Status Updates From Simülakrlar ve Simülasyon

Second chapter is short, but meaningful nonetheless. Offers a historical overview of the hyperreal, namely in cinema.

- “historical” films and the cheapening of “historicity” as a term, using the framework of the hyperreal
- the simulacra as pleasing, “one-upping” the original.
- the simulacra and the pretension to being the real
- cinema only resurrects ghosts.

“It is naive to conclude that the evocation of fascism signals a current renewal of fascism (it is precisely because one is no longer there, because one is in something else, (…) that fascism can again become fascinating in its filtered cruelty, aestheticized)”

^ originally published in 1981 & I’m thinking about the defanging of fascism that allowed the resurgence of it. aestheticized void reborn as real

First chapter is as dense as it is amazing. I feel as if I have already finished the whole book by reading this section. That is a good sign.

enjoying so far, but he really enjoys the sound of his own voice