In my view, his point was more clearly made regarding the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident. In both cases, Baudrillard argues what we “know” is not the event itself, but a representation that has been created through fictionalized accounts and “common knowledge” with varying degrees of accuracy. One is the Holocaust and the other is the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. These two examples are very different, and I believe one is a stronger argument for Baudrillard’s ideas than is the other. To clarify, let’s discuss a couple examples of events that Baudrillard says that we don’t know, but instead we know a simulacrum of. I tended to find that there was a kernel of truth in the points that Baudrillard was making, but that he often blew that kernel up into an absurdity. A reasonable reader might conclude that much of the book consists of crackpot ideas. This is not to say that said ideas are all sound or unassailably true. The book’s strength is in suggesting outside-the-box, thought-provoking ideas. This is a collection of 20-ish essays that share as a theme the idea that we live not so much in a world of events, information, and things, but in a world of simulacra in which those things represent or symbolize something (either the true version of that object or something else altogether.) After an opening that introduces the idea of simulacra and simulations, the chapters each look at an example of illusion and simulation in our world. Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
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