1 out of 5]

puta la weá fome y obsoleta

[Gulliver's Bad Trip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baudrillard sums it all up here.

[Leda Rodríguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

méritos por haber sido escrito en el 2000

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jean Baudrillard's theories are in vogue again this year with the upcoming Matrix movie. I hope Lana Wachowski does him justice again.

[Eric Steere · Rating 4 out of 5]

The real, the real that has beginnings and endings and mimetic/causal relations, is murdered in these lectures. In the virtual world Baudriallard observes, there can be no question of the real, as referent, as the relationship between subject, "knowledge", and object has necessarily shifted.

These lectures bring the insights and attitudes of the main French post-structualists into the New Order of cyber space. It may have been easier to control and engineer communication and knowledge in other, previous discursive relationships to power.

The reality indicted is a most limited form of matter, our known known of sorts, the negation of a counter-discouse of antimatter makes our world with clowds of hypotheticals an illusion in which nobody's view is distorted from the knowable object and spectacle. However, if too, the object is bound to encounter the subject, the object's subject is also the object and "knowable" in reality. We can even push this thesis praactically in terms of knowledge, especially religious knowledge, with a transcendental episteme entering this counter-discursive non-reality. I think that would be a good idea for a thesis.

[Yoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

always good/catchy titles. :) easy to follow, good pace. the usual charm--nostalgic while prophetic.

[John Carter McKnight · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not entirely a steaming pile of horseshit. But close.

[Sungjoon Hwang · Rating 5 out of 5]

The future from a rarely imagined point of view. It allows us to see the world with a bigger perspective and thought by simple questions. Sometimes surprised by the unexpected approach...