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In Latin this word denoted a material representration or image, usually a deity.
The term ahs been given a new importance by [[Baudrillard]]'s account of postmodernity.
A discussion of the role of the simulacrum in Greek and Roman theories of representation can be found in the Appendices to [[Deleuze]]'s ''Logic of Sense'' (1969).
[[Baudrillard]]'s most systematic expositions of his theory of simulacra are to be found in his ''Symbolic Exchange and Death'' (1976) and ''Simulacra and Simulations'' (1981).
For [[Baudrillard]], a [[simulacrum]] is a reproduction of an [[object]] or [[event]] characteristic of a specific stage in the history of the [[image]] or [[sign]].
He traces a series of [[stage]]s in its emergence.
Whereas the [[mage]] was once a [[reflection]] of a basic [[reality]], as in the [[feudal order]] in which [[sign]]s were clear indications of hierarchical status, it came to mask or [[pervert]] a basic [[reality]] when, in the baroque period that privileged [[artifice]] and [[counterfeit]] over natural [[sign]]s, arbitrary or artificial [[sign]]s began to proliferate.
Such [[sign]]s are described as first order [[simulacra]].
With the mass production of industrial objects in [[Benjamin]]'s 'era of mechanical reproduction', second order [[simulacra]] predominated as 'originals' lost their mystic [[aura]].
Such [[simulacra]] signal the [[absence]] of a basic [[reality]].
==Third Order==
The third order [[simulacra]] of [[postmodernity]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
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