Simulacrum America

A collection of articles that analyses the role of the media in America from a deconstructionist viewpoint. This collection of original essays is a response to the paradigm shift that has taken place in cultural studies in the wake of postmodernism and poststructuralism. Such concepts as 'truth' or 'reality' have been increasingly called into question, since the realization that our experience of 'the real' is always mediated through an "empire of signs," as Roland Barthes put it. After a predominantly optimistic evaluation of the effects of the media in the 1960s (by Marshall McLuhan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and others), a growing awareness of the total manipulation of society by mass-media imagery has emerged. The very concept of 'representation' has become problematic, witness the influential essay "The Precession of Simulacra" by the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, in which he defines simulation as "the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal"- the current boom in 'realityTV' comes to mind. In the seventeen years since the publication of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, ever more sophisticated technologies based on the computer as the simulacrum machine par excellence have offered us powerful new means of manipulating data - and consequently, means of manipulating, editing, and inventing 'reality.' The aim of this study is to unmask false 'representations', showing history, personal and cultural identity (especially gender and racial identities), the simulacrum of speed -- and American 'reality' itself -- to be constructs.

In this, his most accessible and evocative book, France’s leading philosopher of postmodernism takes to the freeways in a collection of traveler’s tales from the land of hyperreality.

Traces the ways in which our culture has increasingly become a culture of simulations, and offers strategies for discerning meaning in a world where the difference between what is real and what is simulated has collapsed.

Develops a theory of contemporary culture that relies on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure. This book represents an effort to rethink cultural theory from the perspective of a concept of cultural materialism, one that radically redefines postmodern formulations of the body.

Examination of the critical discourse on the literary movement of 'realism.' Concepts of Realismsurveys the central episodes in the development of the discourse surrounding 'realism' from its inception, with substantial reference to developments in the United States. It concentrates on modernismand the avant-garde as hostile to the realist movement, but more positive critics of the concept, such as Erich Auerbach and Joseph Stern, also receive ample treatment.

Scholars from a wide array of disciplines describe and debate postcolonialism as it applies to America in this authoritative and timely collection. Investigating topics such as law and public policy, immigration and tourism, narratives and discourses, race relations, and virtual communities, Postcolonial America clarifies and challenges prevailing conceptualizations of postcolonialism and accepted understandings of American culture. Advancing multiple, even conflicted visions of postcolonial America, this important volume interrogates postcolonial theory and traces the emergence and significance of postcolonial practices and precepts in the United States. Contributors discuss how the unique status of the United States as the colony that became a superpower has shaped its sense of itself. They assess the global networks of inequality that have displaced neocolonial systems of conquest, exploitation, and occupation. They also examine how individuals and groups use music, the Internet, and other media to reconfigure, reinvent, and resist postcoloniality in American culture. Candidly facing the inherent contradictions of "the American experience," this collection demonstrates the patterns, connections, and histories characteristic of postcoloniality in America and initiates important discussions about how these conditions might be changed.

A disparate group of characters are brought together on a ravaged Earth and must contend with an underclass that's starting to ask too many questions.

A book about the role America plays in the French imagination, as it translates to the French stage. Informed by a rich variety of Western cultural scholarship, Essif examines two dozen post-1960 works representing some of the most innovative dramaturgy of the last half century, including works by Gatti, Obaldia, Cixous, Koltes, and Vinaver.