INFORMATION TO USERS
This manuscript bas been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly trom the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, whiIe others may be ftom any type ofcomputer printer.
The quality ofthis reproduction is depeDdeut apon the quality ofthe copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard rnargins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will he noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to he' removed, a note will indicate the deletion.
Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, chans) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back ofthe book.
Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographie prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Ben & HoweIllDformalion Company 300 North Zeeb ~ ADn Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313n61-4700 8001521.060()
l
Simulation and the Digital Refiguring Of Culture
by
Malcolm Kirk Cecil
Graduate Progrnm in Communications
McGiII University, Montreal
August, 1996
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Gmduate Studies and Research in
partial fuifillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts.
© Malcolm Kirk Cecil, 1996 ( National Ubrary Bibliothèque nationale 1.1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington Cltawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1 A 0N4 Canada canada
Our'" NctnI ,.~
The author bas granted a non L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library ofCanada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies ofthis thesis in microfonn, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique.
The author retains ownership ofthe L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts from it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels May be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son penmSSlon. autorisation.
0-612-29534-6
Canadl Abstract
This thesis elaborates on existing definitions and descriptions ofsimulation to develop an extended. inter-disciplinary concept ofsimulation that serves as an orienting model for the interpretation ofculture. As cultural theory~ simulation offers insights into the stabilization and propagation ofcultural forms. Used descriplively ~ the metaphor of simulation throws into definition a cultural pattern of progressive formalization through increasingly sophisticated methods ofabstraction. 1find evidence of the pattern at Many levels of analysis; metaphysical, social and micro-social, particularly at the level of the body. 1 use the speculative notion of the digital retiguring ofculture 10 articulate this tendency towards abstraction through a parallel with the enhanced analytic and representational capacities of digital technology. 1consider several actual and hypothetical ways that the computer figures in tbis process. 1argue that the basis for cultural fonn is shifting away from the referential function of the body, as the abstract realm of mediated relations takes on greater importance in modem culture.
Cette thèse élabore des définitions et des descriptions déjà existantes de simulations, afin de dévelop~r un concept plus élaboré et interdisciplinaire qui va servir comme modèle d orientation pour interpréter la culture. Comme théorie s appliquant à la culture, la simulation offre une réflexion sur la stabilisation et la propogation de modèles culturels. Utilisé de façon descriptive~ le modèle fait ressortir un motif culturel de formalisation progressive, à travers des méthodes d abstraction de plus en plus sophistiquées. Je trouve des signes de ce motif sur plusieurs niveaux d analyse: Metaphysique, social~ micro-social et particulièrement au niveau du corps. J'utilise la notion spéculative de refiguration numérique de la culture pour exprimer cette tendance vers 1abstraetion~ en la mettant en parallèle avec les capacités d analyse et de représentation de la technologie numérique. J observe plusieurs façons existantes ou hypothétiques que 1ordinateur occupe dans ce procédé. J avance 1hypothèse que les fondaments du modèle culturel sont en train de s écarter de la fonction du corps comme référence, du moment où 1abstraction des relations intramedium, sans face à face, prends de plus en plus d importance dans la culture moderne. ( Table ofContents
Preface and Acknowledgements 2
IntrOOuction 3
ChapterOne: The Contribution ofJean Baudrillard 14
1n search ofthe •code'...... 20
The systemic operation ofsimulation 26
ChapterTwo: Social Simulation 30
The operational form ofsimulation 35
Simulationand the fonnalization ofsociallife 42
ChapterThree: The metaphysics ofsimulation 49
The eclipse ofReason 5()
The Evil Demon ofSimulation 54
The Fabling ofthe World 55
Refabling the Social Booy .56
ChapterFour: Digital Domains 60
Postmodem Play Spaces (i()
Parallel Politics: TheZapatista Rebellion 70
Chapter Five: Simulationat theTechno-Sociallotetface 82
The Digital Refiguring ofCulture 92
.Reproximation'...... fI]
The Culture ofAbstraction 101
Conclusion 107
WorksCited Ils (
1 Preface and Acknowledeements
1would like to thank my faculty advisorCharles Levin for bis generosity in contributing both time and ideas to this lengthy project. 1especially appreciate the creative and supPOrtive atmosphere that he cultivated throughout our work together.
My thanks also to the students and the faculty of the Graduate Program in Communications at McGill University who made my stay there a consistently interesting
one. 1would like to single out Professors Ron Bumetty Will Straw y David Crowley and Mette Hjort ofthe English Department as having been models of good scholarship. Thanks also to the FCAR and the tax payers ofQuébec who funded my research over the last two years.
Fïnally, 1would like to dedicate tbis thesis to my family, who raised me in a context that made this sort ofwork especially meaningful, and to my wife Farinaz, who gave me much love, encouragement and stimulating feedback while 1worked.
1am required by the faculty ofgraduate studies to reproduce the following text to infonn the external examineroffaculty regulations:
( Candidates have the option ofincluding, as part ofthe thesis, the text ofone or more paPers submitted or to he submitted for publication, orthe clearly-duplicated text ofone or more published papers. These texts must he bound as an integral part ofthe thesis.
Iftbis option is chosen, connecting lexts that provide logical bridges between the papers are mandatory. The thesis must he written in a such a way that it is more than a mere collection of manuscripts; in other words, results of a series ofpapers must he integrated.
The thesis must still conform to ail other requirements ofthe '"Guidelines forThesis Preparation". The thesis must include: A Table ofContents, an abstracl in English and French, an introduction which clearly states the rationale and objectives ofthe study, a review ofthe Iiterature, a final conclusion and summary, and a thorough bibliography or reference liste
Additional material must he provided where appropriate (e.g. in appendices) and in sufficient detail to allow a clearand precisejudgment to be made ofthe importance and originality ofthe research reported in the thesis.
ln the case of manuscripts co-authored by the candidate and others, the candidate is required to make an explicit statement in the thesis as to who contributed to such work and to what extent. Supervisors must attest to the accuracy ofsuch statements al the doctoral oral defense. Since the task ofthe examiners is made more difficult in these cases, it is in the candidate's interest to make perfectly c1earthe responsibilities ofail the authors ofthe co-authored papers. (
2 Introduction
This thesis sets out to assess the utility ofthe conceptofsimulation as an orienting model for the interpretation ofcultures. If, as SherryTurkle writes in ber latest book, "We are moving towards a culture ofsimulation in which people are increasingly comfortable with substituting representations ofreality for the real," (23) it is time to review sorne ofthe many fonns ofsimulation, the theoretical treatments ofsimulation, and the evidence of simulation in the cultural context, to ask what such a culture would entail, and ifin fact, as many theorists have suggested, we might not already he living in it.
Wefind sorne ofthe most pressing moral and epistemological concems ofour age centering around the interface oftechnology and culture, where simulation has hecome a dominantfonn. As Michael Fischer remarks, we live in "a world in which traditional boundaries and categories are upset and reworked by the technoscientific infrastructure of organic life, social relations, and communications." (Fischer 51) What seems like a legion oftheorists have remarked on the many 'implosions' thatcharacterize ourculture; certainly ofthe real into representatioo (Baudrillard), but also "ofnature into culture, ofthe material world ioto tropes, as sites oftransfonnations that generate narrative possible worlds and new agencies." (Haraway in Fischer51) The implosion ofthe real into the image celebrated by Baudrillard is complimented by the implosion ofthe human into the machine, ofthe concrete into the abstracL Thetechnologies ofartificial intelligence and biotechnology are at the forefront ofa cultural awareness ofour increasing technical control over the biological and social detenninants oflife. Simulation in ourculture is not simply the product ofrepresentational technologies. A more profound reconfiguring ofthe natural and social orders is taking place. It seems that especially in these key domains, which are invested with great cultural significance and imaginative work, we are gaining increased control overnaturallyoccurring circumstances through the manipulation ofcodes, he they the binary code ofDNA or the digital code ofthe computer. At such levels ofabstraction, differences between entities are easily effaced, new forms ofequivalence are being forged and boundary reconfigurations are being triggered. As ourframes ofreference are shifting and opening up to social control, it is more essential than everto develop a vocabulary to talk about simulation.
A similar blurring ofboundaries is occurring in social theory, in part as a creative response to these very conditions ofinstability. The boundaries separatîng the disciplines ( are being suspended and theoretical arsenals are being supplemented with concepts drawn
3 from other disciplines. New theoretical approaches are being 50ught with which to address the imploding realities ofcontemporaryculture. The establisbed methodologies and discourses ofsocial tbeory have become rather like simulations, set free from their moorings in academic hierarchies and open to new articulations, even subversive uses.
Tenns and concepts are the code ofequivalence between the separate disciplinesy and it is through the transposition ofterms that interdisciplinary approaches to culture cau be developed.
Simulation is a particularly interesting termofanalysis forcultural studies because it draws metaphorically on a number ofdisciplinary contexts for its significance. My goal in developing tbese connections and thereby broadening the background ofthe term is to attempt to bridge the vocabularies ofcultural theory and technology. This brings the teon across cultural and disciplinary boundaries to emphasize connections between various types and levels ofsimulation. Although it is a term widely used in postmodem theoretical circles.1 believe that .simulation•can he applied to many more levels ofanalysis than its current usage suggests. Ifwe model a general principle ofsimulation, its functioning can he detected in many disparate locations. A metaphoric, cross disciplinary definition ofthe tenn seems especially appropriate in this case. Consequently, 1will draw selectively on the various meanings ofsimulation., and on closely allied theoretical perspectives in cultural psychology and anthropology, to develop a concept ofsimulation that 1hope wiU augment its utility for cultural studies. 1will not he attempting a synthesis ofthe various sources. Simulation is a metaphor, and its utility grows with the quality ofthe connections that it inspires. Part ofthe interest ofthis approach is to test the limits ofthe concept, to follow the general principle ofsimulation ioto unexpected areas.
Simulation is popularly associated with the social theorist Jean Baudrillarct as a speculative argument about the changing role ofrepresentation and the media io uodennining our culture's sense ofthe 'real.' There is a great deal to relain from Baudrillard, but also much to set aside. His theory ofsimulation is suggestive but static. The extreme semiotic detenninism ofbis conception is based on a textual model that is completely c1osed, leading to a hermetic and almost naïve theory ofsimulation.
Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault have approached the notion ofsimulation through the tenn simulacrom. This connection develops the opaque and mysterious
metaphysical aspects ofsimulationy by association with the simulacrnm's long bistory of denigration as a deceptive imitative fonn, a tradition going back to Plato. The post structuralists' concem with difference, impennanence, contradiction and non-identity c.
4 suggests a protean, playful side to simulation that is an important counterpart to its ( detenninistic overtones as a mechanism ofsemantic limitation and order.
Another important reference forthe metaphorofsimulation derives from its uses in science, technology and engineering. The institutions ofscience may he objects ofinterest in themselves (see KnorrCetina's workon primitive classifications in scientific laboratories in chapterfive). But the technology tbat 1shaH discuss in the most detail is the computer. which bas stimulated the POpular imaginary in remarkable ways. The computer, conceptualized as a 'thinking machine.' has replaced animallife in the cultural imaginary as what Sherry Turlde caUs the "'test object" ofhumanity. What are the cultural implications of the fact that 'the other' is now more often than not a machine? The computeris a powerful generatorofnew simulations and 1will discuss a nomber ofthe virtual spaces and modes ofinteraction opening up around computernetworks. Finally, 1will considerthe POSsibility that the computer is allowing us, through simulation, to work with abstract concepts in a way that confonns more intuitively to ourown capacities for procedural knowledge.
It is a commonplace. following Clifford Geertz, to approach culture through the metaphorofa text that can he read for traces ofcultural fonns. What new insights might follow ifculture were considered to he a repertoire ofsimulations? Instead of"webs of significance" we find systems ofsigns, not the organic creation ofhuman actors but the objectified products ofagentless social systems. We are drawn to question the mechanics of the creation ofsocio-cultural environments, and the long-tenn changes that technology has wrought on the creation and managementofcultural fonns. Contrary to the static theories ofculture that view meaning as handed down unchanged from generation to generation. simulation suggests a dynamic model ofsemiotic appropriation particularto modemity aspects ofexperience are constantly being drawn up into systems ofsocial communication.
Simulation is also an interesting metaphorwith which to describe culture. as a •container' in which meaning is both the boundary and the substance ofthe environment. Simulation functions in these tenns to drain excess meaning from the container. to creaJe order out ofpotential semantic chaos, to reduce the complexity ofhuman interaction to cognitively manageable levels. Social theory is not c1ear onjust how this process might
occury but it seems to he an essential and constitutive aspect ofcreating a soci&.i worl 5 To summarize my approach: 1will build the concept through a selective literature ( review to suggest a 'thickened' definition ofsimulation as an orienting model for cultural interpretation. 1will then apply the model using a 'metaphorical' strategy.I will project the structure onto POpular and critical accounts ofcontemporary culture, to see where correspondences cao he found. In the exploratory spirit ofthis thesis, 1will attempt to apply the metaphor quite widely, and to many levels ofanalysis, including the metaphysical, the cultural, and the micro-sociallevel ofindividual interaction. As 1pursue my analysis, [ will necessarily continue to supplement my definition ofsimulation, which will remain provisional throughout the thesis. My goal is to see what insights may he gleaned from the correspondence between the structural and thematic qualities ofthe metaphorofsimulation, and the theoretical ordescriptive material that 1will reference as illustration orsupport. 1will ground this open-ended project wherevernecessary in a theory ofculture that bas been developed in dialogue with Baudrillard's work by Charles Levin. [t will allow me to organize and contextualize my own research on simulation within a framework of cultural tneory that offers a more complex and consistent basis for the argument oftbis thesis than the approach outlined above could offer. 1would like to take the rest ofthis introduction to schematically introduce the main Iines ofthe argument that 1will develop more fully in laterchapters. There is a general principle ofsimulation which, with some articulation, supplies the structural basis ofthe metaphor: Simulation employs a technique ofsubstitution a/the signforthe referent. The object is abstracted and organized into a semiotic system which becomes increasingly self referential as it grows in complexity. The objectnecessarily loses some ofits complexity andspecificity when ab.ftracted. Elements that cannot he integrated into the system are jplitoffandbecome irrelevant to itsfunctioning, while the sy.çtem increasingly dominates its environment. There is a general tendencyfor the material abject to be marginalized in favour ofthe more easily manipularedabstractform. It will become apparent in the course ofmy discussion that lbis principle is increasingly operative in modemity, and underwrites sorne ofits central social forms, such as the commodities markets and mass society, in no small part due to the abstracting potential ofcommunications technology. The underlying pattern can he detected in numerous domains, including that ofthe body, social fonn, metaphysics and technology ( \ ... 6 itself. One ofmy tasks in this thesis is to explore the common features ofthese widely variant cases. The originary state against which this transition shaH he measured is suggested by Baudrillard; it is the idealized primitive culture that figures sooften in anthropological literature, a tradition extending through Lévi-Strauss to Mauss and beyond. Primitive culture provides a contrast against which we May critically appraise the effects of simulation. The point ofcomparison that is most relevant to the argument here is that primitive cultures do not possess the means to supplement or vary experience through the use oftechnology. Theirenvironmental and cultural resources for creating systems oforder and interpretation are Iimited to tbose contrasts available to the unaided senses, the iscience ofthe concrete' as Lévi-Strauss called it in La Pensée Sauvaee. They are conceived ofas almost impossibly stable, making slow adjustments to their cultural fonns through homeostatic adjustment. As Levin writes, The crucial difference is thattraditionai culturesevolved through complex multivariant processes, whereas the cultural engineers oftoday actively plan to impose their premeditated systems... (Levio 5) ln the very broadest sense, simulation as a functional process refers to the splitting ( ofholistic experience ioto discrete elements that May he integrated into the functioning of communication systems. Systematizable elements are incorporated, while the unassimilable remainder is split offand consigned to the environmentofthe system, because it cannot he codified for reproduction. Systemic imperatives come to dominate in every domain where simulation is 0Perative. Metaphysically at least, the unique, spontaneous and noo-rational components ofhuman experience are increasingly marginalized as a result: '7he trend towards automation ofself-regulating societal systems (third and fourth order simulation) attenuates the social space for affect ('ambivalence')." (Levin (85) As Levin notes, this view oftechnology as an integrated system that diminishes Being is reminiscent of Heidegger's Gestell. A central concemof Levin and Baudrillard's approach is the fate ofthe excluded and marginalized elementofexperience. It cao he conceptualized in numerous ways: As the body, the social unconscious.. the imaginary, the symbolic dimension ofexperieoce, or as a steadily eroding capacity for meaning .. in contrast with the signification ofcommunication systems. No matter how we cboose to conceive ofit (and 1 will move freely through ail of these conceptions) the unassimilable remainderofthe simulation process fonns an ( unstructured mass ofenergy wbose relation to the isystem' hecomes, as Levin remaries, 7 "precisely that ofthe repressed~ poised for retum." (93) The rationalized systems of ( communication are neverquite impervious ta this irrational force that becomes c1ustered in the environment, periodically resurfacing as various faons of ~noise' - spontaneous outbursts ofaffective behaviour~ mass media narratives ofastonishing violence, acts of genocide or mass suicide. Ali ofthese show signs ofthe Persistence ofthe social irrational within the coolly rationalizing abstract systems ofmodemity. This view is compatible with the post-structuralist interpretations ofthe simulacrum that 1will discuss in my third chapter. Simulation as a functional social process thus becornes a fonn of"civilizing abstraction" by excluding affect from the growing societal dimension constituted by operational simulations.lncreasingly~the societal asPect ofsociallife takes on the abstract nature and systemic autonomy ofthe simulations that organize large scale social interaction~ while the social aspect becomes marginalized~ as a set oflimited relationshipg among individuals. As a credible social theory ofmodernity, Levin tells us that Baudrillard's theory ofsimulation is best interpreted as a historical process ofprogressive fonnalization~ in which functional and utilitarian principles - particularly the principle ofequivalence - come increasingly to control the organization of social fonns from within. (Levin268) This perspective derives ils support from the rise ofthe characteristically modem social fonns ofthe market (based on the abstracting power ofthe commodity) and the Iiberal conception ofthe citizen~ with a set ofuniversal (in theory and DOW quite nearly in practice) fonnalized rights and obligations. The latter is unique in the history offorms of social control for ils emphasis on individual autonomy and equivalence among social actors~ the basis ofrnass society. The market fonn is based 00 the same technique of substitution (ofthe sign for the referent) on which simulation depends for its great abstractiog power. These fonnal structures have had profound effects on the organization ofsociallife, and are foundational features ofmodernity. Theirexistence lends credence to the notion that culture is reconfiguring on a more abstract level than was possible in pre modem societies. One ofthe main factors influencing this broad cultural trend is the growing force of abstraction that is inherent in communication technologies. They are, in Anthony Giddens' tenns, powerful fonns ofthe "disembedding mechanisms" that pennit the refiexive ( reorganization oftime and space in modernity (cf. Giddens Consequences 21-28). 8 Interaction is ·lifted out' ofa local context and restructured within a widercontext. The ( history ofcommunications tecbnology has been oneofsteadily increasing abstracting power, culminating in the globalized span, temporal compression, and sensory ovenide (in virtual reality) ofdigital infonnation environments. 1will use the metaphorofdigitization to draw a parallel between the growing powerofdigital technology and the increasing abstraction and formalization ofmodem culture. The digital code is arguably the most powerful form ofabstraction yet invented. Just two digitt;, organized in series, create sufficient difference to represent any process. But it is the increased analytic powerofdigital tecbnology that bas the most profound implications for a theory ofsimulation. The greaterabstraction ofthe digital code a1lows for a more penetrating analysis ofthe objec~ deconstructing il to its constitutive elements at a fundamentallevel, that ofthe code. Digital representations cao be manipulated and reconstituted without leaving a traceoftheoperation. Quite practically,digitization pennits a finely detailed reconstitution ofthe object that is frequently more convincing than unmediated experience will allow. Thusdigitization contributes to what Baudrillard caUs 'hyperreality' as a fonn ofsensory override and as an epistemological challenge to 'embodied' knowledge, as 1shaH explain in a momeot.1 should specify that digitization as a social process does oot require a specific coding method. The formal power ofabstraction inherent in any technology, regardless ofwhether it is analogue ordigital, is the important factor. Any new method for reducing continuous social processes to discrete, codifiable uoits that May be incorporated into a system and arbitrarily manipulated will effect the necessary abstraction to give rise to simulation. The original Sony portable video camera is a case in point. Despite its analog technology (saticon picture tube, analog transcription of light patterns to magnetic modulations on tape, low resolution and definition) it had the essential digital quality ofabstracting elements ofexperience, and transforming them into discrete elements (shots) that couId he reassembled ioto a narrative that bore ooly an indirect relation with its original context ofproduction. At this phase ofthe argument, we must now consider the action ofsimulation at the level ofthe body. Digitization introduces powerful new fonns ofmediation ioto the distal realm ofsocial interaction that is removedfrom direct physical experience. The distal realm compromises the objectified knowledge and cultural experience that is elaborated into systems ofthought thatextend beyond the individual body. Simulation contributes to the growing autonomy ofthe distal realm in relation to the proximal realm ofthe interncting body and ofdirectexperience. Theadventofwriting technology creates the cultural ( conditions for the build-up ofa large source ofobjectified knowledge that is frequently at 9 odds with the received traditions oforal culture. Where once the distal realm maintained an ( adaptive relation to the proximal realm~ in literate society it becomes the source ofcultural innovation and perturbance. The maintenance oftradition now becomes a matter ofchoice. anived at with an unPrecedenteddegree ofreflexive calculation. Will texts he deemed sacred and attributed an etemal meaning. vigorously cleansedofail competing interpretations; orwill texts he considered historical and ioterpretable? Clashing views on tbis issue may still one day cost Salman Rushdie bis life for having contradicted Islamic doctrine in The Satanic Verses. 1 The 'autonomization' (to echo Baudrillard) ofthe distal realm reaches a certain extreme in the rationalized institution ofmodem science. A cognitive gulfopens up between the distal realm and the marginatized. butstill extremely important proximal realm of interaction. Under modem conditions ofheightened reflexive knowledge, scientific findings often invalidatejudgements based on intuitive understanding and unaided sensory perception. 1cali the latter the Uintermediate level" ofsensoI)' perception, meaning the culturally influenced but biologically limited range ofsensory phenomena that are of significance to individual cognition through unaided Perception. 1assume that our abilities here have remained relatively continuous with those ofthe 'primitive· body, but their relation with the distal frame ofreference has been greatly altered under conditions of modemity.lntuitive understanding is increasingly subjected to a pincering pressure as emotional certainties are invalidated in the light ofnew knowledge issuing from the sciences, conceming the imperceptibly small (the difficulty we have had in adapting our sexual behaviourdespite the knowledge ofthe AIDS virus, for instance) or large (the broad trends revealed by epidemiological analysis, forexample). There now exists a tension between proximal understanding and distal knowledge, and between unaided sensory perception and the mediated hyperreal perceptual domains created by technology. This is having a profound effect not only on perception and cognition, but through them it is influencing the fundamental orderofculture, that ofcultural classification. The 'digital refiguring of culture~ refers to a shift in emphasis at the constitutive level ofculture. Cultural classifications tend to prescribe meanings and acceptable behaviour towards things. and so they are basically systems oforder and social control. Primitive societies elaborateda symbolic orderderived from the basic categories that arise out ofmaking sense ofone's own body experience. These categories influenced social 1 See Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (London: Viking, 1988); for discussion, Lisa c Appignanesi and Sara Maitland, The Rushdie File. (London: Fourth Estate, 1989). 10 hierarchies, and also the structure ofkinship systems, authority, and radial patterns of ( meaning in the culture. The ordering mechanisms ofthe primitiveculture May thus be related back to structures ofmetaphor derived from the mental image ofthe body in space. This is primarily a dimorphic conception that leads to loosely dichotomous categorizations ofthe phenomenal world, which are in tum lied to moral valuations, such as good or evil, benign or dangerous, friend or foe. This form ofcultural organization, mapped on the available contrasts presented by the body, is vulnerable to the influence ofmodem technology, which surpasses and invalidates the body's sensory and cognitive capacities. Through the enveloping power of digital technology, the distal realm constitutes whatamounts to a parallel experiential domain that challenges the body as the site ofsymbolic expressivity, the source ofcultural orderand meaning. This bas a profound effect on culture, as Charles Levin remarks: Premodem symbolic cultures were all based on a dimorphic interpretation of the body. They consisted ofelaborate instruction manuals for interpreting and living the content oflife and the cosmos in a dichotomous existential mode. Modemity has reduced the binary structure ofprimitive thought to the purely fonnal principle ofthe digital code, under whose regime every mythic opposition can be neutralized into an infinite gradation ofdifferences on a continuum. (Levin 90) The source ofourcultural classifications has become abstracted from the body and has shifted towards the distal realm ofscientific rationality, complexity, and digital distancing. Culture has been refigured, from the analog binary fonn that was based on the dimorphic map ofthe body, to the more abstract form based on a digital continuum of infinitely fine gradations, issuing from the distal realm. ExPOsed to the forces of digitization, the dichotomies that once structured sociallife have lost their credibility as structures oforder: The universalizing cultural power ofdigitization is that it reduces the concept 'opposite' to a pure form without content, comparable to exchange value. The ones and zeroes serve as an irresistible general medium ofequivalence. (Levin ITl) lfthe world could once he 'made sense of' on a human scale as a binary system, it now appears to he an extremely complex continuum ofinteracting forces, competing histories and cultural differences ofequivalent value. Culture is refiguring at a greater level of ( abstraction, one further removed from our intuitive and cognitive abilities to understand il. Il Remodeling cultural fonn on the digital continuum leads to a leveling ofhierarchical regimes~ and a previously unheard ofdegree ofsocial contestation and semantic complexity inculture: the actual contentofculture has been reduced to an endless continuum of equivalent ethnicities~ sexualities, genders and identities~ whose significance lies in the play ofmarginal differences which govern the world ofsign objects. (Levin 91) Every cultural faction seems to have its prescription for collective order~ and those that cao afford it bombard the social body with mass advertising in the hOpes ofmanipulating cultural frames ofmeaning. Qiven the growing powerofdigital abstraction to penetrate and manipulate increasingly diverse phenomena~ we must considerthe possibility that one day they will succeed in seeding meaning ata preconscious level, realizing the full potential of social simulation. At the heart ofthe cultural and epistemological shift that 1have described is the penetrating power ofdigital abstraction. It is easy to confuse the concepts ofbinarity and digitality. The binarism of dimorphic classification leads to an either/or logic ofopposition that is reductionist, but remains rich in ambiguity and symbolic meaning, lied to the concrete through the analogic nature ofthe modeling medium (the body as map). The content ofthe primitive dimorphic classification scheme tends to invest the universe with complex chains ofsymbolic links. The binary code that underlies digital technology (two digits organized in series create sufficient difference to Madel any process) suggests an ultimate degree ofabstraction, since the opposition on which it functions is purely formai and diacritical~ empty ofcontent. As a medium~ it imposes little ofils own characteron the processes that it models because it has no material fonn or content~ it is infonnation. Because the digital code is based on a binary it is reductive in a sense, but its abstract nature makes it e'tpansive in its modeling ability: the reductiveness ofthe unit ofmeaning actually creates the conditions for a greater comple'tity ofarticulations. These then are the tenns ofanalysis and the principle lines ofthe argument ofthis thesis. Simulation is a multi-Ieveled metaphor that has metaphysical~ social and epistemological implications that 1shaH develop in the ne'tt chapters. One ofils implications is especially relevant here: A simulation is a specific type oftext that pretends similarity with reality, while problematizing its own representational function. Working with this metaphor implies a retlexive acknowledgment ofthe limits ofone's own project of representation. Cultural criticism can neverachieve total closure, because ourinterpretations c. are a1ways provisional and contingent on what is by nature a shifting set ofmeanings. 12 ln the tirst chapter 1will start to build a concept ofsimulation by drawing on Baudrillard's theory ofsimulation. ln particular, 1look at the contribution that he makes to the question ofsubject-object relations, and pursue the tbeoretical affinity tbatexists between his notion ofa generative cultural 'code' andthe structuralist anthropologjsts' conceptoftotemism. [n the secondchapter ! extend the conceptofsimulation beyond its usual application to severallevels ofsocial activity. 1argue that it is a constitutive process tbat contributes to the stabilization ofcultural forots andexamine sornequalitative differences among simulations. Through the variation that 1cali the operational fonn ofsimulation, 1consider the possibility thatcultural fonns may be purposefully manipulated. Through the example ofgender, 1illustrate the functioning ofsocial simulation: Its reduction ofsexual identity to a logic ofsemiosis; the digitizing ofbinary sexual difference ioto the structure ofa digital continuum; and the political contestation thatarises around a newly simulated social fonn. Finally, 1consider the desire to attain control over the sexed body as evidence ofthe cultural control ofaffect through simulation's 'civilizing abstraction' and explore simulation's dual role in that process. [n the third chapter, 1review the post-structuralists' metaphysical treatment ofthe simulacrum, and argue that they view itas a metaphorical vehicle for embodying contradiction and difference. They Iink simulation to what we might cali the culture of rationality, and imply that this culture contains, Iike the simulacrum, ils own obviation.1 argue that the simulacrum becomes a trope for the retum ofthe irrational within the highly rationalized structures ofmodemity and, as Baudrillard suggests, ofcomputer networks. In the fourth chapter 1pursue this highly speculative notion with a sociological investigation ofcomputer simulations. 1parallel virtual and practical 'play spaces' in the fonn ofcomputer role playing games and urban leisure activities, and argue that they are both fonns ofwhat the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott bas called potential spaces.1 consider the Zapatista rebellion as a case study in the utopian projections ofinternet enthusiasts onto the new medium. In the last chapter1explore tbe cultural implications ofdigitization. ( argue that simulation is leading to the refiguring ofculture on a more abstract level, and 1advance the tentative hypothesis thatsimulation is anadaptive relation between society, technology and culture. 1conclude with a discussion ofthe value ofprocedural knowledge and emergent forms oforder, and the possible role ofthe computer in promoting those fonus by facilitating the creation ofbounded simulations that are shielded from the authority and control ofthe wider culture. 13 ( ChapterOne: The Contribution ofJean Baudrillard Simulation is the situation created by any system ofsigns when it becomes sophislicatedenough. aulonomous enough, to abolish ilS own referent and to replace il w;th itself. (Baudrillard 'Pensée' 157) Baudrillard's theory ofsimulation is an extreme statement on the socially and structurally determinant power ofsignification. Baudrillard argues: "Every stake is symbolic. There have ooly ever been symbolic stakes. This dimension is etched everywhere into the structurallaw ofvalue, everywhere immanent in the code." (Baudrillard Symbolic 39) . For Baudrillard, modem society is constituted through symbolic activity, and semantic processes are never subordinate to social structure. Baudrillard's theory ofsimulation addresses the changing role that signs and images play in modem society, culminating in the contemporary fonn ofsimulation in which the principle ofa semiotic 'code' comes to determine the structure ofcultural 'forms', and consequently becomes the primary mechanism ofsocial control. Action becomes constrained through the limitation ofwhat it is possible to express or even conceive ofin a given social situation. Control is achieved through the limitation ofmeaning. In Baudriliard,s most extreme fonnulations ofthis thesis, the present form of simulation presents the dystopic possibility ofalmost total social control by the modulation and operation ofubiquitous societaI ~codes. ' This is the first of two majortendencies thatcharacterize simulation, as Baudrillard implies when he refers to the "metaphysic of indetenninacy and the code" ofthe present era. (Baudrillard Simulations 103) The code May impose a binary determinism on the structure ofaction, but any sort ofdefinitive 'content' to cultural form seems doomed to negation by the sheerindetenninacy brought about by the 'autonomization' ofthe signifier.' A briefrésumé ofBaudrillard's historical theory ofsimulation will make this clear. In Symbolic Exchanee and Death Baudrillard first narrated the changing role ofrepresentation in the various historical periods that roughly parallel the rise ofmodemity.ln the feudal period, a fixed social order was reflected in the stable hierarchies ofsyrnbolic value attributed to objects, and social standing could clearly he imputed from the objects c associated with different ranks in sociallife. Signs are "Iimited in numberand their 14 circulation is restricted. Each retains its full value as a prohibitio~ and each carries with ila ( reciprocal obligation betweeo castesy clans or personsy 50 signs are not arbitrary.'" (Baudrillard Symbolic 50) The naturallaw ofvalue prevailsy for all signs have a "naturally' constituted place. [D the industrial eraobjects lose their specific associations with social position when they become widely available through mass production. The sign is disembedded from its contex~ and becomes arbitrary and simulates the values ofthe first order ofthe simulacra. Representation DOW functions 00 the "market' law of vaIue~ signs are organized into an abstract system which establishes a level ofequivalence between its componentsy making them interchangeable. [n this phase the sign appears to continue to referto the object in a direct manner. But Baudrillard specifies that the principle ofuncomplieated reference becomes an ideology whereby signs now create the natura! as a simulacrumy their "alibi' or reason for existence. [n the third orderofthe simula~the "structural' law ofvalue pertains. This is the present era dominated by "the code' and "hyperreality.' The sign no longer refers unequivocally to an objective referen~ making theirrelation iDdeterminable. [nstead, the sign appears to -float free' from its reCerent, and to display arbitrary and unpredictable ( tendencies. Society is no longer regulated by the mode ofproduction (artisanal or industrial) but rather through the action ofa multitude ofsocial codesor simulation models (infonnational production) thatfreely generate the simulacrathat togethermake up the experiential "reaIity' ofa society completely given overto control by "the code.' The tertiary fonn ofsimulation is characterized by "hyperreaIity. The highly problematic state of representation leads to a curious sense ofthe "real' world as being not quite "identicaI' with itselfy but rather a deceptive likenessy as though we now experience an uncanny imitation of the world rather than the world itself. The result is rampant indeterminacyy a surplus of meaning that leads to the unjustifiability ofchoice and decision. "(ndetenninacy means too much quite literally, but for that very reason it also means too littJe." (Bahti 213) The Mmetaphysic ofindeterminacy and the code" is thus a statement ofthe dualism ofthe simulacrumy and ofthe instability ofrepresentation itselfin the modem era. This appears to he the single Most compelling cbaracteristic ofthe simulacrnm for the post-strueturalistsy and it is certainlythe facet ofBaudrillard'stheory ofsimulation that bas received much critical attention since theearly -eighties. ln its Most widely understood application, simulation is known as a theory ofmass media effects. This reading is concemed with the representational type ofsimulation, ( extending from "symbolic tokens' such as money, to handwriting., television ads and 15 computerconferencing. The emphasis on this application ofsimulationyoften to the ( exclusion ofall others, is unfortunateybecause much ofwhat Baudrillard says seems patently false when applied to the media. However, [ believe that it cao be expanded on and usefully integrated ioto a broader cultural theory ofsimulation. This will initially involve isolating the relevant concepts from Baudrillard and clearing up sorne ofthe worst confusions that his interpreters have propagated. [n this regard, Mike Featherstone and Douglas KellneroCfer sorne typical examples: consumerculture and television have produced a surfeit ofimages and signs which have given rise to a simulational world which has effaced the distinction between the real andthe imaginary: a depthless aestheticized hallucination ofreality. (Featherstone 54) urban, architectural and transportation models structure within certain limits how cities, houses and transportation systems are organized and used, and these in tum are govemed by the logic ofthe simulation Madel or code. For example, within the track suburban houses, interior design manualsy cookbooks and magazines, newspapers and broadcast media ail provide models and structure various activities within everyday life. (Kellner80) Featherstone reduces the Many varieties ofsimulations to the electronic media, and perpetuates a whiggish metaphor whereby contemporary social reality is held to be somehow shallow in comparison with the pasL Kellner conflates magazines with the infonnational codes that Baudrillard likens to DNA. Theseare all habituai misunderstandings ofsimulation. While the purely representational simulations that Kellner describes do function as interpretive guides to navigating the meanings ofconsumer societyythey are not derived from productive, generative codes comparable to DNA. Nor do they threaten our capacity to distinguish between representation and reality. In fact, as McCannell bas pointed outy simulation in the consumer world is confined to a few very special items - computersoftware and biological clones aside. (133) Baudrillard's theory must not he applied uniquely to obvious mediated representations, although in the work of a crilic like Mark Posterthis can yield very useful insights.2 The effects ofthe media are justone aspect ofa more generalized cultuml process that would encompass the rise ofthe commodity Conny the creation oflegal codes and constitutions, and the progressive formalization ofMany other aspects ofsociallife. It describes a pervasive spread of 2 Mark Poster, The Mode ofInformation (Chicago: University ofChicago PreSSy 1990) ( pps.43-68 16 abstraction io modem society that is subtle, as difficult to grasp as water is to the fish that ( swim within il The electronic media are simply the most visible evidence ofthe phenomeoon. What is surprising is that such an audacious theory, clearly intended to be taken as a metaphor, had its genesis io a carefully reasoned consideration ofconsumption from a neo Marxist perspective. Baudrillard's ~object system' is the prototypicaJ simulation,3 comprising a pseudo-semiotic system ofsocial communication that is elaborated through the process ofcommodity consumption. For Baudrillard, the passage from traditional to modem society constitutes a great change in the nature and role ofthe object. As we have seen, in the first orderofthe simulacrum (traditional societies) the object acquired a stable and unique value through its use in symbolizing social relationships. But with the rise of industrial society and the increase in availability of ~consumergoods' tbrough mass production., the relationsbip between social hierarchy and objects is changed. (cf. Levin pps.43-46) Within the practice ofmass consumption, the object undergoes a process of abstraction tbat is a general feature ofevery fonn ofsimulation: The object is abstmcted from its social context, and ils local economic context, and placed in a global economic ;' context - it is moved iota the system ofexchange value, where entirely different modalities \. ofproduction pertain. A level ofequivaience is established by the attributioo 'lf ~exchange value' ta the ensemble ofobjects. The abject becomes abstract in a furthersense in that it is now measurable agaiost a universal standard ofequivalence, which to Marx dissolves the qualitative aspects ofthe object ioto the quantitative terms ofthe measure ofequivalence. The simuated 'sign-object' that results is far more fungible than its referent, or its prior, 'symbolic' fonn. (Levin 47) This is, ofcourse, the standard account ofcommodification as weil as the initial stage oftertiary simulation. The 'object system' as a simulation cornes iota beiog after this phase ofabstraction is accomplished. The human propeosity to make meaning out ofany material object combines witb the industrial prowess ta design and mass produce a smggering array ofabjects, 10 provide the material paradigm for an eotire system ofsocial communication on an unprecedented seale. For Baudrillard, the object now takes on 'sign value' as a tenn in the semiotic system ofconsomption, a system ofsocial communication which seduces by allowing consumers to metonymically appropriate the stored up values of the sign-objects that they consume. 3 Jean Baudrillard, Le Système des Objets (Paris: Gallimard, 1968). 17 As a ~sign-object,' the object resembles the commodity in important ways. The ( common link is the powerofabstraction to establish a level ofequivalence between heterogeneous series ofobjects. The sign-object is flexible, fungible, mobile, no longer fixed in a syrnbolic hierarchy but part ofan abstract system. As expected, the trade-off is somebow sirnilar to commodification - the reduction ofthe unique quality ofthe traditional symbolic object to a standardized and commodified version. This sense ofthe loss ofa . prior holistic relation to the object that Baudrillard expresses in the ambiguous but potent term ·symbolic,' (referring not to the continued significance ofthe body in proximal relations, but to bis own metaphysical critical standpoint of ~symbolicexchange') carries throughout bis account ofsimulation. The unique and particular qualities ofthe object are suppressed, and its organic relation with human sociality is split offby commodification. The ability ofthe syrnbolic object to express, in a highly compressed fonn, a whole set of social relations (including local and bistorical specificity, mode ofproduction and most importantly social hierarchy) is lost. The continuing vestiges ofthe old forro ofrelations are marginalized by the increasing centrality ofthe semiotic ~object system' in the process of cultural reproduction. The '"fatal" stage in political economy cornes when the semiotic component ofthe abject system gains such importance that the sign-objects themselves appear to become autonomous, and subject to their own form ofequivalence. ft is now the referential object that is marginalized as the sign fonn seems to engage in fluid and unpredictable shifts in meaning: The structural prerequisite ofsign exchange value is the autonomization of the signifier. In this phase ofpolitical econorny, the relative unity and stability ofthe industrial world/sign breaks apart. No longer constrained by an objective reality, ortied to sorne signified in a simple binary relation, the signifier is free to float and establish its own meanings through its manipulation in coded differences and associative chains (as occurs in advertising). (Best 52) Here then is the ultimate source ofthe simulation: a social system ofcommunication is built upon layers ofabstractions until the semiotic component ofthe process becomes, in Baudrillard's opinion ifnot mine, entirely self-referential, leading to the much discussed sensation ofhyperreality. The relation between the sign and the referent is no longerone of clear identity. Representation is 'devoured' by the third order simulacra. Simulation is based on the productive code, it no longerreproduces any priorform, though it freely ( cannibalizes the culturallegacyfor symbolic content. As BaudriUard describes it: "vrI1e cool 18 universe ofdigitality bas absorbed the world ofmetaphor and metonymy. The principle of ( simulation wins out overthe reality principlejust as overthe pleasure principle." (BaudriUard Symbolic 76) ln the fluid miasma offloating signifiers~ the essential need becomes one oflimiting tbe potential excesses ofthe system. Coded forms take on the uomanageable task ofshaping order outofthis apparent chaos. The distinctive feature of ithe code' is that it sets up a framework that iirestricts the range ofmeanings possible to express~ or experiences possible to share, in a given social orcultural system." (Levio~ 268) This highly compressed accountdoes not dojustice to the cataclysmic extremes and the seldom recognized irony ofBaudrillard's notion ofsimulation. The theory itself is clearly abstract, and cao he applied literally to social ireality' with varying success, depending on where one attempts to apply il There are several asPects ofit that 1would like to draw upon and supplement in the next sections. As cultural theory, the notion ofa code that limits the poteotial meanings circulating within a gjveo cultural system is particularly intriguing. Baudrillard has neverproperly defined orelaborated on the code~ but Poster, for one, sees it as an extension ofthe post-structuralist theory that language coostitutes the subject. (Poster 58-59) Yet cao language~ with syntax~ grammar etc. and its ( inherent complexities reaUy be considered a basic code, especially since Baudrillard emphasizes its inhereot binarism? 1will attempt to develop Baudrillard's code not ooly as a metaphor that Links various types ofcode (DNA~ the digital code) but also as a possible elaboration on the strocturalist notion oftotemism, a technique tbat expresses cultural classifications in tenns ofsyrnbolic oppositions. iHyperreaiity' is also an extremely important cultural concept that has too often been diverted into the theoretical dead-end offonnulating typologies ofireality' - orproclaiming the loss ofthe ireal.' It has broad epistemological implications that 1will elaborate on later in the thesis, but it also makes a contribution to the widercultural and philosphical debate about the relationship between the subject and the object, and the way that technology helps us to explore the shifting relationship between thern. These are two central elements of tertiary simulation, and Baudrillard is correct to emphasize tbat they are unique to the modem em. However, at least sorne ofwhat Baudrillard presents as unique to simulation in the modem era is quite possibly fundamental to the constitution ofculture as we know it and as we have imagined it to exist in the pas~ ratherthan new, catastropbic and inescapable. Ofcourse, Baudrillard recognized this implicitly in bis formulation ofthe three iorders ofthe simulacra,' but it is frequently neglected in discussions ofthe cultural role of 19 simulation. Something like simula~on in a social sense has probably a1ways existed, and ( sociallife would he inconceivable without it. ln search ofthe 'code' Baudrillard writes rather ambiguously ofthe dominance of'the code' in the present phase ofsimulation, particularly in matters ofsocial organization. But beyond defining its binary structure, he does not actually describe specific codes in operation, even though it is central to his theory ofsimulation. Ali fonus ofcontemPOrary simulation appear to derive from a process ofabstraction that leads to the creation ofa generative code, a structural model orcombinatory that orders the essential components ofthe process being simulated, allowing variation within a predetennined forme The code can he "rnodulated" (adapted and altered but not escaped), giving rise to cultural organisms thatare not imitations but originals in theirown right - naturalized constructions built on top ofan abstract model. The resulting entity is always an original in the sense that it is not a reproduction ofthe surface characteristics ofan object, but rather a reconstitution from a structural model. The basis of simulation is not imitation ordeception; rather it is this process ofinternai reconstruction. Simulation is not reproduction, it does oot make copies, it generates from withio, like an algorithm. We do not have to look far for prior theorizations ofgenerative, algorithmic cultural codes. The structuralist anthropologists made this a central focus oftheir research. Gaude Lévi-Strauss addressed this problem in bis work on primitive totemism and the deep underlying structures ofcultural systems ofkinship. The fundamental act ofclassification constitutes a self-reproducing cultural code that both orders meaning and provides a connective medium that is the basis for social order. A level ofequivalence is introduced by codes suitable for conveying messages wbich cao be transposed into other codes, and for expressing messages received by means ofdifferent codes in tenns oftheir own system... Far from being an autonomous institution definable by its intrinsic characteristic, totemism orwhat is referred to as such, corresponds to certain modalities arbitrarily associated from a fonnal system, the fonction ofwhich is to guarantee the convertibility ofideas between different levels ofsocial reality. (Lévi-Strauss 75-76) Lévi-Strauss believed that the dichotomous structure ofcultural classifications reflected the underlyjng structure of the human mind. Whether ornot this aspect of the theory is valid, it locates a generative 'deep structure' at work behind cultural phenomena. The associative 20 quai ities ofthe code assure that a basic fonnal pattern finds expression in social institutions ( as diverse as caste systems and the classification offood. From the Perspective of simulation, such knowledge ofcodes would in principle he the fU"St step towards simulating a cultural beiog. Practically, ofcourse, this remains an unrealized project. our knowledge limited to the analysis rather than the generation ofculture. Butthe notion that cultuml fonn is built up from basic classifications, mapped on a system of oppositions, is highly suggestive ofBaudrillard's 'code.' This development oftotemism assumes a basic continuity ofprocess between primitive and modem cultures. Lévi-Strauss showed that objects have always been invested with meanings that made them important elements ofa system ofsocial communication. Long beforecommodification orthe electronic media arrived on the scene, systems ofmeaning were created to facilitate social organization. The modem era is characterized by a much greater level ofhuman control over the object world. Marshall Sahlins extends Lévi-Strauss' analysis oftotemism to contemporary culture, making explicit the changes that mass production and Baudrillard's 'object system' bring to this process ofcultural ordering: [1 is by their meaningful differences from other goods that objects are rendered exchangeable: they thus become use-values to certain persons who are correspondingly differentiated from other subjects... The object stands 1 \ as a human concept outside itself, as man speaking to man through the medium ofthings. And the systematic variation in objective features is capable ofserving, even better than the differences in natural species, as the medium ofa vast and dynamic scheme ofthought: because in manufactured objects many differences cao he varied at once, and by a godlike manipulation... each difference thus developed by human intervention with a view toward utility must have a significance and ootjust those features, existing within nature for their own reasons, whicb lend themselves to cultural notice... By the systematic arrangement ofmeaningful differences assigned the concrete, the cultural order is realized also as an order of goods. The goods stand as an object code for the signification and valuation of persons and occasions, functions and situations. (Sahlins (78) The repertoires for organizing classifications are varied and shiftover time, and have been significantly changed by the modes of 'production' in society. In traditional cultures, the 'natura(' objects that were given in the environment were used to organize these structures, while in modernity the commodity serves the sante totemic function. Every object cao ( signify because it works as an element in a cultural system of meaning. 21 ln Baudrillard's theory, these systems ofmeaning are not the intenlional outcome of a collective act ofrepresentation in the Durkheimian sense, but rather are constitutive ofthe collectivity and its sbared sense ofsocial reality. The cultural system is in fact what permits comprehension and communication among subjects., whicb leads to a shared notion of social •reality'. The change that accurs when the ~ object system' becomes the preferred mapping surface for totemic classification may very weil have ontological consequences. What was stable and gave the illusion of being ~natural' - that is, beyond human manipulation - bas now become tied to the giddy systems ofconsumption, fashion, or technological manipulation. As we have seen., this insight is at the heart ofthe notion of simulation. The ratherexaggerated daims that the 'artificial' has replaced the 'real' ultimately derive from a shift in emphasis ofthe symbolic repertoire, from natural to man made objects. The whole idea ofthe disappearance of'reality' relies on an opposition between the rea1 and the artificial that is mistaken. Man-made objects are neither more nor less real than naturally occurring objects. (Levin (90) Il is important not to get swept up in hyperbole, for reality is not much more problematic in tbis era than it has always been. Modemity has simply provided a new lever ofsubjective control over supposedly objective processes and a set ofalternative notions about reality through refiexive knowledge. But Baudrillard mines this confusion for aU il's worth, insisting that we have entered a new era that is characterized by the implosion ofail oppositions (a fascinating metaphysical notion) including that ofthe sign and the referent: Strictly speaking, tbis is what implosion signifies: the absorption ofone pole ioto another, the short circuit between poles ofevery differential system ofmeaning, the effacement oftenus and ofdistinct oppositions and thus that ofthe medium and the reaL. (Baudrillard, SUent Majorities 102) My interest in the problem that Baudrillard addresses is not really the implosion of these objective categories, but what the implosion says about our subjective implication in them. We continue to have little difficulty in distinguishing between levels ofsocial reality (though we occasionally ~slip' between levels when experiencing today's sophisticated representations) but perbaps we are a somewhat more inclined to let drop the psychological bouodary thatallows us to maintain a mental construction ofthe 'real' as being separate from our selves. At a deeper level then, this is about subject and object relations. Baudrillard attempts to describe processes that undennioe and surpass the subject 1object C· dichotomy with his theory ofsimulation,justas Marx did, incidentally, when dealing with 22 the abstraction brought 00 by commodificatioo, leading to a ~topsy turvy' world. But ( Richard Shweder makes this split out to he a general feature ofhuman psychology: The postulation ofourown intentional mental constructs as external forces lending intelligibility to the data ofthe senses seems to he a centnd and indispensable feature not only ofimaginary, fanciful, hallucinatory, and delusional thinking but ofscientific thought as weil... Although reality is not something we cao do without, neither cao it he reached (for it is beyond experience and transcends appearances) except by an act ofimaginative projection implicating the knower as weil as the known. (Shweder60) Shweder's argument is that the subjective and the objective worlds are so intimately bound together that to consider them separately is to continue to draw an unproductive division hetween them. On this view, the 'real' has always been a cultural construction, and varies historicallyand among cultures. BaudriUard's notion ofimplosion, in its application as a metaphor to the problem ofsubject object relations, would then seem to he a permanent feature ofperceiving the world, not a peculiar effect of modem, mediated or hyperreal cultures. Simulation necessarily spans both internai and external worlds. Il is possible that / ~- through the proliferation ofsimulations ofboth representational and social nature, this aspect ofcognition is coming doser to a level ofeveryday awareness. The retlexive loop that exists between intentional individuals and intentional worlds seems to he tightening. The inversion ofthe logic ofconsumption described by Baudrillard (the celebrated 'precession ofthe simulacra') orsuch technological feats as the engineering ofdesign features on commodities to maximize totemic effects, all draw attention to largely ignored levels ofrelation between subject and object, and ofpsyche and culture. Certainly those who revel in the uncanny ofrepresentational simulations may, with a little effort, begjn to detect the functioning ofsystems ofmeaning that reach into areas ofexperience generally considered 'private' and beyond 'commodification.' This is the majorepistemologjcal effect ofone ofBaudrillard's key concepts, hyperreality. Charles Levin writes that "hyperreality is Dot a separate categoryfrom reality (nor is simulation). Rather, it is a way ofpresenting and receiving reality - in brief, it is reality conceived without othemess." (274) For Baudrillard, modernity's terrible ambition bas been 10 take apart 'the other' to leam how to regeoerate it, to conquer it by producing it as a simulation. It is undoubtedly true that a certain diminishing ofthe 'othemess' ofthe object world has been achieved and continues to intensify, through the various systems of ( retlexive control through which we reconstitute ourenvironments and increasingly "- 23 ourseIves. Baudrillard's hyperreal is notjust the physical world marginalized or ( supplemented by the artificial environments ofcommunications media, although it is ail of thaL [t is the entire realm ofinteractions, systems, models, signs, and abstract knowledge that has become grafted onto the social individual's experience as his horizon bas steadily expanded beyond the hounds ofa small group with its mythical ontology and homeostatic social 'system.' This sensory and cognitive 'surround' is now an inescapable (and highly valued) aspect ofourexperience that bas nonetheless undermined the certainties and securities associated with a more restricted environment. [n The Consequences ofModemity, Anthony Giddens argues that one ofthe unique characteristics ofmodemity is the implication ofreflexive knowledge in the reproduction and control ofsociety. The knowledge generated by the physical and social sciences is directly applied to modifying the structures and institutions ofmodemity, such that knowledge is continually 'feeding back' ioto the system. Baudrillard would see this as one operation ofa multitude ofcybemetic, social steering mechanisms. Modemity is coostituted io and through reflexively applied knowledge, but the equation ofknowledge with certitude has tumed out to he misconceived. We are abroad io a world which is thoroughly constituted through reflexively applied knowledge, but where at the same lime we can never he sure that any given elementofthat knowledge will not he revised. (Giddens Consequences 39) For Giddens (and Baudrillard), this reflexivity now saturates modem societies, penetrating the intimate details ofeveryday life. Hyperreality is one aspect ofthis increased reflexive control over social process.1t derives from the same distancing effects of abstraction that makes the growth ofreflexive knowledge possible in the modem age; and reflexive control feeds the subjective impression ofthe world as hyperreal, not 'natural' but instead a meaningful construction achieved not only through increased scientific knowledge, but technological intervention (as in the manufacturing ofobjects whose main utility is to signify). As Giddens has explained, one ofthe main consequences for the subject is that the ontological security characteristic oflife in traditional society is upset. While the human senses at one point provided the necessary evidence for truth claims, ref1exive knowledge is now more often than not produced through technological orabstract analytical means, far beyond the scope of unaided perception. Frequently, whole sectors of experience are reconfigured to integrate with technical systems or in response to scientific knowledge that is opaque to the lay individual. The "intermediate level" ofsensory ( experience is ofsteadily diminishing importance in determining how we organize social 24 life. Modernization thus tends to override simple experiential understanding, takiog us ( furtherfrorn the emotional certainties oftraditionai life by making available what we may cali a surplus ofretlexive knowledge. The hyperrealism associated with the third order of simulacra is actually one ofthe highly ref1exive processes commOR to modemity. Hyperrealism is both the cause and the effeet ofourinability to frame 'reality' with assurance when so much ofourexistence occurs in environments created purposefully by human intervention. ft is only in the present emofpervasive digitization that we have begun to perceive the constmcted aspect ofthe simulated contexts within which we live. The narratives and images that constitute hyperreality are both 50 prevalent and frequently so obviously constructed that an opportunity for distancing the selffrom the social fonns ofsimulation has reemerged. Hyperreality is a fonn ofwhat McLuhan called the anti-environment, an "indispensable means of becoming aware ofthe environments in which we live and ofthe environments we createfor ourselves technical1y." (McLuhan and Ziogrone 225) The availability ofa mediated alternative to direct fonns ofexperience has been a significant factor in opening up new critical perspectives and reflexive knowledge. In this altered experiential field the referent is not so much lost (as Baudrillard , maintains) but displaced bya shift in the context in which it cao he apprehended. Ta retum to the example ofthe objectsystem again, simulation's effect there was to appropriate the " symbolic abject and reproduce the symbol as a sign of itself. The crucial operation was the abstmction ofthe object, its removal from the specific context ofsocial relations that sustained its symbolic meanings, and in which it exercised its symbolic function. When disembedded, to use Giddens' tenns, the abject takes on the arbitrary nature of the sign, and it is really the shiftfrorn the ordained to the arbitrary that marks the trajectory ofthe abject in modernity. (c.r. Levin 43-46) This is a change in context that May very weil he the result ofa generalized process ofabstraction that occurs through many separate spheres ofsociety. Commodification would not he the root ofail these instances ofabstraction, but rather one particularly pervasive fonn ofit The massive promotion ofthe sign fonn is the result in large part ofvarious communications technologies and ofthe abstract organizational fonnsofmodemity, in combination with the real and imagined benefits of manipulating abstractions ratherthan material objects in a great many endeavours. This is the truly novel aspect ofa culture ofsimulation. But 1would want to mitigate that argument with another proposai that again disputes the ultimate novelty ofthe phenomenon ofsimulation. The free play ofthe sign Co that is ofsuch fascination to ail ofsimulation's practitioners and admirers has what 1 25 suppose to he an ahistorical seductiveness. The experience of the sign and the symbol~ their ( immediacy and veracity~is a deeply interiormatterthat may go beyond the social orthe historical. Tbough this wouldseem to contradict Baudrillanrs bistorical periodization ofthe rise of "sign culture~ in modemity~it is confirmed in bis theory of "seduction~~ in which he relativizes the opposition between the primitive "symbolic' and the sign. The sign bas always had an indeterminate relation with its referen~though this may indeed have taken on a different charaeterDOW. Butsince the time that the animistcuJtures began to invest objects with significance~people have played with the "as ïr quaIity ofthe symbol and have derived spiritual and psycbic satisfaction from erasing the boundaries between subject and abject. There are many differences between a shaman's hallucinatory relationsbip with a ritual object and ourown obsessions with technologica1 simulations, but there is a great deal ofsimilarity.. starting witb the tendency to deny OUT OWD psychological participatiOD in the relation. It should he clear by now tha.t certain general featuTes ofwhat Baudrillard bas been describing as characteristic ofthe third arderofsimulation have in faet always existed. Social codes have governed human interaction in every size ofsocial grouping, and sorne need for objectifying them and generalizing them bas always been met through symbolic ( means. The cultural design is expressed at numerous levels, sorne appearing 10 outsiders as superfluous. but all COI iesponding to what Marshall SahIins calls the "'symbolic order,~ an underlying code that regulates the semantic aspects ofculture. The subordination of individual action and identity to a cultural design (not at ail the same thing as a detenninant social structure) seems 10 he a necessary aspect ofcreating a social world. Through iDCreaSing abstraction, greaterand greater portions ofour Iife experience have been opened up to the ordering fonction ofsimulation. Baudrillard~snarrative is most effective al highIighting a progressive process offormaIization in which~ as Charles Levin writes, MfunctiooaI and utilitarian principles - particularly the principle ofequivalence - come increasingly to control the organization ofsociety from within." (I..,evin 268) The systemic operation ofsimulation Simulation in its broadest sense is the transformation of emergen~disorgani~ and affective forms ofsociality into controlled systems ofcommunication. This occurs through a process ofselective assimilation that is typical ofsocial systems. Modernity is characterized bythe formalization ofsocietal funetioos inteabstraet systems, regulated ( through "surveillance· in Anthony Giddens~ tenns~ referring broadly 10 the use of "- 26 infonnation to coordinate social activities. These systems become self-referential in ( important ways: Particularly in the shape ofthe coding ofinfonnation or knowledge involved in system reproduction, surveillance mechanisms sever social systems from theirextemal referents al the same time as they pennit theirextension over widerand wider tracts oftime-space. Surveillance plus reflexivity means a ;; smoothing ofthe rough edges' snch that behaviourwhich is oot iotegrated ioto a system - that is. not knowledgeably built ioto the mechanisms of system reproduction - becomes a1ien and discrete. To the degree to which snch extemalitites hecome reduced to point zero, the system becomes whollyan intemally referential one. (Giddens Self-ldentity 150) Simulation systemsare autopoietic, in that theirreflexive self-regulatioo resembles the functioning ofbiological systems; once operative. the system acts as an entity to sustaio i15elf and to regulate important boundary functions, without the guidance ofhuman agency. When a system is constituted, a splitting ofthe previously continuous environment occurs. The system incorporates what is relevant to its functioning ioto i15 structures, and the rest, unassimilable to i15 tenns, is margioalized (See also the discussion ofLuhmann in Levin, page 185). The;;smoothing ofrough edges' is one majorfonction ofsimulation as a systemic principle ofsocial orsemantic control. It represents a splitting ofexperience ioto behaviourand discourse that can he "knowledgeably integrated into the mechanisms of systemic reproduction" as Giddens writes, and the rest. which becomes "alien and discrete," because it cannot be codified for reproduction. Experience cannot be converted into communication systems intact. Through such conversion into systematic terms, the continuity of human experience is impinged upon and certain ofi15 unique aSPects are de-emphasized. Since experience is ao emergeot process, the splittiog effect cannot be referred to in a linearfashion. But true to simulation's systemic operation, lost are those elements that lack 'utility' within the terms ofthe abstract system and, in an important parallel with the commodity. are often the most particularand individualistic aspects ofexperience. The general principle ofsimulation is illustrated here, butan important distinction must he made conceming the degree towhich the "extemalities" actually are "reduced to point zero," as Giddens writes. Autopoietic systems are a1ways engaged in interaction with an external environment, and never achieve total closure on this level. The closure is rather ( at the level ofmeaning, where communication systems fonction only on their own terms. 27 As Schmidtspecifies, "The environment cao perturb the system, but only the system can ( assign a meaning to this perturbation through processes that are system specifie." (Schmidt 2(7) It would he difficult to see howa social system could function without sorne fonn ofinput, yet this is the claim that Baudrillardfirst made in articulating semiotics to the commodity in his theory ofthe object system. In fact, the self-referentiality ofsocial systems is only superficially comparable to the structuralists' textual system. Systems theory becomes sociologically questionable where it ignores the influence (however indirect) ofthe environment. Where meaning is concemed, systems are not entirely self referential, but draw on their environment forsemantic resources. George Lakoff's cognitive theory, 'experientialism,' provides an alternative conception ofmeaning that contrasts with these linguistic models. The fundaments ofmeaning are not only prelinguistic, but also preconceptual. They are a product ofour basic bodily functioning, and arise out ofthe body's relation with its environment: Meaningfulness involves not merely mental structures, but the stnlcturing of experience itself... The consideration ofcertain gross patterns in our experience -- our vertical orientation, the nature ofour bodies as containers f \. and as wholes with parts, our ability to sense hot and cold, ourexperience of being empty (hungry) as opPOsed to filled (satiated), etc. -- suggests that our experience is structured kinesthetically in al least a gross way in a variety ofexperiential domains. (Lakoff302-303) This is, ofcourse, a very basic level ofcognition that provides structures that are elaborated into 'cognitive models,' which are the basis for an account oftruth and knowledge. Language certainly has a majorrole to play in cognition at a greater lever ofabstraction, but ita1ways maintains a connection with embodiedexperience through the metaphors that structure conceptual categories. ln domains where there is no clearly discemible preconceptual structure to ourexperience, we import such structure via metaphor. Metaphor provides us with a means for comprehending domains ofexperience that do not have a preconceptual structure oftheir own. A great many ofour domains of experience are like this. Comprehending experience via metaphoris one of the great imaginative triumphs ofthe human mind. Much ofrational thought involves the use ofmetaphoric models. Any account ofrationality must account for the use ofimagination and much ofimagination consists of r l metaphorical reasoning. (Lakoff303) 28 Simple oppositions such as left and right, upper and lower body, hands and feet, ( provide a basic set ofdifferences on which interpretive systems ofclassification may be modeled. It is distinctly possible that the tendency ofcultures the world over to employ dichotomous systems ofclassification may arise from the binary fonn's'fit' with the symmetrical image-schematic structure ofthe body. In its basic fonn, such structure is simply a way oforganizing experience to make it intelligible. A social system of signification that is at ail meaningful must refer outside ofitself, to sorne extent, to embodied experience. Tbere can never he a pure production ofmeaning from a semiotic system, orfor that matter total closure in a social system. Where human actors are involved, the role ofthe body as a source ofstructure must not he overlooked. Baudrillard's theory ofsimulation may not have originally benefited from these insights concerning cognition and meaning, but it raises the fascinating possibility that the penetration ofexperience by a multitude ofabstracting systems is having an effect on the way we ground our systems ofcultural classification, and by extension our notions oftruth and knowledge. Our increasing implication in a set ofhighly abstract eXPeriential domains (the hyperreal) may he leading to a shift in emphasis that marginalizes the body as a frame ofreference. 1will discuss the implications ofthis more fully in chapter five, but suffice to say in closing that cognition itself may he susceptible to simulation's systemic effects, if Lakoff's theory is correcL We should consider the possibility that ifour control over the social and semantic environments that we inhabitdeepens, meaning may weil become manipulable at a very basic level. Theseare the ultimate stakes behind the notion ofsocial simulation that [will develop in the next chapter. 29 ( ChaRterTwo: Social Simulation The notion ofsocial simulation refers both to a constitutive process ofsociety, and to an operationalized version ofthat process. Social simulation influences the cultural production and reproduction ofmeaning. To consider social simulation as constitutive of sociallife supposes thatthere are cultural models that are necessary to strocture meaningful interaction, and that they function by paring away the excess ofmeaning that could he attached to any action. ft is clearthat we are considering systems whose function extends to social organization, ifnot outright social control. Through a process of abstraction, conventionalizationand ultimately limitation ofmeaning, the semantic aspects ofsociallife are organized out ofa potentially chaoticflux. The concept ofan operationalized version ofsocial simulation issues from the notion that once the mechanisms ofthe constitutive process are understood, they may be manipulated at a basic level to 'engïneer' social contexts. Ifcertain significant elements of cultural experience cao he reduced to a model, via abstraction and digitization, societal engineers May he able to iotervene in the constitutive process in orderto recoostitute a '''cultural analogon." (The term is Michel Serres'. See Levin, p. 188) Manipulation would occurat a very basic level and would lead to the simulation ofcultural contexts that would ofcourse he indistinguishable from 'originals,' a term which is meaniogless when referring to cultural fonns. These models would not generate copies ofsocial situations, they would he entirely 'real' to the actors within them. Sorne ofthe most remarkable qualitative aspects ofsocial simulation that can be distinguished are immersiveness, investmentand boundedness. Not surprisingly, the most immersive simulations are those that approximate the conditions ofeveryday sociallife. Perhaps that is why the tbeatre is the oldestand most effective form of simulation in the arts. Here the sense ofimmersion depends, as in many culturally designated fantasy situations, on a willing suspension ofdisbelief. The total involvement ofthe spectator's body, and the proximity to live actors, rneans that less analog expressiveness is lost to abstraction than in technologically mediated fonns ofsimuiation.1t is no coincidence that the drarnaturgical models ofsocial theory proposed by the ethnomethodologists have located sorne ofthe fundamental aspects ofsocial simulation, the sbared perfonnative aspect ofdaily life, and the subordination ofindividual identity within a set ofculturally determined roles. While cultural specificities influence the degreeofsubordination of ( 30 individual choice~ the notion of ~roles' played in relation to 'frames' ofmeaning remains l valid in most contexts. Social cODtext figures importantly in the constitutive process ofsocial simulation. Action takes on different meanings in particularsocial contexts and the interpretive parameters ofeach context must somehow he shared through a culture. Something like simulation must he oPerating to make these shared understandings possible. Context, even in the Iimited sense ofspecifie'speech situations', is dependent on the act offraming. [t implies the portable interpretive overlay(that might he applied across a variety ofsituations) that leads to the impression ofbeing ~ inside' a particular social situation, the sense of immersiveness that varies depending on the characterofthe simulation. Framing describes the act ofmentally separating these situations offfrom a ground ofundifferentiated action~ creating a multiplicity ofcontexts that are managed as a mental background task (to use a metaphordrawn from computerjargon) at the level ofpractical consciousness. What is 0Perative here is a situationally defined pattern ofacceptable behaviour. Actors create interpretive contexts in which meaning is managed~ where language plays an important role but is not sufficient to fully carry meaning~ and in which expectationsfor behaviourare socially detennined. There is difficulty in describing the degree to which these interpretive overlays are detennined by the individual~ and how much are ritualized, or the degree to which the individual contributes to the evolution ofthese practices but they are a self-imposed constraint that is rarely acknowledged as being an integral part ofevery social interaction. The existence ofa multiplicity ofconstructed and evolving contexts such as these~ in which actors are immersed and are rarely conscious of it, is perhaps underacknowldged in cultural theory. Occasionally, there is a suspension or an interruption ofthe regular roies of conduct~ and the protocol becomes quite evident, due to its breakdowo. The ethnomethodologist Garfinkel purposefully violated situatiooally defined ndes ofconduct in his work to demonstrate the often aggressive response to behaviourdeemed ioappropriate for the context. Simulation describes the abstraction ofthese micro-social contexts and their incorporation within systems ofcommunication that restrict the potentially vast field of meanings that May be ascribed within a given context. This entails a reduction of complexity that is probably essential to sustain a system ofcommunication. Such a system would he unmanageable were actors to try to negotiate the full import ofmeaning at each encounter. Rather than adopt the terms ofefficiency and instrumentality ~ however~ the critical standPOint ofsocial simulation invites us to consider what expressive potential is ( actually lost in the process ofabstraction. 31 [n this respect, simulation refers to the transformation ofone fonn ofsocial ritual, ( built up out ofthe more mundane routines ofdaily life, into technique, fonnalized modes of interaction that are potentially imposedon the frame. Daily life is shot through with such techniques at varying levels ofconsciousness, sorne ofwhich are of sucb enduring power that they become naturalized. Thefollowing account is ofa small Castillian village that retains what the authors cali the •psychological architecture' characteristic ofrural, religious daily life, stitched together by sayings for regulating activity and by prayers and religions phrases or sangs, by the 'commandrnents' or precepts of •catechism' leamed by heart in childhood and associated with the appropriate occasions. This is a Iife in which culture defines actions and situations: what ta wear on every occasion; how to deal with your spouse, children and parents. (Del Rio and Alvarez 231) [fthis more traditional society was neither more nor less dependent on simulation than ils 'modem' urban counterparts, at least one central group ofsimulations seems to bave dominated the culture. Perbaps it is the case that the sheerquantity ofsimulations ofall types that the modem individual moves within, from context to context, weakens the hold l ofany single one on the actor. Del Rio and Alvarez rightly identify the fondamental difference between traditional and modem fonns ofsocial simulation as being a question of theirconditions ofemergence. Traditional methods ofsocial control evolved overcenturies and were relatively naturalized, whereas the modem equivalents are more clearly constructions imposed from without. The autbors identify the increased implication ofthe distal realm and the technologies ofthe mass media in operationalizing the modem social simulation. They clearly understand the implications ofa shift in the balance ofinteractional proximity towards distal frames ofreference, implying an abstract source ofcultural order: Religions are one ofthe richest reserves ofthe cultural directive architecture, ofthe implicit, historically generated models that we commando The abrupt and powerful emergence ofrecent constructions based on a dense external network ofthe rational bureaucratie action ofinstitutionallife, on a tecbnologized process ofintemalization grounded in literacy and media of mass communication, are impelling a profound, systematic remodeling of the foundations ofconsciousness by promoting a cognitive managementof sociallife in contrast to the religious option ofthe social management ofthe cognitive. (Del Rio and Alvarez 239) ( 32 The authors believe, much as Baudrillarddoes, that the rationalization ofsociallife in ( modemity has consequences that extend into the human psyche. But while the ·cognitive management' ofculture is one potential outcome ofsocial simulation, Del Rio andAlvarez do not considerthe many factors that mitigate the effectiveness ofthese constructions, starting with their sheer number and abstract nature. Despite the arsenal ofmass media based marketing and management techniques, modem social simulation cannot begin to approach thedegree ofimmersivenessofthe traditional·architectures.' The deep penetration ofa1most every aspect ofdaily life by one single simulation is now an advertiser's pipe dream, an impossibility in the postmodem culture ofexcess. The new architectures that~ generalizable are the relatively empty value fonns ofthe market system and democratic political system that haveIittle ofthe prescriptive quality ofthe religious systems of order. This modem contextofmultiple simulations and mobile social actors moving among them suggests the possibility ofvarying levels of investment. This is the second qualitative distinction that we may usefully make among simulations. Here, even ifwe restrict ourselves to simulations ofa social nature, we cao see that there are a wide range of possible degrees ofimplication. Atone extreme, perhaps, are the computer role playing games such as the ·MUD' and their non-virtual counterparts such as 'Dungeons and ( \ Dragons,' which allow for a sort ofexperiential crossover where the limited framework of agame is applied to social interaction, to engage affective energies without the potentially dire consequences ofreallife. Such artifieial contexts highlight the frames that structure social simulations, and May lead individuals to an increased consciousness ofthe eonstrueted aspect ofsocial eontexts. Where actors choose their level of investment, they retain control over social situations. At the otherextreme would he the prison camps and the semantically restricted world ofOrwell's 1984, where every action is inseribed in a system ofstrietly controlled signification. This last, dystopian view ofsimulation must he somewhat qualified by noting that the immersiveness ofeveryday social simulation May vary considerably, and various methods for achieving its transcendence have traditionally heen available.lnstitutionai logies cao he deait with at more or less ofa remove, depending on how the aetors choose to view theirown implication in the everyday simulation that constitutes the "frame.' The ootologieal 'game' cao he perceived as agame when a suitable distance from it can he aehieved, either by philosophicallabour, or teehnologieal intervention. Abstraction May also pennit a degree ofcomtemplative distance. Hence the ability ofa representatiooal ( simulation to disturb our notions ofreality at the same time that it provides an opportunity 33 to breakdown sorne ofthe restrictive logics ofthe social simulation. Certain Eastern ( religious practices such as Zen. yoga and Sufism. counsel a meditative detachment that may also offera critical distance from simulation. The third qualitative variable ofsocial simulation is its boundedness. The existence ofrelatively impenneable physical orcultural boundaries helps maintain the closure necessary for the full degree ofabstraction. simplification and reduction oflife fonns to occurin the social simulation. The boundary shields the simulation from interaction with the widerenvironment, an infinite numberofothersimulations that could easily modify its terms. Yet~ the need for social simulation arises precisely because meanings are not given~ and are continually vulnerable to change even from within the system. Social simulation is then a process ofsimplification and reduction ofa potentially threatening proliferation of meanings. Something like it is absolutely necessary for the constitution of •society· ~ a collectivity that identifies with itselfthrough a shared setofmeaningful •frames. ~ [t is the abstraction oftheseframes from a dyadic interaction so that they May he generalized across a cultural entity that requires a degree ofinsularity and boundedness. Closure means closure from othermodels. comPeting systems ofvaluation that might compromise the functional principle ofthe cultural system. Through a controUed process ofsimulation, the range ofpossible actions and the meanings overlaying experience are reduced as nearly as ( , • k possible to a unirary principle. The cultivation ofinvestmentand immersiveness in social simulation is~ as 1commented above, relatively difficult in the conditions ofdiversity and social mobility that characterize modemity. Consequeody ~ the maintenance of physical~ symbolic. epistemic boundaries are ail very important to simulation. They contribute in a large degree to raising the level ofautonomy that characterizes the most powerful simulations. In Michel Foucault·s discussion ofthe ·heterotopia ofcompensation.' he describes the controlled social environments that were established in the bounded space of the earlylesuit colonies in the Americas: their mie is to create a space that is other. another real space. as perfect. as meticulous. as weil arranged as ours is messy~ ill constructed and jumbled... marvelous, absolutely regulated colonies in which human perfection was effectively achieved. The lesuits ofParaguay established colonies in which existence was regulated at every tum. The village was laid out according to a rigorous plan... each family had its little cabin along these two axes and thus the sign ofChrist was exacdy reproduced... The daily life of individuals was regulated, not by the whistle but by the beU. Everyone ( 34 was awakened al the same time.. everyone began work al the same time._ (Foucault Other Spaces 27) Here Foucault describes the creation ofa bounded spa.ce in which thenatural social orderis rigorously upgraded through spatial and psycbological techniques; this is social simulation. ft may not have to he executed on as grand a sca1e as Foucault depiets.. ofcourse. The properties ofclosure and immersiveness can he created in any social situation. But in arder to execute 50mething out ofthe ordinary, to tum sociallife to rational and intentional ends .. a bounded environment and a technique ofmanipulating orderare necessary. The OJ!erational form ofsimulation An operational simulation occurs when a previously continuons social form is reduced 10 discrete elements and incorporated ioto a self-referential system. A semiotic component is eitherfound within the object by analytic reductio~ or is applied to il.. and a "spin ~ orients the object 50 that this aspect is foregrounded and the "referenL· is marginalized. Operational simulations provide a new means ofcultural reproduction by opening up social processes to a measure ofrefiexive control and societal influence. whiIe paradoxically introducing them into relatively autonomous systems ofmeaning that soon \. defy human control. Furtherindetenninacy arises from the faet that once "Iiberated" from its prior social or representational fonctions.. the simulation is frequently the subject ofmuch contestation, as competing interest groups stn1gg1e over its meaning. OperationaJization impliesa methodology ofsimulation. We may elabora.te on the idea that sociallife is based on frames ofreference, and speculate that cultural codes are available fOf' appropriation and reconstruction ifthe properanalytic teehniques are used to isolate them. As we have seen.. the work ofthe structural anthropologists represents such a searchfor base elements ofculture and their productive arrangement in a combinatory. The aim is to find DOt the specifie content ofa cultural entity, but the productive relationships tbat determine its possible permutations. Once this deep structural code is locate Charles Levin bas suggested that the proœss ofsimulation involves four steps of semiosis. First.. ..the isolation ofthe object" in a specialized relation 10 the social environment - the necessary abstraction from context effected by the laboratory or the 35 founding ofa discipline with a specialized set of tenns~ for instance. Ne~ the "controUed ( decomposition ofthe object" intodiscrete elemen~followed by the development ofan abstraet model functioning al a strueturallevel. "FinaIly, the elementsare inserted into the model ~ in an atternpt 10 reconstruc~or reconstitule the object[rom the system that bas been created." (Levin 188-189) Once the differentiated social systems are seen as OrganiSOlS functioning in an ecology, and the geoerative models cao he isolated coneeptually and made operable with increasing precision~ the possibility to modify them and set them backinto play in the social system praetically suggests itself.like introducing an engineered chain ofDNA into the social body. For the momen~ this son ofprecision cultural engineering bas not been achiev~ but it remains an ambition ofthe human sciences (in the form ofinterventional research in the psychology oflearning for instance) and marketers~politicians. and -moral entrepreneurs' ofail sorts. The hallmark ofthe partiaUy achieved social simulations that we see today is the stroggle to flX the meaning ofcultural practices ioto a moral1y correctform in the interests ofwhatever group is attempting to exert its influence. Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin's recent attempts to efface the distinction between sex and assault are a partofan ongoing social simulation centering around the legaI status ofpomography. Theirintervention is an attempt to recontextuaIize sexual behaviourby changing the general perception ofordinary human sexual aggressivenes. which involves a severing ofthe tenns from their usual referentiaI functions, a redefinition of -rape.' As John Fekete writes, "When MaeKinnon collapses the two categories ofintercourse (normal) and rape (pathological)~the maIe loverand the rapist are revealed as one and the same." (Fekete 28) Fekete identifies the logie operating behind this coUapsing ofcategories as that ofthe "corrupt continuum." In this case intercourse and rape are mapped ooto the same continuum~and the degree ofdifference between steps on the continuum is then effaced. "Not only is the entire scale given a negative value. but this negative attribution is twice inflated: by spreading the defming qualities ofthe worst case to ail cases. on the one band; and~ on the other. by boosting the infrequeot incidence ofthe worst cases with the sheer volume ofaU the variations ofbuman life dragged into the schematism:' (323) Here the powerofthe digital reduetion ofoppositions to equivalences and their remapping on a digital continuum is cleverly deployed ta recontextualize ordinary behaviour by association with wbat can legitimately he morally condemned. The whole simulation centring around pomography and sexuality testifies to the difficulties of incorporating affective bebaviourto a regime ofsocietal regulation. ( 36 The debate recently extended to the internet when Tune magazine rushed a ( controversial study ofon-lioe pomography consumption (cyberporn) to print without verifying its accuracy (it was indeed highly questionable). Like many partially realized social simulations, the political motivations for the research were shrouded behind a facade ofseeminglyobjective statistics that gave the aura ofscientific objectivity to a fundamentally moral enterprise. Widely accused ofsensationalism and attempting to take a polemical stance towards the then current debate overthe proposed Communications Decency Act, the Time editor who wrote the story eventually expressed bis regrets.. after the magazine and the neologjsm were brandished in congressional hearings. CHameT's Sept. 95) A most intriguing intervention in this debate cornes from Jon Katz, in a recent issue of Wrred magazine. He argues that children are being needlessly deprived ofaccess to information as a result ofthe cyberpom panic. 'Blocking software' targeted at restricting cbildren's use ofthe internet is posed as the ooly alternative to outright on-fine censorship, and most adult free-speech supporters accept its inevitability. Katz argues that children are being dirninished, and should he fumished with the same set ofabstract fonnalized rights thatadults enjoy: The Responsible ChiId has certain inalienable rights, not conferred atthe caprice ofarbitrary authority.. but recognized by ajust society as inherently belonging to every person. As we enter the digital age, this recognition is ioevitable, a powerful idea that will bring children ioto the vast community ofpeople who have, or are battling for, sorne control over their lives. (Katz 166) Katz's caU for a 'social contract' that empowers children is one more instance ofthe drive towards the fonnalization ofsociallife thatcharacterizes our culture. In bis beliefthat the internet will he a leveler ofsocial difference, he echoes such media theorists as Neil Postman and Joshua Meyrowitz, who have linked the sequestration ofchildhood to book culture and the 'implosion' ofchildishness into adulthood (and vice versa) to the television. The 'net will certainly lowerinfonnational boundaries and expose children to a rather caustic culture at an earlierage, and 50 this digital technology may in fact contribute to a further reduction ofthe opposition between the categories ofchild and adult The entire episode demonstrates the degree ofcontestation that arises around issues and experiences that are 'opened up' to reflexive control by simulation. The social status ofthe child, or the 'meanings' ofconsensual sex and rape, are now negotiable in ourculture, they have become susceptible to digitization. c 37 Simulation has also pulled matters ofsexual identity into the purview ofscience and ( technology by opening up a gap between the sexed body and its semiotic component, gender. This is a briUiant piece ofabstraction that illustrates the operational mode of simulation. To begin with, it is worth remarking on sorne intimations ofthe analytic process ofsocial simulation ofthe tyPe that Charles Levin has detailed. In TheApartheid Of Sex: A ManifestaOnThe Freedom OfGender, thetransgenderactivist Martine Rothblatt sees The opportunity for new gender science researcbers to 'deconstruct' (break down) sexual identity into genital-independentconstituent elements and to correlate these elements ofsexual identity with the behaviour, psychology, and neuroanatomy ofpeople. (Rothblatt Ill) Rothblatt clearly bas in mind the methodology ofthe harder, engineering-style social simulation. She imagines the analytical breakdown and reconstitution ofsexual identity within the boWlds ofa new scientific discipline dedicated to developing identities that reference the body through scientific methods. The goal is to abolish sexual dimorphism and to establish the basis of new, abstract sexual identities. This would he a clearcase of digitization, the reduction ofoppositions to minordifferences on a digital continuum. For ( the moment, the engineering knowledge is not yet in place. However, the problem may he attacked at the level ofthe many social expressions of binary genderdifference that continue to exist, and in Rothblatt's opinion should he uprooted. Sucb operations would certainly constitute a fonn ofcultural engineering. Rothblatt suggests several strategies that range from modifying language to remove sexually dimorphic pronouns and replace them with "gender-inclusive" words, to the creation ofunisex toilets. Tbese and other proposais for. social engineering would not he possible ifsimulation had not already 'opened the body up' to reinterpretation on the semiotic level ofgender. It is worth examining this simulation in more detail, because it illusttates many ofthe essential characteristics ofthe operational forme The conception ofsexuality thatdominated modernity isone ofintegrated oppositions. The binary division between male and female, foreclosing ail ambiguity, attached gender to sexas though they were one and the same. With the recent political operationalization oftheconcept ofgender, the biological difference between men and women may now he analytically separated from what are viewed as the purely social, and therefore primarily semiotic constroctions ofmasculine and feminine identity. This requires deconstructing prior notions ofsexuality as cooflations ofbiological and social factors~ () which ofcourse tbey are. The effect is to split the signs ofsexual identity away from the 38 pbysical body and to introduce a greater measure ofsocial control over what was ( previously a process constrained by nature. By privileging the gender side ofthis equation, the body is in effect neutralized anddenied any salience whatsoever. Taken to its logicallimit, the distinction between sex and gendersuggests a radical discontinuity between sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders. Gender becomes a free-floating entity with the consequence that(quotingJudith Butler) 'man and masculine might as easily signify a female body as a male, and wornen and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.' Sucb a deconstruction ofthe polarized tenns ioto which sexuality is forced - what Kristeva caUs the 'demassification ofdifference' - May he the ultimate aim ofsorne forms of feminism. (McNay 22) Lois McNay's cornments suggest Many ofthe important components ofsocial simulation and digitization (the 'demassificationofdifference) in an operational fonn. The ensemble of factors that were generally assumed to constitute sexual identity are isolated within the closed environment ofa discipline and are broken down. The intimate realm ofsexuality becomes operationalized within the social simulation constituted by genderpolitics. The splittiog ofsexual identity into the semiotic and referential components ofgender and the body creates an autonomous level ofsignification that eclipses the referent, the biological given ofsexual difference. Increasingly, the reaJm ofsignified sexuality becomes the focus ofcontestation and 'action,' because it appears to offer whatJudith ButlercaUs "the essential freedom at the origin ofgeoder," the possible neutralization ofthe contrasts orthe concrete body whicb are theorized as the alibi for a regime ofsocial repression. At the same time, developments in biologjcaJ science undennine the very notion ofa natural biological body, reinforeing the argument for the semiotic construction ofa sexual identity by destabilizing the referential body through a surplus ofreflexive knowledge. The body was a given, the often inconvenieot and inadequate seat ofthe self. With the increasing invasion ofthe body by abstract systems, ail this becomes altered. The body, like the self, becomes a site ofinteraction, appropriation and reappropriation, linking reflexively organized processes and systematically ordered expert knowledge. The body itselfhas become emancipated - the condition for its reflexive restructuring. (Giddens Self-ldentity 218) 39 Advances in biotechnology have played theirpartinaltering the relation between the natural 1 "'-.. and the socially produced body: "The fact that sexuality no longerneed have anything to do with reproduction, or vice versa - serves to reorder sexuality in relation to lifestyles (a1though as always, in large degree ooly through the medium ofreflexive appropriation)." (Giddens Selfldentity 220) There is a pincering attack on the received notion ofsexuality that issues from sepamte disciplines working within very different paradigms. Not incidentally however, biotechnology's purchase on sexual reproduction is based on the digital code ofDNA. The varied technical knowledges ofthe social and physical sciences do indeed seem to converge on sorne basic level ofthe code. Wben the semiotic aspect ofsexuality is stripPed away from the biological, an irnJX)rtant gap is opened within the process ofsexual identity. It becomes JX)ssible to imagine other sexualities, and to play with other possibilities. We can only begin to suggest the deconstructive force ofthe digitizing ofsexual identity that is possible once the referent has been marginalized. Tbere is no reason to pause at the simple conjugation ofoutmoded categorizations of 'genital sex.' Once sexual identity is shifted to the distal register ofthe sigo, oppositions such as man and woman ail hearfurther diversification (or homogenization) on the digital continuum thatneutra1izes ail differences. Sexual identities are already becoming fonned through diverse configurations oftraits connecting ( \- . appearance, preference, demeanour, and behaviour rather than biology or binary conceptions ofsexuality. These are the marginal differences tbat lend themselves ta recombination aod personalization, like the sign-objects ofBaudrillard's objectsystem. Ofcourse, the social construction ofsexuality is common to ail cultures, but as Judith Butlerspecifies, there is sornething quite different about its simulation as gender in ourculture: gender is not traceable to any definable origin because it itself is an originating activity incessantly taking place. No longer understood as a product ofcultural and psychic relations long past, gender is a contemporary way oforganising past and future cultural nonns, a way ofsituating oneself in and through those nonns, an active style ofliving one's body in the world. (Butler 131) Gender, and social simulation in general, for tbat matter, is a contemporary way ofdealing with the received legacies ofculture. Simulationfumishes the distance from which that heritage cao he reconsidered and manipulated, and it provides a way ofparticipating in the beritage and at the same time being free ta weave in and out ofit, to duck outfrom an () earlier cultural and psychic determinism. It is the individual who becomes the nexus for 40 variations on the code ofgender. The social simulation, then, is "a way oforganising past ( and future cultural norms," because it provides the leverage to open those nonns up to control and, as maoy hope, recreation by the individual. This would seem to confinn the validity ofBaudrillard's thesis ofthird ordersimulation. In the present era, signs float free from previously 'solid' relations with the referent. But as we cao see, this may facilitate the adoption ofnew, emancipated fonns ofself-identity, orit may conceivably lead to heightened societal control. Simulation creates a rupture with the past, a prying apart of social continuity into wbich innovation may be introduced, but it does not determine what the outcome ofthis will he, it bas no intrinsic political content beyond openïng representation up to a greater level ofsocial control and perhaps, as many hope, recreation by the individual. Simulation makes a majorcontribution to the process ofgaining reflexive control over identity. By sbifting oppositions to a semiotic register, changes in category or status cao he effected that were previously tied down to fixed points ofreference, sucb as the sexed body. Through digitization, these oppositions are neutralized, and a persan may eventually choose from a continuum ofequivalent "options," as Anthony Giddens remarks: What gender identity is, and how it should he expressed, has become itselfa matter ofmultiple options - ranging up to and including even the choice of whethera person remains anatomically ofthe same sex into which she or he was born. The politics ofself-identity, ofcourse, is not limited to matters of gender differentiation. The more we reflexively 'make ourselves' as persons, the more the very category ofwhat a 'person' or 'human being' is cornes to the fore. (Giddens Self-ldentity 217) Gender is a particularly good example ofthe simulation process, being linked directly to the biological body, but there is a good chance that operational simulation can be found in many instances where the reflexive modification ofsocial practice is under way. IfJon Katz is right, the category of 'the cbild' may saon he operationalized, driven by the erosion of infonnational boundaries within on-line culture. As Giddens points out, the broadest question raised by social simulation and digitization is "what is a human being?" The representational instability thatcharacterizes social simulation culminates in ourincreasingly fluid cultural definition of what a person is -- man, woman, child, and now possibly machine, orsorne indetenninate in-between. Judging by the many calls for a renewed sense ofcommunity in contemporary life, and the persistent attempts to reassert public morality, the directive traditional social order is missed by many. Choice is difficult, and anxiety provoking, particularly when others have 41 have an equal right to self-determination. The psychologica1 response to anxiety is ( frequently to attempt to exert increased control overthe social situation, to adhere more strictly to a given model, to he less tolerant ofdifference. The goal ofmany theorists advancing the hypothesis ofradically autonomous gender appears to be the effacement of sexual difference in the name ofequality. Hele, emancipatory idealism coUudes with masculinist Reason, which it has aggressively demonized in Most othercontexts, by marginalizing the body in the greaterinterest ofsocietal equality. The inflation ofgender's importance seems inevitable, as it opens up an area for contestation that previously resisted reduction to political tenns. A strong notion ofgeoder therefore makes possible a setoffar more complex POliticai stances arouod the simulated body.4lt would certainly he interesting to speculate 00 the various pennutations that sexual identity could take once the bioary opposition ofmale and female is reduced to one byte 00 a digital continuum. But this ignores the problem ofthe actual body and the poteotial pre-discursive sexualities that it POssesses, which May never be placed under total social control oreven properly understood. The focus on the semiotic level of gender needlessly margioalizes this body in its ambition to open up sexuality to what amounts to more extensive societal regulation. From Jean BaudriUard's perspective, this is partofa broad tendeocy to fonnalize every possible aspect ofsocial relations which has the secoodary effect ofdiluting and even banisbing affect from the societal field. Simulation and the fonnalization ofsociallife Ooe ofthe societal rewards ofabstraction, whether technological, systemic or theoretical, lie in the shielding ofthe social realm from the anxiety-provoking affective energies ofthe body. Baudrillard's theory ofsimulation cao certainly he interpreted in tbis light: Baudrillard's thesis (is) that modernity systematically sharpens the split between affect and societal fonn ... the argument is that 'society' has become an increasingly system-like abstraction striving towards structural 4With these remarks, and with the concept ofsocial simulation as a whole, 1do not iotend to invoke the notion of 'ideology' in the sense ofa misrepresentation ofsocial reality. There are frequently competing political viewpointsclusteredaround any operatiooal social simulation. As a critical perspective, simulation does oot leod itselfeasily to value ( judgments based on claims to a superior understaoding of 'human nature' or 'truth.' 42 closure and 'perfection' in part by off-loading its affective social content: the ( so-called death ofthe social. The remainderis an unstructured, unintegrated 'mass', a split-off bundle of'imploding' forces whose relation to the 4; system' is precisely that ofthe repressed, poised for retum. (Levin 93) Here society figures as a simulation, engaging in the characteristic process of"assimilative exclusion." (Levin 185) Over the long-term, the action ofthe system is directed towards the growing systematization ofsocial activity at the expense ofspontaneous or unruly affective social fonns. The result has been a steady bifurcation ofsociety into wbat we might designate the social and societal realms. What we now cali society bas always been an abstraction. It is not a social fonn in itself, but an interpretive overlayconflated with social fonn. Il is an imaginary construct referring to other constnlcts - models, impersonal institutions, mediated discourses, populations. This realm ofabstract systems, codes, structures, nonns, and social constraints might better be called the societal, because there is little occurring at this level that resembles embodied social interaction. The societal must he contrasted with the proximal 'social', fonns ofinteraction that begin as extensions offamily and kinship relations. At the infantile level, these relations are Dot based exclusively on societal models orstructures, but also "the realm ofadhoc semantic experience, organized around moments (. underdetermined by the 'rules' ofbebaviour." (Levin 89) The societal and the social should not be seen as strictly opposing categories, but rather relative qualities - the social shades into the societal and vice-versa. The individual'sexperience is influenced by bath levels. The broad cultural trend that is related to simulation is the growing disparity between the social and the societal, as Charles Levin writes, "between fonns ofintersubjectivity retracting into the sphere ofthe individual, aod forms ofsociety detaching from the sphere ofintimacy and panning out iota various eocompassing, self-governing systems." (93) Tbe general trend towards progressive fonnalization in sociallife bas led to wbat Giddens calls the "sequestration ofexperience," basically the removal ofsymbolically patent asPects ofexperience sucb as madness, criminality, death, and sexuality from the arena ofpublic life. Tbe development ofabstract systems creates large areas ofrelative security in modem societies, but in exchange, there is a drainiog ofrelations ofaffective proximity as comPared to pre-modem societies. Primitive forms ofritual were one way that affect could he bath mobilized and contained in the service ofcollective unity. Those fonns ofshared emotional experience bave been largelyconfined to the level ofthe individual and forced back ioto insular private lives. The regular incitement to the 'passion' ofthe shared ecstatic religious eXPerience is now very rare indeed, as religion itself becomes secularized. 43 Non-denominational churcbes serving suburban congregations of many thousands now fonn the avant-garde ofNorth American religion. Popularly referred to as a social phenomenori as "the Next Church," they bave taken on the commodity form, the allure of the shopping mail and use ail ofthe marketing techniques made available bymodem business practice. {Trueheart} Ofcourse, collective expressions ofcatharsis still occur, but they tend to occur more randomly, in deritualized fonn. It could be argued that with the bifurcation ofsociallife, the shared symbolic aspect ofpremodem social fonns has been forced back ioto the individual imaginary.s Sorne ofthe connective function ofthe ·symbolic' cultural practices may still be attributed to the mediated systems ofconsumption and communication ofmodemity, but taken as a whole, it apPears that the trend towards progressive formalization tends to support the construction ofindividual identities rather than collective, symbolic forms. The progressive abstraction ofculture bas contributed to a decline ofaffective expressiveness across the social spectrum. Perhaps the most significant instances can be found in the economic and political domains. We replace communal fonns oforder, which were influenced by the symbolic component ofculture, with systematized fonns ofsocial control - codified abstractions such as the law, the constitution or the charter ofrights. These administrative counterparts to the other great societal process ofabstraction, ( commodification, are the most obvious examples ofthe numerous abstract systems that have come to order modem society. They are institutions ofabstracted order that regulate society with but rare digressions into the premodem symbolic, the death penalty being an odious hold-over. The disembedding ofthe symbolic set ofrelations around the object created a context ofopportunities that led to the formalization ofthe status ofthe individual: the liberation ofthe object constitutes the liberation ofthe subject as weil, as certain formal autonomization ofthejuridico-political individual whose practices (particularly bis discursive practices in the emerging public sphere) are precisely those wbich the commodity has freed from symbolic constraints. (Levin 199) These abstract systems have the characterofsituating individuals within relatively 'empty' value forms that structure social interaction, but impose very little explicit content on it. 5 See for example, Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais And His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, MS.: M.LT. Press, 1968); Allon White, "Hysteria and the End ofCamival: Festivity and Bourgeois Neurosis," Semiotica, vol. ( 54, No 1-2, pp. 97-111. 44 Tbrough the abstraction that they impart to social relations, they have a significant effecton ( dampening the overall affective content ofpublic culture. The Public Sphere, a discursive adjunct to modem civil society, sougbt to regulate and define itselfthrough a closely related fonn ofabstraction. As Michael Wamer points out., the public sphere bas been a simulation since its inception. Even in its formative stages as theorized by Habennas, in the coffee houses and salons of Europe, the public sphere depended on reference to an imaginary construct, the greater ~public', that Wamer believes is a by-product ofprint mediation's capacity to project an indefinite audience. ln Wamer's interpretation, particiPation in the public sphere was a malterofself-abstraction. The individual incorporated the ·public subject', substituting a "prosthetic, universalized body' for bis own particularity. The critic gained authority from bis claim to address a universal audience as an abstracted memberofthat public, not a presumably self-interested embodied individual. In this reading, the public sphere is an operative simulation, in which a model orders the individual's understanding ofselfand public. The existence ofthe model recontextualizes the possible fonns ofparticipation and discourse in the public sphere. There are trade-offs to self-abstraction, however, as we can weil imagine. In order to participate, the individual must renounce bis specificity, to conform to the general tenns ofequivalence. This loss of uniqueness is the consequence of abstraction, as we have seen ( " in earlierexamples ofsimulation. Butabstraction cannot do away with the referent ofthe body entirely: "~Public discourse from the beginning offered a utopian self-abstraction, but in ways that left a residue ofunrecuperated particularity, both for its privileged subjects and for those it minoritized." (Wamer 241) ln Wamer's discussion, the eXcluded body figures as a metaphorfor the historicaHy specific particularities ofthe marginalized. By association, these groups figure as the social irrational that is excluded from the simulation ofthe public sphere, the persistence ofthe symbolic in the face ofsystemic abstraction. It may seem like the loss ofan emotionally engaging symbolic culture structured around community and proximal relations is a heavy price to pay for the formalized structures that Weber characterized asan iron cage. But these structures have a ·civilizing' effect (for better and for worse) through the suppression ofthe strong symbolic hierarcbies ofpre-modem cultures, what BaudriUard called the ·cruelty ofthe transparencyofthe sign.' The element ofparanoid violence in the symbolic is proximal, vicious, terroristic - certainJy projected, but not so disavowed, as is possible in the impersonality ofdigital systems and remote societal structures. In modem ( societies, with the dissolution ofthe feudal order and the ·emancipation of 45 the sign' 7 the consequences ofaffective proximity are progressively diluted ( and deferred in the widening scope ofabstract systems, whose operational perfection is based on ~profounddeDiai.' (Levin 96) The containment and attenuation ofsymbolic violence makes simulation irresistible, because it seems to mitigate the play of'irrational 7 forces which penneate sociallife. The graduaI imposition ofthe mie oflaw based on certain protections for the accused individual is a classic case in point. Voting as a way ofmeasuriog the relative force ofpower blocks within the political system is another. Norbert Elias bas examined the same process, albeit from a perspective not particularly sensitive to simulation. He sees the developmentofthe societal specifically in terms ofa "civilizing change ofbehaviour:7 that is not imposed by these systems, but rather arises through changes io the context ofaction effected by systematization, making the suppression ofaffect advantageous to the self-interested actor, (not incidentally, a constn1ction ofhuman motivation similarto that created by the market system): The closer the web ofinterdependence becomes in which the iodividual is enmeshed with the advancing division offuoctioos, the larger the social spaces overwhich this network extends and which become iotegrated ioto fuoctional orinstitutiontal units - the more threatened is the social existence ofthe individual who gives way to spootaneous impulses and emotions, the greater is the social advantage ofthose able to moderate their affects... (Elias 448) Nevertheless7 a realm ofnon-systematized experience and uncondifiable forces continues to subsist, which simply cannot he expressed within the terms of the societal simulation. Despite the almost mechanized screening out ofthe systemicallydisruptive elements of sociallife, they will always succeed in perturbing the systems which operate on them. The abstraction imparted by simulation is also widely feared 7 however, because it is perceived to put the organizational efficiency ofrational bureaucracy at the disposai ofa potentially violent and irrational project, as the Holocaust demonstrated. The fear is that the imposition ofa layer ofrepresentation will subdue the moral impact ofviolence and thus perpetuate il ln an interesting variation on this theme, the film PatriotGames contrasted the technologically abstracted eliminationofa middle-eastem terrorist camp by satellite remote control with the psychopathically violent revenge ofone ofthe survivors ofthe attack, in what could he thought ofas the retum ofthe technologically repressed.6 The 'smart' ( 6 Phillip Noyce, dir., Patriot Games, Paramount, 1992. 46 weapons ofthe GulfWar revived perennial concems about the location ofmoral ( responsibility when killing becomes an abstract~ disembodied act. Oearly there remain doubts about the ultimate efficacy ofabstraction that plague us on an emotionaileveI. It is potentially terrible in its efficiency and sang froid~ but not sufficiently terrifyjng on a symbolic level to enforce the moral standards that we May believe~ however irrationally, to be aU that separates us from the seriai killers. These anxieties and systemic perturbances often reappearin the representations offered up by the mass media and the art world~ which frequently challenge the limits of public morality. As Giddens points ou~ the sequestration ofexperience is compensated on a symbolic level by the conversion ofthe excluded component ofsociallife ioto narrative form~ to be cycled back through the culture: Contact with death and serious illness May be rare~ except on the part of specialized professionals~ but in respect ofmediated experience it is very commODo Fictionalliterature and documentary presentations arefull of materials portraying such violence, sexuality and death. Familiarity with settings of such activities, as a result ofthe wide ranging influence of media ofvarious kinds may in fact oCten be greater than in pre-modem social ( conditions. Many popular art forms are essentially morality tales~ in which narratives are spun and a moral order assembled. PIainiYthese fictional worlds in sorne part supplant those ofday-tO-day Iife... Existential sensibilities therefore do oot simply become atteouated and lost; to sorne extent they May even be enriched as new fields ofexperience are opened up. (Giddeos Self-ldentity 168) The mass media continually feed backthe suppressed affective component ofthe social into the societal~ DOW at a safe distance from embodied interaction.lfwe examine this structurally, simulation becomes a kind offeedback loop that splits offaffective experience from proximal, embodied relations by autopoietic exclusion and then rechannels the repressed symbolic dimension back ioto the societal by way ofrepreseotational simulations. While oot implying anything like a zero-sum economy of affec~ it does seem that the function ofsimulation is not to destroy affect~ but rather to distance it from the social body ~ therefore to gain control over il The media concentrate affect into relatively hannless mediated forms thatare consumed by small groups and individuals - no chance for collective catharsis orthe spootaneous overtuming oforder - and Giddens concludes that rnediated fonns ofexperience fmally reinforce the sequestration ofexperience. ( 47 One ofthe important social functions ofsimulation then is the containment and ( dispersal ofaffect. At the systemic level it splits offaffective social fonns and consigns them to an increasingly irrelevant position in the social enYÏronment. Representational simulation provides a retum conduitfor these impulses that have little ather means of figuring in the systematized domains ofculture. This is a second broad pattern to simulation that 1will develop overthe next chapters. ft is Particularly evidentin the metaphysical component ofsimulation that 1will discuss next. "\ ( 48 ( ChapterThree: The metaphysics ofsimulation After the metaphysics of being and appearance, after energy and determinacy, the metaphysics ofindeterminacy and the code. (Baudrillard Symbolic 57) Baudrillard's brieffonnula adrnirably suros up the post-structuralists' position on dualism ofthe simulacrum. As indicated in my introduction, the conceptofsimulation can he located at several conceptuallevels. 1would now Iike to tum to the metaphysicallevel of simulation. In the preceding chapters 1have emphasized that contrary to the popular view of the simulacrum, it is actually a fonn oforder and abstraction, and on that level it must be considered a rationalizing force. Ofcourse the rational and the irrational are relational concepts. In modemity, rationality, defined as what benefits society, becomes identified with systemic imperatives. In the strongest fonns of 'semiotic detenninism' that have been associated with simulation by theorists like Douglas Kellner, the code takes control of cultural design, and tums it towards rationalized purposes. In our discussion ofthe methodology ofsocial simulation, we saw a rationalizing impulse in the drive towards social engineering and its aims, the reconstitution ofthe object from its model. And what could be more rational than the fantasy ofpure production, simulation as presented by Baudrillard, which generates originals every time, order and confonnity seemingly guaranteed? And yet the post-structuralist accountofthe simulacrum is highly contradictory. Foucault refers to the simulacrum as ironie, prophetie, but certainly not rational; Deleuze tums it into a "Dionysian machine," and Baudrillard typically pushes the irtational side of the duality to its Iimit. If simulation is a viable concept, why are we not surrounded by orderand conformity? Why does ultra-rationalist simulation lead to indetenninacy and not the orderthat a technology ofsymbolic control would seem to suggest? What makes the poststructuralistargument so interesting is that it makes use ofthe simulaerum and the related process ofsimulation to attempt to bridge the opposition hetween the rational and the irrational. Couched in biblical tenns, the post-structuralists characterize the simulacrum as a demonic force that ultimately undennines rationality as a consequence ofils own rational functioning. In a remarkable piece, Baudrillard suggests that a criticallevel oftechnologically induced abstraction bas been reached within the society ofmass communications, and the result is the resurfacing ofan irrational, mythical ( energy. (Baudrillard Ecstacy 45-56) ln this view he is not tbat far from sharing Gianni 49 Vattimo's position in TheTraosparentSociety. that within the culture ofmass ( communication and the social sciences, myth has been rediscovered, to the detriment ofthe cherished notion ofhistory as the Emancipation ofReason. The eclipse ofReason The on/y stralegy against the hype"ealist system is sorne form of palaphysics, a &science ofimaginary solutions'; that is, a science fiction of the system's reversai against itselfat the extreme limit of simulation, a reversible simulation in a hyperlogic ofdeath and destruction. (Baudrillard 1993, p.5) Postmodem culture is characterized by an overabundance ofmeaning and a digitized flattening ofhierarchies that contribute to an overall impression ofindetenninacy, and even chaos. One way ofunderstanding this cultural shift is tbrough Baudrillard's concept of metastasis, the fourth order ofthe simulacra, in which simulations propagate out ofcontrol. Metastasis refers to the acceleration ofsocial processes and the consequent chaotic effects ofmodernity, leading to a break witb conventionally understood causality and heightened indeterminacy. Baudrillard couches bis argument in the fashionahle terms ofchaos theory, hut it is actually more comPelling in its literary dimension. The rich metaphor ofa semantic canceris particularly apt, for whatcould he more repugnant to social rationality than the utterly organic exponential multiplication ofmeaning? Organic growth is antithetical to Reason, which underwrites integrated designs tbat are executed witb fonnal elegance. Metastatic simulation, Perhaps spurred on by the growing impingement ofmediated communication, would contribute to the undoing ofthe smoothly functioning ensemble of social systems tbat constitute hyperreality. Simulation, a principle ofrationalist control, tums back on itself into indetenninacy. The irrational, indetenninate asPect ofthe simulation metaphorcan he traced to the meanings associated with the term ·simulacrom.' Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault were among the tbeorists in the 1960's to explore the possibilities presented by the tenn. Both writers approached the simulacrum tbrough the work of Pierre Klossowski, a novelist and philosopher, known as a major interpreter of Nietzsche and Gide. In an essay entitled '·La Prose d'Actéon," Foucault offers a definition ofKlossowski's simulacrum that is relatively familiar to us from the Baudrillardian usage tbat followed: 50 vaine image (paropposition a la réalité); représentation de quelque chose (en ( quoi cette chose se délègue, se manifeste, mais se retire et en un sens se cache); mensonge qui fait prendre un signe pour un autre; signe de la présence d'une divinité (et possibilité réciproque de prendre ce signe pour son conttaire); venue simultanée du Même etde l'Autre (simulerc'est originairement, venir ensemble). (Foucault lA Prose 329) The problematization ofthe image, resemblance and representation is present as it is in Baudrillard, a10ng with the threat ofthe representation to obscure or replace the referent. Most significantly, the indetenninacyofthe simulacrum is a1so clearly identified in the possibility ofmistaking a divine presence for its opposite. For Foucault, the simulacmm is a specifie type ofsymbol, which he contrasts with the sign. While in the structuralist view the sign derives its significance from ils relation with the set ofail other signs operative at any given moment, the simulacrom takes its meaning from a relation in kind with an originary model. This is a different structural relation from that ofthe sign, one ofmodel and series, that may stretch back temPOrally overthousands ofyears and through Many different variations of meaning worked around the model: "ce qu'il dit, il le dit par une profonde appartenance a l'origine, par une consécration." (Foucault U2 Prose 330) According to Foucault, the elements ofthe series achieve an identity with the model, becoming its 'double' rather than simply signifying the meanings associated with il. For example, the tree ofthe cross imparts something 'essential' to every other tree and withered branch in the Christian tradition - it is in a sense the model for ail trees which constitute the series. It is not surprising that Foucault and Deleuze illustrate their commentaries on the simulacrum with examples drawn from religjous imagery. These are symbols that provided the focal point for traditions ofrepresentation with half-lives ofmillennia, figuring metaphoric relations that still resonate in contemporary culture. As cultobjects, they endured radical doctrinal reinterpretations during their Many centuries ofcurrency. Their ambiguous bridging ofthe spiritual and phenomenal dimensions a1so suggests the contemporary use ofthe simulacrum. ln a contemporary application ofthe same idea, Baudrillard used the model - series relationship to describe the 'personalization' promised by the commodity in the object system. This is the effect by which the sign-value ofan idealized object, the model, is differentially distributed across a series ofsimilar but 'Iesser' objects that are available to the mass ofconsumers. An example would be the Chanel dress, which takes on an aura ( and overvaluation in relation to ready-to-wear, mass produced garments. In the context of 51 the fashion cycle, the haute couture object manages to outpace its imitatorsjust enough ta ( cultivate uniqueness. In this way, the simulated singularity ofthe model is made available for metonymic appropriation through what appearto he individual choices thatare actually constrained by the system. Tbere is certainly a potentially powerful integrative effect in the model - series relation. Possessing anelement ofthe series seems ta be the concretization of an imagÏnary relationsbip with the model, and for the subject itoffers the material participation in an imagined world, be it that ofthe object system, orofmystical communion. These examples suggesta further dimension ofthe concept ofsimulation. The simulacrum structures meaning through the model-series relation, so that sorne form of arder is exerted on the semantic component ofthe series. 10 the case ofthe applied use of such symbolism, ofcourse, the actual misappropriation ofthe model could lead to serious consequences, such as being branded a heretic and bumed at the stake. The impetus of tradition and the enforcemeot oforderaround the model-series relation leads to the regularization ofmeanings and, as we suggested, the collaborative induction ofindividuals ioto systems of mass consumption. But as Baudrillard bas pointed out, the semiotic overdetermination ofthe object system produces its own discrete effects; the irrational force ofthe simulacmm cornes to the fore when systems become at least partially self-referential. Baudrillard depicts fashion as an irrational assault on the ideology ofproduction, a tenninal stage in the process of simulation. Under the conditions ofoperational simulation, the model is emptied ofintrinsic meaning, taking its value only from the tenns ofthe system. Fundamentally, fashion imposes upon us the rupture ofan imaginary arder: that ofreferential Reason in all its guises, and ifwe enjoy (jouir) the dismantling orstripping ofreason (démantèlement de la raison), enjoy the liquidation of meaning... we also suffer profoundly from the corruption of rationality it implies, as reason crumbles under the blow ofthe pure and simple a1temation ofsigns. (Baudrillard Symbolic 88) Ofcourse any comparison between these notions ofthe simulacrum must take into account thatfashion moves at thefrenetic pace ofmodernity, and attributes value through the agentless action ofa system, whereas the 'consécration' ofFoucault's 'model' is traditionally orinstitutionally sanctioned overcenturies. But the characterofthe model, or simulacrum, is similarin both accounts. The ability to control and rationalize meaning depends on being able to radiate the meaning ofthe model dependably through the series, and this proves impossible, even in the comparatively stable medieval period, where there ( were few other players to compete with the Church in the realm ofsocial engineering. 52 Shifts incultural context required adjustments to the doctrinal model nonetheless. As ( ~identity' Foucault points outy the between model and series is subject to radical change, and very likely complete reversai. Rathertban enjoying a fixed meaning, the simulacrum can always be related back to a different modet a prior originy and therefore it cao realign an entire series ofsimulacra in a contradictory ~movement' when i15 model is altered. This is the inherently irrational quality ofthe simulacrum, a duality which is i15 oost definition. As Foucault describes it, the contradiction will stem from an interiordisjuncture that was a1ways presenty but not manifest: Un pareil signe est a la fois prophétique et ironique: tout entier suspendu à un avenirqu'il répète d'avance et qui le répètera à son touren pleine lumière; il dit ceci puis celay ou plutôt il disait déjà, sans qu'on ait pu le savoiry ceci et cela. En son essence il est simulacre, - disant tout simultanément et simulant sans cesse autre chose que ce qu'il dit. Il offre une image dépendant d'une vérité toujours en recul. (Foucault La Prose 330) Thealmost cyclical oscillation through intemally detennined POles ofmeaning exhibited by the simulacrom are, according to Foucault, a result ofits internai disjuncture. The anthropologist Roy Wagner provides us with an analysis ofthe Christian doctrine of ( transubstantiation that shows a related tendency from a perspective ofa series ofcultural ;;figure-ground' inversions. The symbol ofthe Eucharist endured radical doctrinal reinterpretations during i15 many centuries ofinfluence. Forexample, the basically figurative meaning ofthe Augustinian Eucharist was transformed by Papal edict into the literai embodiment ofChrist al around 1050A.D., constituting a radical inversion of its sanctioned meaning. When the stabilized interpretation ofsuch a central understanding quite arbitrarily becomes heresy, one can weil appreciate that the symbol becomes indetenninate. Over the centuries and on into the modem period the meaning ofthe Eucharist continued ta unfold in a cultural trajectory full oflatent contradictions. Greatly simplifying Wagner's argument, it is possible to note thatfor certain central symbols that mediate between dualities ofenduring cultural importance (the divine and the natural, for instance), meaning is likely to shift in a cyclical pattern. [n this way, lbe medieval and modem tropes (associated with transubstantiation) each replicated the otheras an internal, motivating factor because, basically, each trope is fonned against the other. This is the significance ofthe figure ground reversaI. Taken as a whole, the meaning ofthis double trope is involute: it generates its own referential space, stands for itselfand is about c itself. The perceptions tbat make one or the otherfacet distinct - the singular 53 world oftranscendental space, or the plural world ofproduction and ( Copernican space - arefolded into each other in the figure-ground reversai. (Wagner 123-(24) Ifwe take Wagner's 'core symbols' to he the cultural operators ofwhat are clearly early simulation systems, we cao inferthat they carry with them their obviation or negation. perhaps interpreted as marginal tendencies at any one point9 but rising cyclically to notice again over the long term. Here again, we see that the arbitrary nature ofthe sign orthe text operates overthe long-term to negate the rationalizing impulse to flX meaning. Therecan he no sacred texts with fixed. etemal meanings. These simulations incorporate the terms of their own negation and eventually tom in on themselves, expressing their latent values. If Reason is the core symbol ofthe culture ofmodernity, does it also contain i15 obviation? TheEviI Demon ofSimulation The internai disjuncture ofthe simulacrum is decidedly its most intriguing characteristic for the poststructuraiists. In The Loeic ofSense Deleuze uses the argument DOW familiar to us, that the simulacrum dissimulates the non-identity between the sign and the referent, to suggest the POssibility ofa non-hierarchical philosophy. The simulacrum plays a central part in bis 'reversai' ofthe Platonic theory ofForms and i15 enduring hierarchy of representations, ordered by principle ofidentity witb the abstract Idea. Deleuze is frankly dismissive ofsuch hierarchies, writing that ·'philosophy is always selecting among !>retenders, excluding the eccentric and divergent in the name ofa superior finality..:· (Deleuze 260) ln Deleuze's accoun~ the simulacrum provided Plato with a means of distinguishing arbitrarily between theacceptable and the unacceptable foundations for knowledge: The copy is an image endowed with resemblance, the simulacrum is an image without resemblance. The catechism. 50 much inspired by Platonism. bas familiarized us with this notion. God made man in bis image and resemblance. Through sin, however, man lost the resemblance while maintaining the image. We have become simulacra. We have forsaken moral existence in order toenteraesthetic existence. This remark about the catechism bas the advantage ofemphasizing the demonic characterofthe simulacrum." (Deleuze 257) Ofcourse the ~demonic chamcter' ofthe simulacrum has little to do with good and ( evil nowadays, and much more with the indetenninacy ofthe sign. The simulacrum is evil 54 in that it threatens to undennine the natural orderofrepresentation, and by extension the ( confident categories and hierarchies cbampioned by Reason. As Foucault reminds us in his essay, in the secuIarage the evil demon is more likely to take the form ofDescartes' malin génie, who c10uds the rational mind and tries to fool us into thinking that our dreams are perceptions ofreallife. It is the simulacrum's capacity to incorporate two ormore radicaUy opposing meanings that makes it an effective funclional metaphorin a philosophy ofnon-identity. Thefundamental operation ofDeleuze's reversai is the negation ofthe overriding Platonic valuation ofsimilarity or uoity (between Ideas and their representations) by substituting a contrary valuation of ~difference.'The simulacrum becomes the preferred vehicle for representing the anti-hierarchical correspondenceofdifferences that Deleuze envisions, in what could he taken as a parody ofthe Theory offonns. The simulacrum was to he P1ato's scaPegoat, the source ofail "false knowledge,' and rational in only a strategic sense. The simulacrum is tumed against itselfin Deleuze's subversive use, becoming anri-rational. Here the simulacrum, to paraphrase Wagner, harbours the obviation ofail representational hierarchies. A connection cao easily he made to social or tertiary simulation, where the sign seems to take precedence over the referent. ( There is a Heraclitean aspect to the simulacrum that defies objectification. It is a1ways in flux, harboring unknown contradictions, neither completely random nor orderly in its oscillation. It betrays a certain vitality and opaqueness which cannot he harnessed. Where an attempt is made to regulate its meaning, the effon invariably fails over the long tenn. It is a privileged metaphor for difference, the irrational, and the spiritof "play. ~ The Fablin& orthe World Ifwe follow the poststructuralists' argument into its cultural implications, it leads to the notion that what we might calI the culture ofrationality folds back on itselfand becomes irrational through its own functioning. This is not to suggest that culture was ever necessarily dominated by the rational ideal. Rather, the process ofret1exive investigation begun during the Enlightenment has finally extended to its own grounding assumptions and has found them to he not entirely rational. The result has been the destahilization of representatioD7 and a1so the growing awareness ofa latent mythical dimension to modem eXPerience, the 'fabling ofthe world' as Gianni Vattimo has described it. Rationality, c having encountered little resistance in its operationalizationofmaterially productive terrain, 55 has come full circle to confront the culture that engendered it7and finds an irrational core ( still operative amid the institutions ofmodemity. The main consequence ofrationality's self-consumption7at least for metaphysics, is the 1055 ofthe central notion ofhistory as the emancipation ofReason. As Vattimo tells us7 the decline ofthe unilinear narrative ofbistory has come about by the acknowledgment of numerous 'other' cultures that have achieved a presence within the public sphere. The effect ofthe human sciences and the mass media has been to cause the proliferation ofalternative centers ofhistory by bringing the competing histories ofother cultures into the consciousness ofthe West. It is no longer possible to regard the universal telos ofhistory as the progressive discarding ofirrational and mytbic thought: "Demythologization has itselfcome to he seen as myth." (Vattimo39) SecuIar modernity has drained the symbolic vitality from culture, but the religious elements oftradition remain, "as traces, as hidden and distorted models that are nonetheless profoundly present" (Vattimo 40) When rational skepticism in the fonn ofthe humansciences uncovers these trace simulacra, myth regains legitimacy, but only within the frame ofa generally 'weakened7experience oftruth. The presence ofmyth in our culture does oot represent an alternative oropposing movement to modernization, but is ( rather its natural outcome, its destination at least thus far. (Vattimo 42) \ 7 The rediscovery ofmyth bas not been the result ofa romantic tom back to prior forms ofknowledge, but rather the logical extension ofthe rationality that has led to the human sciences, technology and the proliferation ofcommunication systems. Lodged within the rational structures ofmodemity were the donnant seeds ofirrationality, awaitiog the turning offigure to ground that the digital refiguring ofculture has wrought. Refablina the Social Body For Baudrillard, tecbnology plays an important role in cultivating indeterminacy. In the new environment ofelectronic communication7the liberation ofthe sign by simulation extends to undennining the body"s self-reference7auguring the retum ofa mythic state of immanence. He shares with many ofthe poststructuralists"an idealization of prerepresentatiooal realms ofbodies and their intensities overrepresentational schemes of meaning.'7 (Best and Kellner84) In The Ecstasy ofCommunication, Baudrillard retums to bis consideration ofmetastasis, the fourth order ofsimulation, without shrouding ms ( metaphysics in chaos theory. Through the series "Metamorphosis, Metaphor, Metastasis," 56 Baudrillard details the passage ofthe body through three stages ofsignificance. ( Baudrillard's implication is that in the metastatic period, through the mediation ofthe computerin particular, the protean quality ofthe metamorphic body is recovered in a non identificatory retum to immanence. This concems more than the body however; it is an 'embodied' narrative ofthe return ofthe irrational, of myth, narrative and indetenninacy, within highly rationalized systems ofcommunication. The metamorphic body is the prerepresentational body of'the fable' as Baudrillard describes i~ an idealized primordial state approaching Bataille's metaphysical notion of immanence: Prior to consciousness, which allows the positing ofthe discrete entities of subjectand object, there is oolyan "undifferentiated immensity" that is the immanence of Being. Within this ambiance, the symbolic dimension ofthe body is simply an intensity, and passes freely between fonns, sexes and species, never having been subjected to a representational regime. Metamorphosis is a fonn oftotal liberty through mutability, an uncontroUable force. Baudrillard makes this unrestricted polymorphous energy out to he "the root ofaIl seduction,"(46) the negative principle that replaces detenninism and causality in the immanent universe where conventional metaphysical oppositions ofdepth and surface do not hold. It is when immanence is interrupted by the transcendent fixing ofa fonn to the self that the metamorphic body is 'reduced' in experientiaJ potential to the metaphoric body of more conventional representation. The fluid energy ofmetamorphosis has been driven into the individual unconscious. It leaves its POwerful traces in the psychologjcal imagjnary, "the psychological vestige ofthe cruel prestige offonns and appearances. The imaginary is the diminished fonn of the genie's illusion and reign of metamorphoses." (49) Through the identification ofthe body with the passions, the metaphoric body becomes figured as the site ofa1l the negative pulsions, the riotous symbolic dimension, that ragOO in the metamorphic stage - in some contemporary accounts, the underside ofthe mindfbody dichotomy, the unconscious, the devil's share, noise: ...the way in which we recount (the body) in our unrecognized simulacrum of reality, as an individuated space of pulsion, ofdesire and phantasies, has 100 it to become the materialist Precipitation ofa seducing fonn, which carried with it a gigantic power ofnegation overthe world, an ultra mundane power ofillusion and metamorphosis. (49) The imaginary as loosely defined here bas little to do with Lacanian theory. It is a repository ofthe affective energjes that have been foreed back into the individual ( ..... unconscious through the rationalizing process ofmodernity. This negative force, entropic, 57 destn1ctive~ and indeterminate is~ in the metaphysical context in whicb Baudrillard works~ ( the continuing butdispersed action ofthe symbolic dimension ofpremodem cultures.. pushing up into rationalized experience like weeds between the cracks in the pavement. The body and the imaginary are deemed the site ofthese unndy energies. 10 the final representational stage ofthe body.. that of metastasis~the imaginary becomes exteriorized through technology. The immense negative principle ofseduction.. pushed back ioto the uoconscious ofthe metaphoric body, rmds its way into the object wood ofperceived 'reality~ to destabilize it..leading to grave indetenmnacy. Hele again simulation engenders irrationality: One can no longercount 00 a revolution ofthe repressed (either psychic or historica1). ft is the immanence that everything is playing ouL It is simply not cenain if~ in immanence, things will obey the objective laws which we are wiUing to grant them. (54) Here the body becomes a simulation and figuratively floats free from its prior semiotic forms. An operational definition bas replaced the earliersacred and metaphysical representations ofthe body, reducing it to little more than an empty medium for the transfer ofDNA. But the operational definition.. in ail ofits antihumanism, opens up new lines of association that May prove liberatingfor the body through the paralleling ofthe biological and teehnologicaI codes: "From a biologica1, genetic and cyhemetic point ofview~ we are ail mutants." (51) The body becomes indefinable once again.. and begins to retrieve sorne of the fluid potentiaI ofthe metamorphic. Baudrillard singles out"computers as a new productive immaterial force," (51) thatcreate a "telepathic~ telecommunicational universe"(52). The implication is that we bave looped back ioto contact with the mytbic body ofmetamorphosis as simulation bas reached a criticallevel ofcultural influence. Tbrough the tecbnology we are confronted with the excluded symbolic dimension ofexperience, the unsystematizable and imploding mass that simulation cannot assimilate. In metastasis the extemalizationofthe social imaginary continues witbin the artificiaIly enhanced environrnents ofsimulation, but these become 50 nurnerous and diffused through the culture that irratiooality begins 10 he perceived in areas not coosidered its usual domain. We must recognize that myth.. narrative and the irrational functioning ofimaginary are spread throughout the culture ofrationality. We should recall the hypothesis ofthe digital refiguring ofculture that 1briefly presented in my introduction. Culture is refiguring~ from the analog fonns that are based on the dimorphic map ofthe body~ to the more abstract form ofthe digital continuum that is derived from the distal realm of rationaIity - science and teehnology. The basis ofour 58 culture is drifting, eut loose from the referential body, which bas been undermined by ( hyperreality. Baudrillard's tale ofthe body dissolving in a telecommunicational universe of immanence seems to he an exaggeration ofthis hypothesis. In these highly abstract environments we are literallydisembodied., and metapborically freed from representational hierarchies to assume otheridentities, perhaps even to fancy ourselves as hybrids ofman and machine. Sucb domains would be a more extreme expression ofa wider tendency towards abstraction in a culture that is amassing a critical number ofsimulations, in Baudrillard's terms, "flowing towards death." The drifting ofculture May weil imply ilS extinction as a nurturing environment for the elaboration ofthe symbolic dimension of experience. Ifthe basis ofculture is drifting towards the distal realm, this implies, as Del Rio and Alvarez put il, the cognitive management ofsociallife. The disembodimentofour culture tbreatens todevalue the inational, the immanentqualities ofspontaneity and play, as systemic imperatives come to organize sociallife. There arises the need for "otherspaces" (as Foucault called his 'heterotopia ofcompensation') that allow us to step out ofthe wider, rational culture and suspend its ordering principles. Such spaces become even more important when the discursive spaces ofthe public spbere are c10gged with the competing ( claims ofsocietal engineers, each with their preferred fonn ofsocial simulation. By the logic ofsimulation, computer networks are the apotheosis ofcommunication systems, yet within them the irrational May potentially find expression. The simulated 'telepathic' environments that Baudrillard describes might serve as 'safe havens," places in which the inational May he pennitted free play again. As we shaH see in the next section, technologically generated simulations are fueling the imaginary by providing tluid environmentsfor constructing new and ephemeral identities with a variety ofsimulated bodies and personas. We shaH see ifthese bounded simulations provide safe havens for the free play ofthe irrational. ( 59 ( ChapterFour: Di&ital Domains Postmodem Play Spaces Simulatedenvironments are often intended as play spaces in which participants may indulge in elaborating theirfantasies while suspendingjudgment as to the 'reality' oftheir experience. Though many simulations invoke this sort ofexperiential cross-overand potential for play, not ail simulations are 'playful,' in fact simulation's effects at the systemic level are clearly rationalizing. The simulated environments that 1shall discuss in this chapter, the MUn and the urban leisure spaces, do not automatically escape this rationalizing effect, though as in ail social situations, spontaneous behaviour is never entirely nlled out. Social simulations define behaviour contextually, and we might think of these spaces as frames that define a less fonnalized set ofexperiential parameters, and fewer sanctions for departing from those tbat do exist. Another distinguishing factor, in technical and practical space, between the play space and the more rationalizing foons of simulation, is the outcome ofactions taken within the simulation. Are the consequences of participation clearly defioed and delimited? Is the simulation linked toa control mechanism that produces a change in the material world? Ifthe simulation is suitably abstracted from the containing environment, the consequences ofactions in the simulation are reversible. For this reason they make good learning environments, because experience can be acquired while sheltered from the consequences ofaction in the real world. The parallel ofthe technologically produced and the 'naturally existiog' environmeot may tell us something about our use ofpractical space, and the common predilection for fantasy environments that we see off-lïne. The abstraction ofthe body effected by computer-mediated communication a1so iovites a playful, exploratory reaction. The medium allows users to create alter egos and persooas which depend 00a certain amouotofimaginative investment and experiential crossoverfor theirappeal. We cao reasonably assume that few computer users have yet experienced the immanence ofthe metastatic body, but Baudrillard~spoint is that we may soon he possible to bypass the body altogether and enter, disembodied, into the identificatory play ofa fluid, malleable technological fantasy world.lfthis is the case it will he interesting to see ifthe full analogue range ofthe body cao he carried overioto the rnediated environmeot. For the moment this remains a palpable limitation to the medium. It ( 60 bas not, bowever, stifled the utopian fantasies that surround the medium as a site of ( political as weil as corporeal 'emanciPation.' The MUD (an acronym for "Multi-user domain", similarto MUCK, MOO, MUSH and LPMUD) is one such fantasy environmenL ft is a computer program that enables users to create a simulated sociocultural environmentoutoftext, and DOW increasingly using sorne fonn of graphics. The text window ofthe computer acts as the equivalent ofshared social space to which users lint from their home computers. The MUD has many ofthe attributes ofactual social space, though its restricted rePresentational palette has obliged users to develop an adapted set ofbehavioura1 codes to conununicate effectively. Users are free to invent conversationand simulated social activity that is ca..rried in a textual window relayed to ail participating computers. The cues normally associated with sight, sound and touch are provided through description while dialogue is conveyed through the textual conventions ofreported speech, giving the MUn the semblance ofan emergent collective fiction. Players mayjoin as guests or as members, but the ability to provide contextual information - to represent gesture oremotion, or to add text pennanently to the environment, is often reserved for members alone. Suggestions ofacceptable message content Cbehaviour') are frequently supplied on entry to the MOO as 'advice' on etiquette; obscenity and harassment are most often deemed unacceptable. MUD supervisors called 'wizards' May observe interaction to make sure the social codes are respected. The degree ofpolicing is specific to each MUD, though the non-commercial versions are relatively relaxed conceming occasional outbursts of 'flaming.' [n fact, the general effect ofcomputer-mediated communication is that users become less inhibited due to the relative anonymity and protection afforded by the textual Mediation. Exchanges May he more volatile, aggressive ordisrespectful, or intimate and friendly, than routine face to face communication. Players create theirown personae through character descriptions and interactional style. The illusion ofautonomous existence for the personae is cultivated as part ofthe game; inactive personae are often listed as 'sleeping' in the MUD. The MUn provides many options for users to play with identity. Will the character be invented or true to the player's conception ofself? And, to what degree do the described contexts really serveas 'environments' for interaction; are they vital projections of players' taste and lifestyle choices and fantasies, orare they simply examples ofwriting skill, or lackthereof? The MUD opens up a space for play with identity and imaginary relations with personae and the contextual objects ofone's own creation. Certain accounts hoId that a c surprisingly high degree ofinvestment is made in the Personae and in the encounters played 61 out between them in the simulated environmenL Proponents often say that the MUD is a ( fonn ofvirtual reality, implying thatfor some players the experience is highly immersive, and that the süppage between selfand persona that makes the game work is uncontrollable. To generalize the experience ofthese reportedly helpless subjects in anticipation of'full virtual reality', as sorne enthusiasts seem bent on doing, is misleading. These simulations offera different sort ofexperience to each player, depending largely on their degree of investment in the fantasy world. The phenomenon is differential because players exercise a certain amount ofcontrol over the process, which is one of'Ietting go,' not simply ofsocial constraints, as many theorists have noted, but also ofpsychological boundaries. MUDs are ratherlike collective transitional objects in D.W. Winnicott's terms, where distinctions between subject and object also blur. This can provide an elusive type ofpleasure, derived from the suspension ofthe usually self-imposed psychological distinction between selfand objecL Maintaining tbis distinction is hard, lifelong work, as Winnicott tells us; '''no human being is free from the strain ofreality." The release from this strain (ofwhich play with identity in the MUD is a controlled example) involves temporarily submitting oneselfto the confusion inherent in dropping the subject-object boundaries. This creates a 'potential space', as Winnicott caUs it, one that first cornes to exist between infant and mother. ( At tirst the infant is entirely dependent, and makes no distinction between selfand the mother, who adapts to its needs as weil as she cano When the baby becomes capable of distinguishing selffrom significant objects, it a1so becomes aware of having a wish, and of having that wish met by the mother. An imagined correspondence between the wished for and the ensuing reality installs itself. This provides the basis for trust and the later conviction that more complex needs will be met by the world. As the child grows older and the mother becomes less adaptive, the infant feels the gap grow between its desire and the object ofits satisfaction. The transitional object cornes into use to provide a compromise, so that the separateness ofthe mother cao be borne. The infant seeks to avoid separation from the object ofits satisfaction '''by the tilling in ofthe potential space with creative playing, with the use of symbols and with ail that eventually adds up to a culturallife." In this way sorne objects or phenomena l'etain an unquestioned correspondence between objective and subjective worlds. To Winnicott, the transitional object is the tirst use ofsymbol and the first experience ofplay. The important aspect ofWinnicott's argument for our purposes is the use ofthe object to symbolize the union oftwo separate things, the baby and the motherat the time of separation, as a way ofacknowledging the separation but continuing to hold open an incorporation on an imaginative level. Thus the potential space also links two levels of 62 social reality. There is a play between separateness and union. The 'potential space' thus ( created becomes, in later life, the area ofcreative play and fantasy, and latercultural experience. Mentally, tbis is a pivotai concept, medialing hetween the objective and the subjective worlds. The concept points to the subjective process ofseparating the selffrom objects and the strain inherent in making that separation. Winnicott's theory clearly complements Richard Shweder's view ofthe socio-cultural environment as an 'intenlional world' that depends on the positing ofmental constructs as wholly external phenomena to lend intelligibility to seosory impressions. It also lends credence to elements ofthe theory ofsocial simulation; the construction ofthe social worlddepends on projecting pre conscious structures ofmeaning that are nonetheless open to purposeful manipulation. 1should do the concept of'potential space' justice and acknowledge the Iimits to the analogy that 1will draw. The scope ofthe tenn play, which Winnicott extends to 'cultural experience', is vast, and for the moment 1would rather not Hmit it, but instead suggest that tmly playful cultural experience would he a wonderful lhing (1 will retum to this idea in my conclusion). MUn users May occasionally slip ioto the kind ofimmersive experience familiar to the child utterly engrossed in a game cfits own devising, but generally the user is far more self-aware and controlling ofbis own experience. The textual Mediation, the 'Iag' time (delays) between messages, and the greaterneed for tum-taking that characterize the medium make it incapable ofproviding a consistently engrossing experience. This is not to rule out the possibility that users occasionally 'slip' into surprising degrees ofinvestment in the simulation. However, the extent to which this actually happens must remain a mystery to us. The pleasures ofthe MUD, and indeed ofail representational simulations that provide an immersive, technologjcally mediated environrnent, certainly depend on the confusion ofthe levels that we conventionally tenn the real and the represented. More fundamentally, this is an aspect ofthe purposeful confusion ofsubject and object that characterizes child's play. Winnicott's notion ofpotential space captures the importance of this intentional and perbaps not quite conscious agency, this tendency to prolong and intensify the subjective linkage with significant objects through symbolization and fantasy. This agency applies equally to the MUD user's investment in on-line 'personae', and in a broader sense to the subject's willingness to take up the terms ofthe system constituting the simulation, which involves a fair bit ofwork. The notion of potential space is also fundamental to an explanation ofthe extraordinary attribution ofagency to the technology itself, a cultural tendency that Ron Bumett has written about, to which we will retum in a ( moment. The simplistic view ofsimulation promoted by Many ofBaudrillard's interpreters '- 63 is thatthe media have acquired the powerto 'replace' reality. At least in the realmof ( representational media, something approaching this effectcannot be produced withoutthe willing collaboration ofthe subject. The game is one ofmake-believe, and users want to invest in the cbaracters tbatthey writefor themselves and the relationships that they cultivateon-line, as Elizabeth Reid makes clear: Virtual worlds exisl not in the technology used to represent them nor purely in the mind ofthe user but in the relationship between internai mental constructs and technologically generated representations ofthese constructs. The illusion ofreality lies oot in the machinery itselfbut in the user's willingness to treat the manifestations ofhis or berimaginings as iftbey were real. (Reid (66) The cbaracteristics ofthe medium bave elicited a growing amountofcritical interest and discussion oftheir social significance. Mark. Poster lists wbat are widely considered the extraordinary effects ofcomputerwriting on the subject: 1. tbey introduce new possibilities for playing witb identities. 2. they degendercommunications by removing gendercues 3. they destabilize existiog hierarchies in relationships... 4. they disperse the subjec~ dislocating it temporally and spatially. (Poster 1(6) The fluidity ofidentity is the aspect ofthis fonn ofcomputer-mediatedcommunication that bas intrigued critics most. Participants are supposedly in a position to rewrite their identities on-line, freed from the personal history inscribed in the body. In a sense the user is exteriorizing bis or her subjectivity, and reconstructing it, in dialogue and collaboration with others.Tbe ability to achieve beightened control ofself-representation leads Many users to imagine that their constructionsare more true to their "real" selves (perbaps more exactly, their own self-conception). The willingness to create a representation ofself, and to maintain one or Many ofthese in different MUns, in fact to 'play' several at once, is taken literally as indicative ofa predilection for multiple roles, fractured subjectivity and even split personality by Sherry Turlde. Her conclusions may he somewhatextreme, but her notion ofthe two-way nature ofthe experiential cross-over rings true. Experience in mediated environments supplementthe means toarticulate experience in RL('reallife,' to bersubjects). This is just another example ofhow the distal realm cornes to furnish categories andconcepts that supplementand May even replace those relevant to our ( proximal experience: 64 in the daily practice ofmany computer users, windows have become a ( powerful metaphorfor thinking about the selfas a multiple distributed system... (MUDs) offer parallel identities, parallellives. The experience of this parallelism encourages treating oo-screen and off-screeo lives with a surprising degree ofequality. Experiences on the ioternet exteod the metaphor ofwindows - now RL (reallife) itself, as Doug said, can be 'just one more window.' (Turkie (4) But there is little that is substantially new going on here. Habennas, in describing the construction ofthe bourgeois subject in the 18th century, makes it clear that epistolary Iiterature has for a long time served the individual both as an opportunity to externalize subjectivity and to reconstruct it: The reality as illusion that the new genre created received its proper name in Eoglish, "fiction": itshed the characterofthe merely fictitious. The psychological novel fashioned for the first time the kind ofrealism that allowed anyone to enter into the literary action as a substitute for his owo, to use the relationships between the figures, between the author, the characters, and the readeras substitute relationships for reality. The contemporary drama too becamefiction 00differently than the novel through the introduction ofthe 'fourth wall'. The same Madame de Stael who in her house cultivated to excess that social game in which afterdinner everyone withdrew to write letters to one another became aware that the persons themselves became sujets de fiction for themselves and the others. (Habermas 50) Much that is presented as new about the MUD is an adaptation ofthe epistolary reflex, with deep roots in the fonns ofliterate culture.lts effects largely perpetuate the confirmation of an individualized subjectivity that Habennas recognized as characterizing the effects ofthe bourgeois novel, and we are now seeing a recoding ofthat culture in the terms ofthe new medium. One couId argue that the degree ofdisembedding from context and identity markers does present a significant change, but most ofthe claims derived from tbis property have been challenged: Genderdiscrimioation continues on-line (see Shade); anonymity is not guaranteed, as the recent shut-down ofa popular anonYm0us remailer serverdemonstrates; policy worries tum around access limitations that will reinforce social divisions. Subjectivity, inside or outside ofthe confines ofthe MUD simulation, seems as difficult to generalize about as it everwas. Definitivejudgements on these questions are ( 65 impossible to mûe. It is a very complex, differential phenomenon, not at all uniform in ( chameter. The MUn illustrates some ofthe properties ofa closed system familiar to us from ourdiscussion ofsimulations in chaptertwo. Here closure is effected at a technological level, requiring access to computer networks and a certain amount ofpractice at manipulating the controls ofthe game, as weil as time to foster on-fine relationships. The MUns differ significantly enough from non-mediated environments to potentially define theirown set ofcodes ofsocial behavioUT. Yet the persistence ofstructuring mechanisms has proven to be one ofthe more obsessively discussed aspects ofMUDs: "The contexts and atmospheres that we take for granted in regulating our behaviour are very much present on MUns, although not in the form we are used to encountering in actuality." (Reid 174) The applicability ofexisting societal codes and their limitations may be debated and contested (in discussions ofcyberspatial 'rape.. ' for instance) but they remain active on-line. What is remarkable then, is that social codes and restraints are ofsuch concem despite the closure ofthe environment and the freedom from real-world consequences ofwhat goes on there. We cao only offeras an explanation that setting up such restrictions is a major componentofcreating a sociO-culturai environment The MUn illustrates the attractions ofsocial interaction conductedatthe comfortable distance supplied by simulation, and also the related trade-off in tenns ofthe imposition of systemic principles. Users enjoy the altered social protocol, anonymity, lack of commitment.. and physical security that textual collaborations within the MUD afford. At the same time the MUn represents the splitting offofthe analogue dimension ofinteraction, the cues ofthe body and social context. Interaction within the MUD draws users deeper into the structures oftechnology. Not only the 'existence' ofthe individual on-fine, but the functioning ofthe entire system depends on the production oftext: Moreover, the existence ofthe MUn system itselfdepends on a richness of communication and creation ofcontext. Like any other system, MUDs abhor a vacuum, and a vacuum on a MUn is seen in a lack oftextual exchanges. The virtual universe functions ooly when players are willing to volunteer from their own contributions. (Reid 174) Users scramble to fit analogue material into the code ofthe MUD, narrating context and physical action, typing commands andemoticons. They may initially derive pleasure from the challenge or the novelty ofthe mediation process, but it is ultimately not a replacement for the absent body. From the point ofview ofmany observers~ communicating through ( the MUD means the loss ofa concrete 'presence' that we take for granted. Our personae, 66 and by association our selves" cease to exist ifwe don"t produce communication - more ( text. MacKinnon sees the net as a simulation oflife processes that are constantly in danger ofsuccumbing to entropy. The... analog for life is also derived from motions" the motion ofthe cycle ofstatement and response... the visible demonstration ofone"s presence via a persona,. and continuous participation in the cycle ofstatement and response. Without the satisfaction ofthese conditions~a persona cannot exist. (MacKinnon 128) The MUn illustrates sorne ofthe limits to representational simulations and our ability to conduct social relations through them. Despite the "pleasures' ofthe MUn, most users eventually go off-line 10 continue social relations, andfmally reassert the importance ofthe ·window' that is 'Real Life.' For the moment it is their beliefin the decline of everyday experience and its consequences that are the more interesting social phenomena As TurkIe says, "we are eagerto believe that the Internet will provide an effective substitute for face-to-face interaction. But the move toward virtuality tends to skew ourexperience of the real." (236) She sees MUDs as a part ofwhat she calls a "culture ofsimulation.' This notion seems largely based on sorne ofthe surface effects of Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality. In her opinion, the MUn user's interest in simulating existence on-line is t \ preceded by the prevalence ofsimulated environments in the material world. This predilection for fantasy environments is not confined to the on-line world. [t is in fact generalized throughout the culture. as Mike Featherstone comments: Theme parks, contemPQrary MuseUms and the whole heritage indusUy play to this sense ofrecreating home which takes one back to a past experienced in fictional form... the combination of realistic film-sel scenery, animatronics, sounds and smells are often sufficient to persuade adults to suspend disbeliefand relive the fiction... We fmd examples in the growing number ofopen-air and indoor industrial museums... Such postmodem spaces... encourage a "controlled decontrol' ofthe emotions, a receptivity to, and experimentation with, emotional experiences and collective memories previously closed offfrom experience. They encourage the adult to he childlike again. and allow the child 10 play with simulated ranges of adult experience." (Featherstone 97) Such spaces have been widely critiqued as inauthentic objectifications ofculture and Baudrillard himselfbas memorably treated them as the alibi tenn that makes the less-than real U.S.A. apPear authentic by comparison. But more importantly. the notion of 67 simulation brings the correspondences between the on-line and ~real' fantasyenvironments ( to the fore. Each depends on the reduction ofcomplexity and the selection and heightening ofcertain elements ofthe environments on which they work. Bath practical and technical spaces structure the way in which social interaction occurs and the possible range of meaniogs that cao be expressed within them. Uman fantasy environments are amoog the mast tightly controlled uses ofpseudo-public space in the contemporary city. Each apPearS somehow to encourage a regression towards a childish sense of wonder and play. As we notOO in OUT discussion of Wmnico~playful behaviour in such environments is based 00 a suspension ofthe distinction between the objective and subjective worlds. This becomes rather more forced in the example of urban fantasy environments. lt is more appropriate 10 speakofa willed confusion orambiguity here, for the urban fantasy environments seldom exhibit the degree ofclosure or the powerof fascination that the better technological simulations seem 10 offer. More ofa conscious effort is required ofparticipants to temporarily SUSPend boundaries and to achieve partial immersion in the fantasy environmenL In the construction ofthese environments there is a purposeful selection ofqualities and a display ofartifice that leaves no doubt that we are in a cootrolled world. lt is worth retuming to La Pensée Sauvaee for insight ioto a poteotial operational code here. The postmodem fantasy environments are commonly described as the vanguard ofa playful aesthetic dimension that has been introduced into urban space. Theme parks and shopping mails appear to function as self-contained universes, where a single principle seems to underlie every aesthetic and practical decision goveming the site - the objective correlatives ofdiscourses like ~fun'. ~convenience' or ~Ieisure.' The complexity ofthese environments has been reduced,just as the absence ofthe body limits the consequences and the complexity ofinteraction on the MUO. Lévi-Strauss discusses the reduced scale model as the "universal type" ofthe work ofart (the reduction may equally he ofqualities rather than scale), and comments that its main virtue is to give the beholder a sense of power over the object represented, extending the control already inherent in imitation. Being smaller, the object as a whole seems less formidable. By being quantitatively diminished, it seems to us qualitatively simplified. More exactly, this quantitative transposition extends and diversifies our power over a homologue ofa thing..• (Lévi-Strauss 23) The recreation ofthe child's fantasy world is a similarsort ofincitement to mastery, rendering the environment overtly safe and unthreatening. The purposeful reduction ofthe ( social world to the most unthreatening dimensions in these simulations emphasizes that they 68 are sanctioned spaces ofregression (in a positive sense ofrelease from socialized ( constraints on behaviour). Lévi-Strauss comments that because these environments are man-made, the viewer's interpretive response changes; the art object picks up "intelligible dimensions" as it loses "sensible dimensions." (Lévi-Strauss 24) This is equally applicable to the simulation, where the recognition ofthe intentionalityofartificially enhanced environments, orthe intuition ofa semiotic code worked into diverse objects, often creates the sensation ofhyperreality, of being surrounded by a surplus of meaning. Such an important investment in these simulated fantasy environments and the playful experiences that they provide May weil have diminished ourcapacityfor othersorts ofplay, or cultural experience. By these 1Mean the successors to traditional forros ofa more spontaneous 'controlled decontrol ofthe emotions' - the carnivals, rituals and festivals that provided a regularand generalized overtuming ofhierarchy and social structure on a collective scale. The simulatedfantasy environments potentially provide sorne forro of substitute, but it is a totally dispersed one. The disembedding characteristic of modernity is taken to new extremes in the MUD, where both physicallocale and the marks ofthe body are completely abstracted. Users interaet at such extreme distances that most will never meet, norwill they share any affective experience that depends on the implication ofthe body. The practical fantasy environments are thoroughly implicated in the mechanisms ofconsumption. Our highly treasured marks oflocal cultural specificity are more often than not simulations, offering a balm for the anxieties produced by globalization. The type ofplay that might improve on these objectified fonns could profit from the isolation from real consequences that characterizes simulation. A utopian goal for such play might be a significant liberation from societal constraints. Ultimately the potential for creating a social environment amenable to ourplayful, creative spirits is what could be promoted within the protected contexts ofsimulation. As Lévi-Strauss implies, we may be attmcted to simulations because they offer the illusion ofmastery, but we would he wise to examine how we also long for simulation to control !!!. Ron Bumett draws on Winnicott's notion of potential space to elaborate a theory ofthe imaginative use that audiences make ofimages, which he calls 'projection.' One fondamental aspect ofprojection is the tendency to delegate the responsibility for creating meaning to the image. 1think that this cao he extended to coyer the cultural aspirations being projected onto the new media, the responsibility that is being off-loaded to the technology itself. It is not a1ways possible to determine where the technology's influence stops and the technological imaginary takes over -- this is the bind ofthe double ( henneneutic - but the consistent attribution ofpower is clear: 69 This fantasy ofexternal powercannotcome about without identification and ( projection, without replacing what bas been seen and listened to witb tbe subjective transfonnation and processes that make it possible for images to be understood and experienced... Tbey involve maintaining power over certain aspects ofthat experience, wbile at the same time creating a variety of contingent operations that are profoundly contextual. One ofthese is to confer upon the image a measure ofcontrol, wbich seems to remove tbe "(" from the responsibility ofhaving effected any transfonnations. This may he wbat Winnicott refers toas that intennediate area wbere the intensity of identifying with the image also leads to distance, to the ability to recognize 'play' and to the creation ofa potential space for understanding and experience. (Bumett 2(0) This goes beyond simple anthropomorphization ortechnologjcal detenninism. Turkle documents the projection ofhopes and aspirations onto computer-mediated communication: "Today many are looking to computers and virtual reality to countersocial fragmentation and atomization; to extend democracy; to break down divisions ofgender, race and class; and to lead to a renaissance ofleaming." (Turkle 245) This is something fundamental about the beliefs driving the development ofthe new medium, and ofmany of \ the people theorizing it. When the technological realm throws upa medium as iotriguing and socially challenging as the inteme~ the imaginary cornes ioto play. The medium itselfis attributed meaning, (the medium is the message) and may be transformed from a technology ioto the equivalent ofa social being. As Bumett points out, it may he endowed witb a teleology and even social agency. These imaginative reconstructions may contribute more than any otherfactor to the present and future social impact ofthe medium. Parallel Politics: TheZapatista Rebellion This is most certainly the case ofthe Internet, where the exponential growth ofthe user base seems to be outpaced only by the growth ofspeculative discussion conceming its transfonnative and 'emancipatory' potential.The popular understanding ofthe internet cao he read as a simulation, oot in the 'bard' engineering sense, but rather as a sustained attempt to briog a highly abstract medium ioto line with our more cherished narratives of political and Personal redemption. A si gnificant thread ofthe internet myth concems the appropriation ofthe medium, initially a messaging service for the scientific and defense ( 70 communities, by the lay public. The medium becomes a sounding board for ouranxieties ( and disappointments conceming, among otherthings, politics and the mass media. There is surely a measure ofsocial simulation in the case ofthe peasant uprising that occurred in Chiapas, Mexico in 1994. The Zapatistas' skill in gaining favourable coverage in the mass media bas been widety remarked on (notably by themsetves - part oftheir disanning mystique). Simulation serves as a metaphor with which to address the way Internet users and the opposing parties in the conflict, as weil as sorne ofthe theorists who have written ofthe events directly, have conflated the meanings ofthe technology and the events ioto a highly imaginative and mutually reinforciog sel From the perspective ofa rather more traditional notion ofsimulation, the rebels are manipulating deeply resonant cultural codes belonging to Mexican, American and international media cultures, white being swept up in a tide ofevents leading to their enshrinement as cultural icons that seems to operate on its own, more abstract code. In this example we cao see the Zapatista's willingness to operate in the tennsofthe generalized simulation that the media generate around politics. They are quite consciously influencing their own media representations in a surprisingly effective and, to sorne observers, disturbing manner. We cao also detect in the discussions around their use ofthe Internet a particular coding ofmeaning reserved for the medium itself. ( On the first ofJanuary 1994several thousand campesinos under the name ofthe Zapatista National Liberation Anny took control ofthe smalt town ofSan eristobal, Chiapas, burning the public tax register and declaring independence from the state of Mexico. Govemment forces saon chased them back into the Lacondonjungle, but twelve days laterthe régime calted for a cease-fire that 100 to eveotual negotiatioos, publicly televised but stilliargely inconclusive. Since then, the Zapatistas have waged what amounts to a war ofpropaganda with the Mexican govemment, under constant threat oforganized reprisais ifthe political wind in Mexico should change, and have succeeded in maintaining pressure on the govemment through the mass media. Octavio paz describes the Zapatista rebellion in terms that are highly reminiscent ofsimulation: During the months ofcrisis in Chiapas, television has involuntarily revealed to us a curious sPectacle which combines religious liturgy with civic ceremony. The enchantmentofcertain images - in the original and powerful sense ofthe word enchantment: magical spell - is intensified... each one of their presentations bas had the solemnity ofritual and the seduction ofa spectacle. Beginning with theirattire, the black and blue knit masks and the ( colored neck scarves and their master use ofsymbols like the national flag 71 and religious images - they offerthe spectacleofhooded characters that <- television simultaneously brings close and then draws away on the screeo. (Paz 59-60) Theevents had a bemispherical impact thatimplicatedboth Mexican andAmeriean cultures. The coded gestures and ritual acts that Paz writes ofderive from the catbolic tradition~and a rhetorical and ceremonial style ofpolitics seemingly forgotten by the media societies ofNorth America. Here the reception was perhaps based on a more general idea of how an indigeoous rebellion should unfold. Ofprimary interest to us is tbat a related set of expectations about the use and function ofthe media were being referenced and modified by the presence ofthe Internet in the media mix for what many thought was the flfSt time. Crities have remarked on the public orientation ofthis rebellion~ where slogans painted around San Cristobal were often written in English for the benefit ofCNN viewers~ and the start ofthe action was c1early timed to coïncide with the enactmentofthe North Ameriean Free Trade Agreement. Commenting on the rebellion~ Carlos Fuentes writes that "we have ail become mirrors ofthe struggle between the global village and the local village, between economic integration on the world scale and loyalty to community, memory~ tradition." (Fuentes 58)The Zapatistas ~ actions were symbolically patent throughout theAmericas becausethey were appropriating a set ofpowerful simulations and manipulatiog them in an \" emotional contextcharged with anxiety overthe ratification ofNAFrA. The broad-based support with wbich the Zapatistas were greeted may perhaps he seen as an expression of collective ressentiment overtbis further encroachmentofglobalized abstract systems ioto ways oflife largely emptied oftheirspecifically local characterand autonomy. While the meaning oftradition and community have largely become 50 detached from anyexperiential reference that they '(1031' Iike signs in a simulation system~ they are still entry points ioto the social imaginary. What is most remarkable is how the mass media were capable of creatinga simultaneity ofinformation that galvanized Mexican civil society for a briefwhile around an •identification' with theZapatista cause. The Zapatista's demands were circulated through e-mail and posted in translation to relevant Usenet news groups, and became the object ofmuch discussion among the many alternative political groups that populate the Internet and similarcomputernetworks like PeaceNet. (Halleck32) Since the Internet is based primarily in university and research organizations, academics and students made up a significant public in their own right. This group brought their expertise to bear, translating the communiqués and creating archives of the importantdocuments pertaining to the rebellion. They were also responsible for setting ( up discussion groups where experts on the area and on the history ofthe Indian land claims 72 analyzed the events with sorne authority. Postings came from ail overthe world, expressing ( solidarity with the Zapatistas, indulging in conjecture overtheirleader, Subcommandante Marcos' identity, ordebating god knows what. As Deedee Halleck points out in the NAClA Reoort on the Americas, The January actions were a hit with the grass roots organizers world wide who daily wage legal and moral battles for many ofthe same causes that the FZLNchampions... TheZapatistas have been exemplary in their mobilization ofnew technologies to disseminate infonnation and to point out the emancipatory potential ofthe Internet." (Halleck32) Halleck's article is typical ofthe JX>pular response to the implication ofthe Internet in the rebellion.lt shows a great investment in the properties ofthe new medium, without much thought on the role ofthe users in ascribing a meaning and role to the technology, an oversight for a communications scholar. There has been a general overvaluation ofthe 'emaocipatory potential' ofthe Internet that is reflected in Halleck's inspirational piece. This has certainly been a common feature ofprogressive criticism ofnew oralternative media for decades. Hans Magnus Enzensberger's celebrated essay "Constituents ofa Theory ofthe Media" is representative ofthis strain oftechnologically biased emancipatory utopianism. As he argues, The open secret ofthe electronic media, the decisive political factor, which has been waiting, suppressed or crippled, for its moment to come, is their mobilizing power. (97) Enzensbergershares with most ofthe impassioned champions ofthe Internet the tendency to attribute enormous power to the media, a lacit deniai ofthe role social actors have in shaping the meaning and use ofthe technologies. In his view the emancipatory potential ofthe media remains unexpressed as the result ofsocial forces; "a potential which capitalism must sabotagejust as surely as Soviet revisionism, because it would endanger the role ofboth systems." (97) He takes a rather limited view of mediated communication as being structurally identical with distribution and consumption, in essence a one-way channel. He also shows a rather cursory appreciation ofthe aesthetic fonn ofthe individual media, a common tendency to conflate ail media by ignoring their varied effects on social interaction. The metaphor ofthe monologic quality ofthe mass media has ofcourse been challenged by laterresearch paradigms, which themselves often minimize the imaginative work that occurs when subjects make meaning out ofmediated experience. This is where simulation cao make its strongest contribution to media criticism and the elucidation of Co" meanings around media use, though it obviously does not lend itselfto empirical analysis. 73 Enzensberger is so committed to the notion ofinteractivity as restoring an ( emancipated state ofcommunicative equality (basedon an idealizedface toface model) that he serious1y entertains the ratherfantastic notion thatail receivers May he modified into tmnsmitters. Whether ornot this is possible, the stnlcturing effects that the Internet makes available in the 'nineties permit the type ofwidelydecentralized two-way communication that so enthused Enzensberger in the 'seventies. Forthe moment its technical complexity and expense hamper the extension ofservice to the entire population, and so the utopia of total communication has yet to he realized. Butthe effectsofdecentralized communication are becoming discernible, and it is c1ear that the problem ofdiscursive authority highlighted by the Internet undennines sorne ofthe key assumptions ofthe emancipatory narrative. However, these criticisms only serve to emphasize the popularemotional investment in the Internet. For many il was a powerful and subversive 'force' acting on the events, and was among the most prominentofthe Many simulations that infused the zapatista rebellion. The technology itselfcontributed greatly to the building ofthe Zapatista's mystique. Joumalists speculated that Marcos had a laptop computerat thejunglebide-out from which he composed his famous communiqués, uploading them to the Internet free from the interference ofmedia gatekeepers. (Lateraccounts insist that Marcos' communiqués were delivered to the offices ofa local newspaper where they were faxed to Mexico city and put on-fine aftertheirapPearance in the national daily LaJomada.) But something about the image of revolutionaries accessing the net from a cellularmodem in the jungle, howeverfar fetched, stirred the popular imagination. It became one ofthe more prominent examples of the popular press' association ofnew communications technology and revolutionary political movements, from the fax machines ofthe students in Tiananmen square to Czechoslovakia's 'modem revolution.' Thecurrent technology ofchoice, which does indeed promise decentralized and difficult to police point to point and narrowcast communications, is the Internet. Thesejoumalistic fancies coincide with many of the egalitarian and utopian projections ofthe social sciences, ofwhich Halleck's article is but one example. This imaginativeovervaluationofthe medium is pure simulation. The Internet is conceived ofas a transparent conduit, teetering precariouslyjust outside ofthe grasp of ideological and commercial influences. Il takes on an extended set ofmeanings that draw on and supplement popularand social scientific interpretations ofits unique characteristics, attributing a potent symbolic content to the Internet, a 'sign value' in Baudrillard's terms. This is nothing Jess than the 'animation' ofan entire medium. The effects ofthe medium ( that Posteroffered in 1990basalready received saturation distribution through conventional 74 media cbannels, magazines and television, to the point that they are etched into popular ( consciousness. The ultimateeffect oftbis simulation is to recontextualize the information that the Internet cames. ft is plain to see that important assessments about how to interpret the infonnation on the Internet were made based on its cultural valuation as a 'revolutionary' new medium, in both the political and commercial sense. A second effect ofthe simulation, ifanything more important than the tirst, is to influence the conception ofInternet users about what it is that they are doing when they go on-line. Zapatista supporters c1early feh that they were participating in the events in a novel and quite effective way.The mass media accounts confinn this, and locate the most compelling story in the coupling ofradical politics and new technologies. What makes this dual construction 50 complex is that it is an emergent process (in the sense ofnon-detenninistic), and perhaps systemic in nature once under way. The users themselves contribute to it by behaving in ways suggested by their interpretation ofthe context" but the spread ofthis small chunk ofwhat sorne have called the 'ideology ofthe net' bas been too generalized to he the work ofany particularagency. Weare instead seeing a market-like conveyance ofprivate or individual acts creating a build-up of 'sedimented' discourse that often remains archived and available for months afterwards. Noone seerns to question exactly what the utility ofcirculating the anodyne infonnation and conjecture on the Zapatistas was, but plenty ofit continues to circulate. We cao only assume that users are satisfying a multitude ofmore or less rational needs and desires that are articulated in their constructions ofthe technology. 1t seems c1ear that by capitalizing on the fantasies ofthe Internet enthusiasts the Zapatistas were able to establish a completely different type ofpublicity(more al the level of 'aura') than the Mexican govemment, which was Iinked to the widely distrusted state infonnation agencies and the 'official story' oflaTelevisa, the state broadcaster. Defined against the dominant, industrial model ofthe mass media" the Internet was treated as an alternative site free from the vested econornic influences and the mode oforganization that the mass media have imPOsed on the circulation ofinformation. The "rhizomatic network" (Oeaver) ofthe Internet is thus defined against a monolithic cont1ation ofail the mass media in a replay ofthe familiar altemative versus mainstream media dichotomy. This is an opposition that has been rehearsed in discussions ofvideo, the previous aspirant for the 'democratizing' medium ofchoice, as Ron Bumett bas pointed out, There is an underlying moral imperative to the notion ofaltemativity which locates critiqueand analysis witbin a framework ofoppositions to nearly ail (" aspects ofmainstream culture. (232) 75 This profoundly moral dichotomy is based on unexamined assumptions ofwhat the ( relationship between an insurgent group and the media should he. It rests on assumptions ofwhatthe mainstream mediaare (mass audience~ commercial orstate mo are all equally beholden to vested interests ofsocial and capitalistcontrol). The moral distinction is strongestat the point ofindetenninacy - video bas not changed the world but the Internet May yet fulfill its emancipatory poteotial. Ofcourse this neglects the continued role ofthe mass media in establishing an agenda ofinfonnation worthy ofattention. The product of emancipated two-way communication is first ofall an uomanageable quantity of infonnation, all ofitat an equivalent level ofvalue with no adjudicating authority to order it. How many Internet users would have happened on the Zapatista crisis without being guided to it by the mass media? The unstated problem is one of 'truth' and its sources. There is a fiercely sustained hope that the alternative medium will, perhaps simply by nature ofits imagined independence, yield the 'tnle' story, the untold facts suppressed by the mass media. But this moral dichotomy, like so Many others, is collapsing under the generalized condition of simulation. The Zapatistas~amateurs by comparison with even the lowliest corporate public relations officer, manipulate the tenns ofboth mainstream and alternative media codes with ( instinctual ease. U1timately the alternative media simulation is not about retrieving communicative equality, but mtherabout the collective hoPe offinding an alternative context in which 'trutb ~ cao he located and established, even fleetingly. Ironically, the Internet, unregulated aod emergent, is probably the last medium in which sucb a thing could he managed. From a philosophical point ofview, that May weil he ilS most ioteresting quality. While Halleck confers the power00 the medium to serve "as a block against disinfonnatioo... (that)forced even Televisa... to report the official demands ofthe guerrillas..." (31, my italics) Martine Jacot ofLe Monde points out that the EZLN communiqués concerning recent events in Chiapas contained serious inaccuracies. Zapatista sympathizers privy to the Internet discussions accused Le Monde of suppressing important infonnation as it waited to confinn reports that were tater disproved. As Jacot comments, More and more communicators are discovering itevery day. The Internet seems cheaperand more practical than fax orthe telephone for reaching the largest audience world-wide, especially specifically targeted publics. But the risk ofseeing misinfonnation and pure proPaganda broadcast ail overthe c planet also rises proportionately. (Jacot) 76 Ifwe focus on the related issue ofthe increased credibility ofthe alternative media., l this dichotomy goes back many decades., and reveals a pattern ofinitial credibility and eventual disillusionment with new mediafonns. Paul Lazarsfeld noted the initial trust io radio as a 'talking medium" poteotially more objective than the partisan press ofthe forties (in Stott., p. 200)., and Meyrowitz notes the same burst ofenthusiasm for television (106) based more on the sense ofiDtimacy and personal trust developed in news anchors. 1would emphasize what seems to he the increased credulity with each representational advance (the fears evoked by the cognitive override ofvirtual reality take 00 more credence in this Iight). The public"s mistrust ofthe dominant medium leads to an overiovestment in the new one, and may result in what amounts to a naïve trust in the Internet at present There is a sense, when one reads Paz's description ofthe ritual aura ofthe Mexican media coverage, or ofthe wooden replica guns with which many ofthe destitute Zapatista rebels were anned., that the logic ofsimulation has outweighed the material facts ofwarfare in more than justthe interpretation ofthese events. Paz explicitly takes Guy Debord's tenns when he tells us that this was a rebellion in the name ofthe spectacle, in fact a rebellion in name only, and he may he right. Subcommandante Marcos has confinned in interview that it was an attempt to provoke a resPOnse from Mexican civil society, primarily to achieve ( syrnbolic power(see the Zapatista Net "FAQs"). The predictable effectofentering wholeheartedly into the terms ofsimulation were to castdoubts tirst on the authenticity of the Zapatista's actions, and eventually oojust what constitutes a rebellion. As a symbolic intervention, is this really what we calI a rebellion? ln the face ofsimulation. we are aJways thrown back on the inadequacy ofourdefinitions. Sensing a weakness, the Mexican govemment staged an explicit 'unrnasking' ofMarcos in the news media, playing in their tom with the deep significance ofthe mask in Mexican culture. Denounced as a white Maoist intellectual, Marcos' authority to speakfor the campesinos was widely questioned in the media and on the Internet. The fact that bis communiqués show a progressive use of Indian vemacular(Guillermoprieto 32) points to a certain adjustment in the construction of bis image for public consumption. Yet because ofpopularcynicism towards the mainstream press, where the maneuver was contextualized as an intervention by the state, Marcos retained his credibility in emotional terms. As Paz points out, any political act is, like the theatrical scene or the mass, a representation. Debord's theory ofculture from the Society ofthe Spectacle resembles Baudrillard's notion ofthird ordersimulation in its exploration and demonization ofthe widespread effects ofrepresentation. The spectacle bas become generalized through the societal process ofabstraction and has resulted in wbat amounts to the reification ofreality 77 in the image-objecte Debord still held out hope in the possibility ofthe recuperation of ( human experience when he wrote bis book, through a Marxist-influeneed eultuml epiphany, the exposure ofthe supreme negativity ofthe spectacle. paz follows Debord far enough to tom the argument against ail mediation, suggesting rather hopelessly that we unplug, tbat we "stop being images, to beeome again what we are: men and women, blood and time." (59) This is, ofcourse, precisely where Baudrillard parts ways with Debord and the sitoationists. ForBaudrillard it is impossible to escape from the logie ofsimulation tOOt constitutes the conduet ofpolitics in eontemporary society. Despite the totalizing aspects of this claim, there is something convincing about it, for ifthe zapatistas emerged as public relations experts and Marcos an unlikely media celebrity, tbis must surely be the result of the funetioning ofthe logic ofsimulation itself. They would perhaps bave had more difficulty remaining outside ofthe symbolie overvaluations that made them into international figures ofresistance. The Zapatista uprising was not an authentie "post communist revolution" that was somehow perverted by the media as Fuentes suggests, but more Iikely a courageous, fumbling initial maneuver in a cultural game whose own internai logie built a symbolieally charged conflict with a force ofits own. The roles were clear from the start, but the outeome was never certain. Perspectives which are govemed by simulation as a central concept have a tendency to conflate ail communications technologies, and this cao lead to igooring sorne ofthe nuances that each medium brings to the process. The 'interactivity' ofcomputer-mediated communication makes itan oddly immersive but still text-based simulation technology. Halleck's on-lïne radicals seem to consider theirs a very active relationship to the events, in comparison with those who simply followed reports in the mass media. Much of Ibis can be attributed to the effects ofinteractivity which offers the opportunity to participate in an exchangeofinfonnation with representatives ofan 'imagined community' ofsympathizers. They seem to share the sense that the collection and forwarding ofinfonnation and opinion on the events is somehow closer to significant participation in the events themselves than attending to the mass mediacoverage. Media scrotiny arguably does influence the official response, ifonly through a concem for global public relations, but there is also a popular beliefthat, in the words of Newsweek magazine, "infonnation can undermine dictatorships and the faster it tlows the more trouble they're in." (Watson36) [n effect, the simulation at work here is that infonnation is power, and users set out to exercise that power. From tbis point ofview, manipulating infonnation is almost as effective as physical participation, and the Zapatista's symbolic rebellion is the perfectvehicle for such intangjble participation. Without wanting to belittle theiractions, why is the shuffling about ofinformation 50 78 important? The beginning ofan answer is that the Internet users seem to have been responding to needs and desires for a heightened emotional involvement: (The Zapatistas) have brought a measure ofhope that bas been in woefully short supply during the past few years. There was a sense ofdirect connection~ ofan authentic 'interactive' movemen~as groups and individuals forwarded messages~ excerpted passages~ pinned up tear sheets and posted theirown comments on-Hne. (Halleck 32) These activities, divorced from any practical connection to the rebellion, constituted action in a symbolic field. Oearly the Internet allowed users to extend their sense ofcontrol overthe imaginary universe created by projection, ofwbich the Zapatistas hecame a part. Writing and posting commentary and contributing information on computernetworks is a way ofentering into that universe on a seale equal to its scope. It is important that the Internet is equally ifnot more global in its scope than television. The idea that the Internet deals in alternative viewpoints and that they might he ofpolitical import simply feeds the motivation to enter the simulation. Marcos ~ e-mail communiqués, with theirepistolary intimacy, created a mystified link with bis presence in the objective world that made users feel a more direct connection with the events than they might have ifwatcbing television. This is one ofthe ambiguous aspects ofcriticizing a new writing fonn.1l derives its meaning and cultural valuation not ooly from its own effects, but also in relation to the technologically mediated fonns that preceded it. Ifany single factor is more indicative ofthe effects ofsimulation it is Marcos' emergence as a media celebrity. There was certainly an objective and political outcome of the events in Chiapas, but the process ofconsuming the narratives and the images circulating parallel to the events functions regardless offictional ornon-fictional subject matter. Rather, it is based on the opening up ofa space of identification. Marcos became a figure ofpopularculture in Mexico and among the on-line radicals. The on-lîne controversy about bis identity and right to represent the campesinos may to sorne extent have been a discussion ofthe activists' doubts about their own role as champions ofthe rebellion. From the point of view ofsimulation, bis mie has been comparable to that ofa pop singer or a performer, a figure ofpopular culture. We are dealing with a very complex phenomenon that has elements particular to various subsets ofMexican culture, to American culture, and the global population of Internet users and its subset ofZapatista 'fan culture.' A definitive reading ofthe phenomenon is close to impossible. 1would like to suggest, however, that even the very c broad framework ofthe Internet as an emancipatory medium leads to an impoverished view 79 ofwhat peopleactually do with simulatioDS. The multimedia web site called the '7.apatista ( Net ofAutonomy & Liberation" is a useful foil to HalIeck's vision ofradicals united in the responsible exchange ofinfonnation. ft was created by students al the University ofTexas, which bas maintained an archive ofe-mail cooceming the Zapatistas sioce the startofthe rebellion. 1mention the site simply because itemphasizes the extent to which the Zapatista phenomenon is swept up ioto the popularimaginary as soon as it appears. The web site features prose and poetry about the rebellioo, icons in the shape of Marcos' signature pipe, and psychedelic graphies. A linlt titled 4simulations' leads to a series ofparables written by Marcos, in which bis alter ego Don Durito de la Lacondo~a pipe-smoking beetle, lectures Marcos on the hegemony ofneo-Iiberalism. Visitors to the site are invited to submit their own parables using the character, and ilappears tbat at least one ofthese is posted, though the actual authoris not identified in order to create confusion, perbaps 10 decentre authority. Oearly the site bas been conceived as 'playful' - Derridaand Baudrillard may weil he influences. But what ofthe revolutionary commandante'5 own hal1ucinatory parables. or another ofbis texts reproduced, the metaphysical "Book ofMirrors" which veers towards a notion ofsimulation - and seems designed to inspire this playfulness? The communications that Halleck describes are there, and in the archive one can find the accumulation of Marcos' communiqués and those sincere contributions from scholars, radicals and relief organizations. But they have become the basis ofmuch further imaginative work. The events ofChiapas have become the startiog point for a host ofimagioative transfonnations, and have resulted in an excess ofmeanings through which Marcos and the Zapatistas become available to us as objects ofidentification and fantasy. This site might be a metaphorfor the complexity ofwhat people do in the imaginary universe ofsimulation. There are already Many more layers ofidentification to work through than my account can describe - Marcos the media figure and bis self-commentary through bis alterego beingjust those made explicitly available al the site. My example is no more than metaphoric, but it emphasizes that it's ail too easy 10 acceptthe contextualizing ofthe medium as the grassroots alternative, when in fact it is more like another unpredictable 'potential space' the tenn we have drawn from Winnicott to describe the MUO. There seems no doubt that the continuing expansion ofcomputer networks wiU have transformative results. Where Halleck's emphasis May he misplaced, and the alternative mediaenthusiasts are mistaken, is in projecting the conditions ofemergence for an alternative 4troth' ooto the medium. This upholds the moral dichotomy on which the split between mainstream and alternative media is based. This is equivalent to an attribution of centrality andmarginality thatcomputer-mediatedcommunicationaetually tends to ( undennine. Ifwe take the Internet as a laboratory for contemporary culture, we cao see that 80 this collapse ofcentre and margin is whoUy consistent with the notion ofsimulation as a ( cultural predicament. Rather than a retum to stable authority and consensus about 'truth~' such a culture promises the dissolution ofcentrality, the reduction of gross oppositions to the infinitely small gradations ofthe digital continuum. The Internet is thus éomparable to the hypertextual network that George Landow positions as a "model ofa society of conversations in which no one conversation~no one discipline or ideology~ dominates or founds the others." (70) The unsuspected utility of 'shuffling information', as 1described the enthusiastic activity ofHalleck's on-Iineactivists, becomes in Richard Rorty's words, ·'to keep the conversation going rather than to find the objective truth." (in Landow, p. 70) It makes little difference what circulates, but let it he as heterogeneous as possible, ifwe hope for what is humanly precious to thrive. ( 81 ( ChapterRve: SimulationattheTechno-Social Interface There is an interesting parallel to be made between the exponentially expanding powerofdigital technology and the everincreasingabstraction ofexperience in society. This cao be approached through the metaphorofdigitization. To he a useful tenn of analysis, 6digjtization' requires properdefinition, but rather Iike simulation, it is a metaphor whose utility varies with its potential uses and the connections that itfacilitates. Without attempting to elucidate ail ofits possible meanings, l'd Iike to suggest a few broad interpretations and their sources, which 1will elaborate further ifnecessary in the course of this chapter. The digital metaphor is inspired by Baudrillard, where it appears in the assertion that the digital code is the evolutionary successor to the binary oppositions that structured c1assical metaphysics and realist notions ofrepresentation. ft is the primary structural form associated with a wide variety ofphenomena thatcbaracterize third order simulation. Binarity and digitality constitute the troe generativefonnula which encompasses ail the others and is, in a way, the stabilised fonn ofthe code. This does oot mean pure repetitioo, but minimal difference, the minimal inflexion between two tenns, that is, the 6smallest common paradigm' that cao sustain the fiction of meaning. (Baudrillard Symbolic 73) Developiog on Baudrillard, Charles Levin uses the metaphorofthe digitization ofculture to suggest that through simulation, any structure that is based 00 a polar opposition can he expressed instead as a point on a finely graded digital continuum ofmeaning, effectively neutralizing it (my discussion of gender in chapter two was an example). Baudrillard misses the distinction between bioarity and digitality. The binary code enables the a1gorithmic manipulation by which simulation can replicate an increasingly large numberof organic processes. The simplicity ofthis code (two digits organized in series create sufficient difference to model any process) suggests an u1timate lever ofabstraction. Because the digital code is based on a binary it is reductive in its structure, but its digjtaIity makes itexpansive in its modeling ability: the reduction ofthe unit ofmeaning actually creates the conditions for a greater complexity ofarticulations. These lead to more detailed reproductions, or more seamlessly integrated systems. ( 82 ln the field ofcommunication studies, Paul Watzlawick usedthe digitallanalog ( opposition to make distinctions between levels ofhuman communication. Speech is an example ofdigital communication, which can easily he broken into discrete signs for transcoding.lnWatzlawick's schema. analogue communication refers to the more continuous and complex modes ofexpression, such as body language, that are difficult to transcode. This distinction is easily articulated with ournotion ofsocial simulation as an autopoietic communication system. A simulationoperates on discrete, elementsofits environmentthat are the equivalent ofsigns, while completely bypassing more complex and expressive elements ofexperience. These are related with the body as a trope for the unconscious. affective, and unassimilable energies that are marginalized by simulation. Simulation therefore draws more readily on material that is digital, ordigitizable, and renders continuous modes ofexperience discrete and digital by its functioning. Much ofthe richness ofthe metaphoris drawn from an analogy with digital technology, following the method of ~cross-fertilization'that 1have tried to employ with the tenn simulation. Thedigital code itselfoperates ata greater level ofabstraction than previous schema. It is the most flexible and transparent tool yet devised for modeling a great diversity ofobjects and processes, because it impacts the least amount ofits own character to its products. It introduces less 'noise' into the signal, but in the opinion of Many audiophiles, for example, something wann, rich and human is lost through digital transcoding, which echoes the loss ofthe human dimension inherent in the social transition to abstract systems. Theflexibility ofthe digital code has made it a preferred technical standard, and digital technologies such as the computer integrate most previously incompatible forms ofcommunications media. We cao extend this characteristic to referto the digital's generalized powerofintegration, applying it to converging social systems, new social articulations and increased systemic integration. Many, including Baudrillard, consider the digital code to he the basic level ofcompatibility for the convergence of biological. technological and otherdisparate forms. The heightened powers ofrepresentational technologies that ron on the digital code contributedirectly to the phenomenon ofhyperreality, as we shall see presently. But it is the increased analytic power ofthe digital code that resonates the most profoundly with simulation. The greaterabstraction ofthe digital code allows for a more penetrating analysis ofobjects and processes, deconstructing them to theirconstituent elements, creating a powerfulleverwith which to manipulate the object under scrutiny. By comparison, the analogue code generally offers only a static, mimetic representation, as this example drawn ( from a discussion ofdigital image technologies illustrates: 83 Digital media do not mimic what they represent in analogies,. but model it in ( fonnal structures. A numerical model does not transcribe,. but rather transfigures what it represents. It is able to simulate the workings ofits subject rather than simply record its states since computets cao continuously and responsively update an abstraction in much the way events play themselves out in the reality it represents. (Binkley) Not ooly does the digital provide enhanced analytic penetration,. but it also cao reassemble the simulated material with an efficacy and veracity that fools the perceptions. Digital simulation also has a tendency to ron ahead ofreal-time processes,. as we see in cybemetic systems ofcontrol. The appearance ofthe simulation is often of secondary importance,. what matters is that it models conceptual-Ievel processes. The tlight simulatorand the automatic bank teller are functional replacements for real interaction, and convince not by theirmimetic qualities but by their utility. Similarly, the type ofknowledge that is valorized in our culture, as in social simulation,. is knowledge that allows us to reconstitute the object by the manipulation ofits constituent elements. Cultural engineers don"tjust seek to reproduce cultural processes, they pursue the algorithmic code that generates the actual process they wish to manipulate. ( The structuralist anthropologists 50ught to develop this kind ofknowledge ofthe codes that structure social. This is a strategy ofknowledge production that is characteristic ofa culture moving increasingly towards simulation. The most comprehensive perspective on the digitization ofculture can he obtained by examining some ofthe major changes in social form that characterize the transition from traditional to modem societies. As 1 presented it in the second chapter, the process of simulation leads to the partial assimilation ofthe social dimension ofexperience into self regulating social systems. The process works through abstraction. Digitization, in the sense ofreducing a process to standardized units of equal valuation, enables a more generalized and accelerated conversion ofexperience into abstract values. Consequendy,. simulation is responsible for an increase in the splitting ofthe holistic social forro that we associate with traditional societies. We can characterize the result as a qualitative division of experience into what we shaH cali the 'distal' and 'proximal' realms of modem culture. ln considering the relations between distal and proximal reaJms ofinteraction, it is important to bear in miod that the terms 'distal' and 'proximal' refer to social qualities which are relative to each other,. mther than absolute opposites,. and also relative to the body as a social form, which itselfcan serve ooly as a provisiooal measure ofsocial distance c (immediacy vs. mediatioo) and order(spontaneity vs. systematicity). Il goes without saying 84 that all social forms and interactions involve sorne blending ofproximal and distal frames of ( reference. Ofcourse, human perception and cognition necessarily begin with the human body, and most especially with the interacting social body; but they can never he confined to the latter. Even the intimacy ofchildrearing in small, tribal groups relying on the Most rudimentary technology will necessarily he influenced by the distal and societal aspects of the surrounding culture; and (as Lévi-Strauss was at pains to demonstrate in La Pensée Sauva&e) no culture, however illiterate, could persist without developing that distal realm of objectifications, in which experience, learning, and lore are symbolically elaborated, through inference, projection, substitution, and repetition, ioto systems ofthought which extend weil beyond the proximal realm ofbodily relations. The distal realm is composed ofthe abstract processes and elements characteristic of social and communication systems, those aspects ofexperience that cao be simulated, standardized, ordered and widely circulated, often with the aid oftechnology. Needless to say tbis has little to do with the type ofcontinuous, embodied expressiveness that Watzlawick associates with analogue communication. The proximal realm ofculture would ofcourse comprise the excluded remains ofthe simulation process and those areas of experience still notoperationalized, characterized by "direct" experience, spontaneous and non-systematizable social processes. This is the level ofthe interacting body, replete with l emotion, affect and ambiguity. However, tbis conception ofthe proximal realm as a kind ofremainder, as what is left overfrom the "civilizing" process ofabstraction, fonnalization and standardization, May he symptomatic in a peculiarway to modem experience. The "negative" definition of the proximal body, as that which in one way or another eludes systematization, probably refleets the decentered perspective characteristic ofsocieties in which the distallevel of objectifications has become self-sustaining, and functions with an increasing measure of independence from the ordinary, proximal dimension ofsocial experience. This points to the important fact that the differential criterion ofmodemity does not lie in the existence, or even the complexity, ofthe distallevel itself, since the lattercao easily he discovered in ail pre-modem social fonnatioDs. The sociohistorical issue is rather the "autonomization," or iDcreasing separation, ofthe distal and societallevels oforganization from the proximally centered sphere ofsociallife. The rise ofsociology itselfas a fomt ofreflexive human knowledge is probably a direct expression ofthe bistorical detacbment ofdistal forms c···· 85 characteristic ofmodemity, and also serves as an excellentexample ofthe increasingly ( independent structure ofthe societal dimension ofsociallife.7 There is no doubt that communications technology, particularly since the invention ofmoveable type, has contributed to the exponential growth ofthe societal realm ofdistal relations, and that this in tom bas contributed to its "uncoupling" from the level of proximal interaction. Moreover, the increasing split between the world ofdirect interpersonal relationships and that oflarge scale collective organization may he linked to the DOW familiar pattern ofabstraction and simulation. Various new forms ofmediation, such as information technology, bureaucratie organizations or market forms oftrade, open up an entirely new area ofindirect relations between social actors that becomes extremely consequential for everyday life. Social relations are gradually reorganized on the basis made possible by the new configuration oftime and space. We should consider these changes from a broad temporal perspective that takes primitive societies ofproximal relations as the counterpoint to the modem. 1use the term primitive loosely (and without implying that they may he situated priorto 'modem' societies in a narrative ofhistorical orcultural 'progress') to referto cultures existing within a limited and rarely changing setofexperiential domains. They are oral cultures that do not possess the means to supplement or vary experience by technological extension. They store only very limited amounts ofinformation, and their oral knowledge base tends to maintain a close relation with current cultural practices by the homeostatic adjustment of oral tradition. Lacking technology, the primitive culture's resources for creating systems of 7 The concepts of proximal and distal knowledge and social fonn would certainly benetit from dialogue with other sociological conceptions ofmodemity, for example, Habermas' discussion of "the uncoupling ofsystem and lifeworld" and the ensuing problematic of social "pathology" and "systematically distorted communication" which Habermas relates to the "colonization ofthe lifeworld." Unfortunately, there is not room in the present study to elaborate and retine the echoes ofthese themes in Habermas, and the rich sociology of modemity to be found in the traditions of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Husserl from which Habermas has drawn. Suffice it to say that in spite oftheir obvious points of resonance, the categories of Habermas's analysis of modemity are by no means congruent with the conceptual framework ofthe present discussion. See Jurgen Habermas. The Theory ofCommunicative Action. Volume Two: Lifeworld and System: A Critigue of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), pp. 113 ( 197. 86 orderand interpreting experience are limited to those contrasts in the natural world which { fall within the abilities ofthe body to perceive orintuit theirexistence. Primitive cultures are often characterized as symbolic, as though they issued from a mysterious form of experience so a1ien to us that we cao DOW scarcely comprehend it. But this symbolic chamcterprobably denves from a relation ofIimited experiential domains and the given perceptuallimitations ofthe body unaided by technology. The distal realm ofa primitive culture may he thought to issue from at least a potential proximal relation, the 'sources' ofinteraction being related by kinship, acquaintance orat the very least sorne fonn ofproximal communication ofa common tradition. Proximal relations are ofcourse still a relevant comPODent ofmodem cultures. But in the primitive culture, the proximal is clearly the centrallevel ofinteraction that dominates the culture, the level ofprimary relevance to the actor's weil -being. As a rather extreme example, the existential anxieties ofthe modem individual may derive chiefly from distal sources -- the nuclear threat orthe possibility ofcontracting cancer. The member of the primitive culture would more likely fear threats from bis orher immediate environment - attack from wild animais or perhaps another trihe. Fearofancestral retribution would he a typically distal anxiety in the primitive society. Experiential alternatives, essential for a reflexive awareness ofselfor ofculture, must a1so derive from proximal forms. Craig ( Calhoun writes that in comparison with primitive cultures, the modem horizon ofsocial interaction is greatly expanded, and offers the basis for different levels ofcomParison : "We contrast the quotidian no longer with the extraordinary days of feasts and festivals but with the systemically remote, that which counts on a large seale."(Calhoun 96). While proximal social relations still continue in limited forms, sociallife is increasingly reorganized to meet the imperatives ofthe self-governing systems that organize the expanding scope ofcoordinated interaction. Consequently, the distal realm appears to become more autonomous as diverse systemic functions increasingly move beyond individual control and comprehension. Sociallife is continually reconfigured in response to new systemic demands. Fixed patterns of relationships are shattered and9 once freed from prior constraints, recombine in novel ways across temporal, spatial and cultural barriers. The process ofabstraction and decontextualization that characterizes simulation seems to he operative behind all ofthese transitions, playing itselfout in sometimes subtle ways in diverse areas ofexperience. The explosion ofthe distal must he seen as part ofa greater cultural shift moving towards the marginalization ofconcrete.. proximal forms by the increasing prevalence ofcommunications systems and technologies, the product ofa progressive digitization ofculture. In the long tenn view ofthe transmission ofcultural practices~ the digital (in the ( broad sense ofwriting technologies) has always had a disruptive influence 00 experiential cootiouity and fixed frames ofreference. Asa majorepistemological effectofdistal structures and technology, hyperreality continues this trend and intensifies its penetration ioto the individual ~sensorium.' Digitization originally created gaps in theseamless contiouity oftraditional and oral culturallife byfacilitating the build up ofa cultural archive, overcoming whatJackGoody caUs the ~selective amnesia' oforal culture. The ability to consult a record ofthe past opens up the critical distance that enables the detached assessment ofthe present. The challenge that Iiteracy poses to the homeostatic regulation oftraditional cultures is considerable. The build up ofthe archive (a bounded and discrete entity in the distal realm, the recorded legacy ofculture) creates a growing bulk ofretlexive knowledgethat "prevents the iodividual from particiPating fullYin the total cultural tradition to anything like the extent possible in non-fiterate society." (Goody and Watt49) The balance ofdistal to proximal knowledges quicldy becomes irrevocably tipped in favour ofthe distal. The literate individual owes a very small proportion ofhis knowledge to direct eXPerience, a significant difference from pre-Iiterate societies. Ofcourse, preliterate ~hearsay' implies a sizable distal realm, but its content is essentially mythic, lacking in precise and reliable 1 \ detai!. The build up ofthis spbere involves the build up ofscientific thought, an entire separate intellectual domain that bas detacbed further from the level ofproximal understanding as its complexity has grown. This achievement has beeo primarily founded 00 the abstracting capabilities ofwriting technologies. While the ability to digitize bas been available to literate and protoliteratecultures for thousands ofyears in the fonn ofwriting technologies, it is ooly in the last balfcentury that electronic communications have spurred the exponential growth ofthe distal realm. Following Innis, the contribution ofcommunications tecbnology to social form has generally been thougbt ofas improved infrastructure, in continuity with advances in modes oftransport. Theacceleration oftechnological advances culminating in the generalized conversion to the digital code is ofsecondary importance here. What we must emphasize in this case is the fonnal powerofabstraction inherent in any technology, regardless of whether il is analogue or digital. In exchange for the powerful time-space compression effects ofmediated communication, there is an invariable reconfiguring ofthe distal and proximal components ofexperience. The consequence ofthe expansion ofthe distal realm is the increasing irrelevance ofintermediate level, embodied experience as the foundation (~ foremotional certainties derivedfrom perception and cognition. 88 One moment ofthis rathercomplex setofinterconnected processes is illustrated in a ( case study ofthe telegraph in James Carey's Communication as Culture. Carey presents the telegraph as part ofa widerensemble ofmutually reinforcing abstract systems that rapidly developed into a commodities market ofnational scope in 19th eentury America. The major social transfonnations involved were based on the circulation ofabstracted information made possible by communications technology, with marked benefits for tntde and speculation being realized through commodification and innovative use ofrepresentation. Capitalizing on these possibilities required the ability ofactors to rethink social relations in the face of changes in timelspace boundaries. One ofthe majoreffects ofthe communication system established around the telegraph was the equalization ofmarket priees overan extended area. Local variations in price that had sustained the praetiee ofarbitrage were done away with by the improved exchange ofinformation between cities made possible by the telegraph. This lead to an erasure ofspatial differences that had struetured previous forms oftrade and resulted in the local specificities ofcommodity markets. In a very short time a daunting numberof processes were converted into abstraet fomt, and were integrated to fonn a powerful new system ofcommerce. Its efficacy depended on objects being replaced by tokens operating in simulation systems wherever possible. ln creating the futures markets at least five major fonns ofabstraction were employed, ail ofthem involving the splitting ofthe referential and physical functions ofthe objects and processes effected: lt required that information move independently ofand fasterthan products. It required that prices he made unifonn in space and that markets he decontextualized. It required, as weil, that commodities he separated from the receipts that represent them ~d that commodities he reduced to unifonn grades. (Carey 221) For the contemporary businessm~the changes must have been extreme. Within little more than two generations, the scope ofmajor business transactions changed from a face to face interaction between aequaintances trading goods produced and used regionally, to the exchange ofrepresentations ofstandardized commodities (that would probably never be seen) aecording to priees set in an abstraet environmen~the market. among strangers who could he located anywhere. Local autonomy was ofcourse impinged upon by these processes. Markets were integrated into a national system, and the fortunes ofdistant communities now had a direct impact upon daily life. Divorced from its local conte~ and now the product ofnumerous interlocking abstract systems, trade took on the pecuJiar ( characterthat we have associated with the 'distal' realm: 89 The telegraph removed markets from the particularcontext in which they ( were historically locatedand concentrated on them forces emanatingfrom any place and any time. This was a redefinition from physical or geographical markets to spiritual ones. In a sense they were made more mysterious; they becameeverywhere markets andeverytime markets and thus less apprehensible al the very moment they became more powerful. (Carey 220) People continued to deal with each other on a daily basis much as they had before, but a significant new area ofconsequence for social actors had been created by technology and abstraction. lndividuals were increasingly called upon to act in both realms. The application ofthe effects attainable through abstraction, particularly within cybemetic systems of control, were applied throughout society. The same principles that equalized the markets could be used to regulate the railroads. Carey insightfully sees that as ... part ofa general social process initiated by the use of money and widely written about in contemporary semiotics; the progressive divorce ofthe signifier from the signified, a process in which the world ofsignifiers progressively overwhelms and moves independently ofreal material abjects. (Carey 222) Carey's analysis ofthe rise and consolidation ofthe market fonn parallels the argument that 1have been making for the digjtization ofculture. Through the technologically enbancedcapacity forabstraction and standardization across cultural boundaries, abstract systems begin to eut more deeply througb the local sphere of social relations. The latter, still recognizable as extensions ofbody proximal interaction, are gradually reorganized on the distal basis made possible by progressive digjtization. Like commodities and money, signs begin to circulate independently ofsocial context The connection between the social (the level ofthe interacting body) and the societal (the level of abstract social fonns sucb as the nation state) becomes increasingly invisible orirrelevant. Moreover, social actors are required to develop a greaterability to override and disregard the body proximal range ofexperience in favour ofcalculations based on abstract distal relations accessible only to sPecialized expertise. A similar process is outlined by BenedictAnderson in bis analysis ofthe role of print capitalism in the creation ofthe modem nation-state. Anderson sees the imposition of a standardized system ofIiteracy as being an essential stage in developing the extended systems ofsocial coordination necessary to the nation-state fonn (orthe societal fonn 9 for ( that matter). 90 ... had print capitalism sougbt to exploit each potential oral vernacular ( marke~ it would have remained a capitalism ofpetty proportions. But these varied idiolects were capable ofbeing assembled, witbin definite limits, into print languages far fewer in number. The very arbitrariness ofany system of signs for sounds facilitated the assembling process... Nothing served to 'assemble' related vemaculars more than capitalism, which, within the Iimits imposed by grammars andsyntaxes, created mechanically reproduced print languages capable ofdissemination through the market These print languages laid the basis for national consciousness... First and foremost, they created unified fields ofexchange and communication. (Anderson 43-44) Here again we see the process ofabstraction at wor~ reducing continuous oral forms of vemacular expression into the discrete and fonnal units ofsemiotic systems oflesser complexity. The result is the creation ofa generalized distal system, in this case an "'imagined community." The accumulated weigbt ofsucb distal structures, ofstandardized languages, and abstract systems, is consequential enough to encourage the overriding of certain proximal social practices. ( As these communications systems become increasingly powerful, and supplement their mimetic capabilities with realistic imagery, they come to fonn what amounts to a parallel experiential realm constitllted by representational and social simulations, which furthermarginalizes the proximallevel ofexperience. The effect derives from the tendency ofthe digital reconstruction ofevents orexperiences to be more convincing or more agreeably compliant with ourexpectations than the actual events themselves. On a perceptuallevel, sound and image technologies are carefully engineered to produce a heightened impact rarely offered by natural phenomena. Cognitively, the narratives of sociallife purveyed by the evening news or the social sciences make extraordinarily complex events appear humanly understandable, more 50 than they could to an observer who was actually present in most cases. We intemalize the distal structures in ourself conception as members ofa society, or a nation. Through the increasing power ofdigital technology, the informational and representational functions ofsimulation are heightened, and extend their abstracting influence to the lever ofthe body, as we saw in ourdiscussion of gender. There, a fundamental cultural process is also reconfigured in relation with the abstract knowledges ofthe distal realm. ( 91 The Di&ital RefilurinlofCulture ( Technology has a profound effect on the ordering ofculture with effects reaching down ta the cognitive level ofthe individual actor. The cognitive and perceptual mechanisms ofthe human body are increasingly challenged by new pbenomena issuing from the growing societal realm. The process ofabstraction particular tosimulation extends to the body, and has affected the mechanisms ofclassification that orderthe interpretation ofmaterial phenomena and culture on a very basic and preconscious level. The body is directly implicated in ordering cultural forms through the body schema which provides a metapboric structure for mapping interpretations. Oral cultures needed rough and ready structuring schemes around which to orgaoize cultural principles and the symmetrical image-schematic structure ofthe body provided a referential surface. Simple oppositions sucb as left and right, upPer and lower body, hands and feet, provide a basic set ofdifferences on which interpretive systems ofclassification could he modeled. Mediation in general sbifts the natural order to a symbolic level that permits the mastery of objective phenomena, resulting in a sense ofdistancefrom and control over immediate stimuli and objects. Simulation at the level ofclassification builds on tbis 'totemic' operation, to create a code that establishes a form ofequivalence between multiple levels of experience, coordinating symbolic and sociallevels oforder. As Richard Sbweder points out, classification bas always been the foundation ofsocial control: ...a primary function of classification is to construct classes ofthings the behaviour to (00 which can he regulated or govemed by prescriptions, recommendations, taboos... One function ofclassification is to tell the world how it should behave, and since most human behaviour is mie govemed, many, perhaps most, ofour categories serve this function, at least in part. (Shweder 183) Premodem cultures are organized on dichotomous symbolic structures drawn from the simple oppositions presented by the body and the phenomena ofthe natural world, as shaped by ordinary sensory perception. Through symbolic Mediation, oral cultures put together stable cultural models to pass on to successive generations. These were based on dimorphic interpretations ofthe body in relation to its environment and could he worked into systems ofprimitive classifications that built on these basic oppositions to create schemes ofinterpretation. As we have seen, George Lakotrs eXPerientialist theory of ( cognition supports such a view. Lakoff helieves that metaphors drawn from a very basic 92 level ofembodied experience have a structuring influence on cognition. 1would emphasize ( that he also maintains these metaphors to be supplemented by reference to specific experientialdomains: Complexcategories are structured by chaining; central members are linked to other members, which are linked to other members and so OD. For example, wornen are linked to the SUD, which is linked to sunburn... There are basic domains ofexperience, which may he culture-specific. These can characterize links in category chains." (Lakoff95) The dimorphic mapping ofthe body leads to binary moral schema that worked on a principle ofopposition; good and evil mapping onto male and female, left and right orsun and Moon, for example. In tbis way premodem cultures achieved the great schemes of dualistic, cosmic organization that we now tenn symbolic, capable as they are ofexpressing a primary moral order throughout theirsystem. This process bas changed in modem societies, due to the creation ofa whole intennediary orderofman made objects presenting alternative, far more complex mapping schemas, inserted ioto the new 'artificial' experiential domain ofhyperreality that is based in the distal realm, effectively at a remove from the body: ( Modemity has reduced the binary structure ofprimitive thought to the purely formai principle ofthe digital code, under whose regime every mythic opposition cao be neutralized ioto an infinite gradation ofdifferences on a continuum. Hyperrealism arises from the fact that the digital reconstruction ofevents is oCten more coherent and more coherent than organic body perception normally pennits or expects. (Levin 91) Without technology, the body cannot surpass the limitations of ils own sensory apparatus in order to generate alternative schemes ofclassification. This imposes great limitations on the innovative capabilities ofa culture. Forinstance, Lévi-Strauss believes that scientific enquiry is based on classification, and draws the distinction between modem and primitive sciences on the modem's ability to generate new conceptual tools and classificatory schema at a remove from "perception and the imagination... more remote from sensible intuition." (Lévi-Strauss 15) In order to go beyond the extantcultural parameters ofthought, new domains of experience must be opened up, and this now occurs through the use of technology. Lacking technology, the individual cannot override the basic instinctual response to stimuli, which is to ascribe moral content to any perceived contrast ofmagnitude to warrant c. interest -- the edible and the inedible, the good and the bad, the higher and the lower, the 93 pure and the polluted, the friendly and the dangerous, fight-flight, dominate-submit, etc. (Levin 90). The cultural system remains rooted in a number ofconceptual oppositions which, though often laden with ambiguity, are finnly shared by its members as points of reference for the moral interpretation ofexperience. In modemity, the dichotomous structures that underwrote this process have proven themselves to he vulnerable to the effects oftechnology. The parallel realm ofhyperreality provides enough experiential variety to overwhelm the categories based on the body schema. The distal technologies of writing and infonnation processing, as Levin argues, impose a safe enough distance from experience to '~suspendthe categories ofpurity and danger, and pennit (hyper)realistic re examination." (Levin91) These dichotomous structures have come to he associated with Enlightenment thought, which is paradoxical, because it isjustat the lime that literacy becomes a broadly distributed skiU that the need for such schemata begins to wain, and theircognitive status is submitted to a series ofskeptical revisions and relativizations which has continued until the present day. One explanation for tbis May he that a1though the ability to store thought on paper makes dichotomy as a mnemonic ordering devise redundant, it also has the initial effect ofenhancing the power to structure the world logically according to Iists ofbinary oppositions (Goody 104-105). An established and open culture ofwriting ultimately ( increases the potential for complex lines ofargument, and thus encourages the decline of "YinIYang"-type systemsofthought; yet it a1so invites the attempt to codify received cultural systems ofclassification in more rigorous logical lenns. These contradictory potentials ofsecularized Iiteracy May explain the widespread but mistaken impression that it is the Enlightenment which is responsible for the most rigid, hierarchical systems ofbinary opposition. In fact, to take the most notorious example ofEnlightenment binarism, Descartes' mind-body split is better understood as an attempt to render the ambiguity and ambivalence oftraditional and primitive symbolic dualism as an abstract logical fonnalism compatible with scientific inquiry. Descartes' beirs have neverceased to criticize the rigidity ofhis thought; but the latterdid help to lay the distal foundations for science as an institutional process, and this process bas steadily eroded the Cartesian categories themselves, and the primitive symbolic fonns upon which they were ultimately based. The initial scientificand metaphysical fonnalization ofprimitive bodily categories and metaphors May also thus have been the tirst step in the deconstruction ofthe cultural imaginary. The Enlightenment was the first crude adumbration ofa culture, like ours, seeking the eliminatioo ofaffective content through techniques ofabstract digitization and technologically enhanced observation which permit access to phenomena either too small or ( too large to fall ioto the range ofproximal body perception. 94 Culture is refiguring, from the analog binary forms that are based on the dimorphic ( map ofthe body, to the more abstract fonns based on a digital continuum ofinfmitely small gradations, deriving from the distal environment of modemity. The source ofour cultural classifications is becoming abstracted and bas begun to float, shifting towards the distal, the complex domain ofscience and technology, with unforseeable effects. Exposed to centuries ofskeptical reevaluation, the dichotomies still functioning in the distal realm have lost their credibility, and culture has lost much ofits symbolic intensity: The actual content ofculture has been reduced to an endless continuum of equivalentethnicities, sexualities, genders and identities, whose significance lies in the play ofmarginal differences which govem the world ofsign objects. (Levin 91) This process ofreductioo to equivalencies cao also he seeo in the archetypal cultural entity, the archive. Along with the rest ofthe distal domain, the archive bas grown fantastically in the modem em. Despite the best efforts ofcenturies ofscholarship, the contradictions inherent in the archive, its actual diversity, have thwarted the assembly ofa harmonious and hierarchically ordered record ofculturallife.ln fact, the archive draws to ourattention the contingency ofall accounts as it makes available a panoply ofdivergent viewpoints. Despite the canon's reputed exclusiveoess, in the larger scheme ofdigitization the archive actually introduces equivalence ioto the cultural system by creating an excess of contradictory viewpoints ofpotentially equal authority. When litemcy is implanted in the cycle ofcultural reproduction intellectual and moral certainty begin to corrode. The flattening effeet ofsimulation is obvious here, forwhere so Many texts are assembled, none can make daim to the absolute "truth." This distal repository ofcontestation bas been aecumulating uncontrollably in the society ofinformation and communication, and modem society now dmws on the entire record: literate society (is) inevitably committed to an ever-increasing series of culture lags. The content ofthe cultural tradition grows cootinually, and in 50 far as it affects any particularindividual he becomes a palimpsest composed oflayers of beliefs and attitudes belongjng to different stages in historical lime. So too, eventually, does society al large~ sioce there is a tendency for eacb group to he particularly influenced by systems ofideas belonging to different stages in historical time. (Goody and Watt49) One thinks ofthe successive waves ofcontestatory youth cultures that have consistently offered utopian alternatives to the 'mainstream' culture since the nineteen-fifties~eacb to he ( incorporated back ioto the more conservative cultural element as theirconstituents age. 95 There is an acceptance ofdivergent and individualistic viewpoints in modem culture that ( has become nonnalized. Until recently, the archive was conceivable as a bounded entity. However, ifwe examine the development ofwriting technologies we cao see that they are a1so moving towards greater abstraction in the digital era. The representative structure ofthe book is giving way to electronic writing, and this implies significant changes for the archive as weil. Ifcertain cultural crities are right, we shaH soon he reading from a continuous hypertextual network rather than from discrete books. This represents a fascinating abstraction from the structure ofthe book. Hypertext offers an a1most conceptual fluidity to the reading experience, allowing readers "to leap through the network ofknowledge in something like an etemal present." (Heim 38) The internet archive promises to further level the residual value hierarcrnes associated with its cultural texts by decentring authority. Such well-known hypertextual characteristics as the ability to post commentary and to annotate texts are held to challenge textual univocality. Theali-inclusive e-library thatJay David BoItercalls the 'hypertext utopia' will push the equivalences aIready established in the material archive to new extremes. This should further the trend towards the erosion ofa cultural canon, and the illusion ofa unitary body ofknowledge. The archive is about to become a leaky text, as George Landow would seem to imply when he references Derrida's notion ofdébordement: As Derrida explains, "to keep the outside out... is the inaugural gesture of logic itself, ofgood sense insofar as it accords with the selfidentity ofthat which is: being is what it is, the outside is outside and the inside inside. Writing must retum to being what it should never have ceased to he: an accessory, an accident, an excess." (Landow 60) The archive itself is about to undergo a technological reorganization that should dissolve ils boundaries and further open it up to informai publishing practices, eroding the authority ofthe knowledge base. Practically, this means much more specialized knowledge will he available to the general public. 1have already speculated that the relatively unrestricted environment ofthe internet provides children with unprecedented opportunities to break down experiential baniers that operate in the wider society. It must be assumed that as more knowledge is made available, other forros ofsequestration will also he eroded, leading tofurther cultural equivalencies. To parallel this interpretation with the metaphysical progression that 1described in chapter three: Developing under the unifying coyerof Reason, a set ofcontradictory discourses multiplies uotil it oversteps its boundaries, breaks ( ils simulated unitYand exposes the irrationality at its core. 96 'Reproximation' ( Myth, narrative, the irrational and the imaginary, ail persist within the bifurcated social fonn, to he found still actively interpreting the world at the proximallevel ofthe body. On a metaphysicallevel, we migbt speculate that the symbolic bas been driven back into the iodividual imagioary. Ernest Gellnerconfinns that the rationalizing tendencies of modem society actually serve toconcentrate the unassimilable elements in the proximal realm: ln a way the irrationaIization ofculture is the obverse ofthe pervasive rationalization ofcognition. ft is precisely because serious, cumulative, powerful cognitive inquiry bas been hived offfrom the rest ofour conceptuallife that this residue is Hable to he thrown back onto its own resources, whicb had previously operated more pervasively. 'Culture' in the non-anthropological sense the tenu bas DOW acquired in developed societies is a kiod ofbuttermilk - the symbolic activities left overas a residue when serious cognition (science) and production have been abstracted. (Gellner 150) This is an astute appraisal ofthe polarization ofthe symbolic and the rational impulses at work in our culture. According to GeUner, this separation issues from the growing autonomy ofthe distal realm ofscientific knowledge tbat appears to be closed off as a discrete and isolated entity. It is a hot-house ofconceptual development that is increasingly opaque to the (proximal) cultural 'residue.' The resurfacing ofthe mythic dimension ofsocial existence cornes as a direct result ofthe filtering out ofaffectfrom the rationalized societal and scientific domains. The symbolic is left to develop potency in what Gellner refers to as 'culture.' What he is missing is the continued interpenetration ofthe two realms, for his 'culture' is really nothing more than the environment ofthe autopoietic societal system, an amorphous mass ofmndom material that the continually expanding and changing distal realm can draw on. Mterail, what is irrational and excluded at one moment may prave ofgreat rational import in the next if it becomes material for science. The distinctness ofGellner's categories may he valid in terms of bis argument conceming modes ofthought, but he does not account for eitherthe continued presence ofirrationality in scientific thought, or the means by which scientific thougbt cornes to he ofconsequence within 'culture.' ( The products and structures ofthe distal realm must have a means ofreintegrating ( with proximal understanding ifthey are to bave a significant social effect.As the sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina writes~ "The assumption ofthe iocrease in formal~ technical and abstract systems ignores the phenomenon tbat these systems are neverabstract when they are enacted." (KnorrCetina 6) She has identified the hidden operation ofthe simulation principle even in the most rationalized ofenvironments, the highly technical world ofthe scientific lab. Here~ as throughout the rest ofthe social world, she insists, primitive classifications continue to he applied to the most abstract of entities~ effectively bridging the distal and the proximal. Science~ a paradigmatic modem institution, also enlivens its universe through symbolic classifications. Consider the jewel in the crown ofbasic disciplines, experimental high energy physics. Like in any otherscience, the definition ofthings is accomplished by technical vocabularies."A huge measurement instrument such as adetectorand, presumably, all ofits thousands ofparts cao be classified or paraphrased in a technicallanguage. Moreover, physicists seem to share enough ofthis vocabulary to make themselves understood and to communicate with each otherwithin this technical language. Yet there exist~ in addition to the technicallanguage, imaginative tenninological repertoires which reclassify technical objects and distinctions. These constitute a symbolic universe superimposed upon the technical universe; a repertoire offictional categories and distinctions from the everyday world which are extended ioto science where they refonnulate, elaborate and at times fill io for technical categories and distinctions. (Knorr Cetina 10) A set ofprimitive classifications is projected upon distal and technical structures quite routinely, lifting materia! phenomena into the symbolic realm as a matter ofhabit. We might cali this 'reproximation,' because it is through this process that abstract knowledge is reintroduced ioto the social~ in tenns that are compatible with proximal understanding and cognition. The reintegration ofdistal infonnation and its abstract structuring effects into everyday life is arguably the main social function ofsimulation. For example, Knorr Cetina observes that the particle accelerators ofthe high energy physics labs tbat she studied are attributed a host ofphysiological characteristics. The machines age, have diseases (the sick accelerator), states ofbeing (dead, congested, or blind) and a variety ofbehavioural idiosyncracies. (Il) Wbat has not occurred to Knorr Cetina is that by the steady association ( ofprimitive categorization with abstractentities, the categorizations are themselves being 98 cbanged. Overthe long-term, it is the technical vocabulary ofthe distal realm that is ( penetrating the proximal, the effects ofscientific knowledge that are continually impacting on the mid-Ievel proximal. During reproximation, the innovations flowing from the distal realm undergo symbolic reinterpretation. Reproximation puts a comprehensible, and perhaps familiar face back ooto the abstracted signal, and in doiog so gives rise to the hyperreal effect of simulation. In a sense, the digitization procedure runs in reverse, with the abstract becomiog concrete and acquiring layers ofsymbolic content that are quite unpredictable. To pursue the technological analogy, we might say that the digital signal is output at an analogue interface. Without this process most scientific innovation would remain c10istered in a specialized realm and would have a greatly diminished effeet 00 sociallife. Simulation, by opening up societal innovation to symbolic reinterpretation, is thus a cruciallink between scientific knowledge and social fonn. The process goes further than simply creating a 'user-frieodly' interface however. The indeterminacy ofthe simulacrum is at work here - these are not unproblematic representations that we are dealing with, but frequently symbolically and emotionally charged issues that may find their mediation in purportedly objective forms. The distal realm draws affectively charged experience up into the analytic stratosphere, distills il and sets it back down objectified, to he reproximated ioto imaginative fonns. Aoother example concerns statistics, the ultimate objectivist medium, from John Fekete's book Moral Panic. Mterdetailing the facile distortions to which certain quantitative research procedures lend themselves, Fekete turns to the essential role ofreproximation in not ooly making sense of the distal, but ofmakiog meaning from it: it is oot clear that what statistics do for us in making ourworld picture cao any longer be sorted out from how we imagine the match between our picture and the real world. In truth, statistics play an ever iocreasing raie as the screens on which we project our desires and anxieties, so that we may exchange them and shape them ioto a Iivable psychic order. (Fekete 29) This is also highly suggestive ofGiddens' remarks 00 the complementarity ofthe sequestration ofexperience and the mediated experience ofsymbolic violence and affectively charged situations. The tenn 'reproximation' gjves a Dame ta the functioDal pattern that we uncovered there, the repressed content circulatiog back into the societal through the media. Here the loop is explicit, with distal culture drawiog up resources from the proximal, simulating them and setting them back in play. 99 Ifthe inverted world ofthe commodity was ·topsy turvy,' , as Marx wrote, we ( might say that simulations reenterthe proximal realm ·wobbling.' Simulation opens the meaning ofan object up to semantic indetenninacy, while materially it frequently appears unchanged; hence it wobbles. There may he a good deal ofstruggle and reinterpretation ofa simulation that prolongs this peri The feedback from the distal realm resembles an accelerating series ofshock waves that impact upon the proximallevel, destabilizing it As the distal realm expands, the feedback waves become more frequent, certainly far more unsettling than anything traditional cultures encountered. The situation may approach one ofnearcontinuous adjustment and feedback. We cao see this in what Giddens bas called the double henneneutic ofthe social sciences, where the effects ofreflexive information generated by research continually feed into society, altering its make-up. As a technologjcal culture, we have organized around change, and have become so imbricated in its elaboration that it becomes a central feature ofthe culture. We cao see sncb accelerated cycling in the realm of consumption, which is often considered as a purely irrational sector ofsocial life. As Giddens suggests, this rapid cycling also breaks down the distance between the subject of science and its object, the natura! world, which becomes enough ofa function ofits own control that scieotific ·objectivity' is put understrain. The modeling discourse ofrationality is collapsing outside ofits scientific-material applications, where its technical achievements remain impressive. Tbere can he no reasonable evaluation of means and ends in cultural matters; they are far too complex to regulate by rational principle. Social realities are simply the product ofcultural context, and we now organize below that level 10 provide a context ofcontexts. Our abstract constitution and charterofrights take on an ontological status because we have no choice but to invest in some structure in order to setthe parameters for social organization, given that natura! law is no longera credible legitimative category. This is anotherlevel on which the active interchange between the two realms cao he ( seen to he constantly taking place. Perhaps the critical focus has been on the irrationality of 100 science simply to challenge a more entrenched discourse ofobjectivity. If 50, it is a good ( time to develop a vocabulary to describe the reverse process, the transformation ofthe proximal realm through technological change. The shift ofthe source ofsymbolic expressiveness to the hyperreal cames the proximal to a level ofabstraction that was hitherto unknown, and whose limits have yet to be tested.ln the fantastic predictions made about new technology, hyperreality culminates in virtual reality, the inCOrPOration ofthe body into a completely abstract system, perceptually indistinguishable from ~reality.' Through reproximation, the continuai readjustment in the face ofdistal innovations, the proximal is s~fting to an indeterminate level ofabstraction. There is no way ofknowing how far the process will go. The Culture ofAbstraction Culture is now organized at a conceptuallevel, at a greater remove from a level meaningful to basic sensory perception. Cultural coherence appears to he in decline from our proximal vantage point, because it is continually being destabilized by ideas and technologies issuing from the distal realm, or the competing daims ofothercultures. But rather than being signs ( of profound chaos, as the ~panic' theorists seem to believe, 1suggest that culture is re " organizing at a greater level ofabstraction. The surface indications of breakdown may actually he the signs ofan emerging abstract order, fonned through thejoint, agentless functioning of multiple social systems. This is the view that 1want to explore here. Certainly the signs ofapparent disorder on the 'surface' ofculture have been widely noted. As Zygmunt Bauman defines postmodem culture in bis book Intimations of Postmodernity, It is, as Baudrillard has argued, a culture of excess. ft is characterized by the overabundance ofmeanings, coupled with (or made ail the more salient by) the scarcity ofadjudicating authorities. Like postmodem art it is in constant change, yet devoid ofa distinctive line ofdevelopment.lts elementsappear both underdetermined and incoosequential. It is, one may say, a culture of over-production and waste. (31) An often noted aspect ofpostmodem culture is the generalized tlattening ofhierarchies, the dissolution ofsocial categorizations based 00 them leading ta a sense ofcultural indeterminacy. Thecollapse ofthe distinction between high and mass culture, the breakiog down ofacademic disciplinary boundaries, and the perceived breakdown ofcategories in ( consumerculture, have aIl cootributed to an impression ofcultural entropy. The urban 101 landscape seems to have lost its visible signs ofcultural arderand cohesiveness. Where ( attention is paid to design~ as in architecture~local building styles first gave way to modemist unifonnity and now have become reintegrated as fragments in eclectic postmodem projects. But the bulkofurban development is organized all too c1early on the exigencies ofcommercial developmentand abstract systems. Some ofthese affect the built environmen~others such as the advertising and marketing systems are more obviously engagedon the semantic level. Yet despite the enonnousefforts to organize cultural life through various levels of simulation~disorder and indeterminacy 001y seem to grow. A plethora ofcodesand an abundance ofmeaoing penetrate everyday life with more persistence than ever before. This is certainly evidence ofa vast refiguriog ofculture that necessarily geoerates a good deal ofambiguity and indetenninacy. It is no longer possible ta speak ofa unitary cultural norm~ these are recognized as simply heing a reduction ofthe multiplicity ofcultural contexts that exisl There is 00 longer an institutionalized system ofvalues that cao lay claim ta organizing our culture. In the tenns ofa bygone sociology~ there are no longer homogeneous groups ofseriously committed social actors who adhere without fail to a unitary value system. But the weakened and fragmented oetworks ofknowledgeable individuals thatconstitute the shifting subcultures oftoday are somehow organized 00 a meta-cultural scale~ and by-aod large that order works. The advantage ofsuch abstrnct organization is that arder is established below the level ofexplicitcontent. Such reüance 00 abstract systems May appearta he dehumanizing, but these emergent systems are capable ofsustaining great social complexity without imposing any particular set ofvalues that must he observed by ail. The frong ofaU values through a claim to sorne cultural essence would be more dehumanizing. There is somethiog about tbis notion ofvalueless organization that reminds me ofRichard Rorty's edifyjng philosophy: The danger which edifyjng discourse tries to avert is that sorne given vocabulary, sorne way in which people might come to think of themselves~ will deceive them ioto thinking that from DOW on all discourse could be~ or should be~ nonnal discourse. The resultiog freezing overofculture would he, in the eyes ofedifying philosophers~the dehumanization ofhumao beings. (in Landow, p. 70) An abstract culture, one based on conceptual transparency ratherthan simulated values~ forgoes the familiarity oforganizing on a concrete scale. Ils constituents must accept the opaqueness ofthe abstract systems despite the anxiety which results from a lack ( ofcontrol. The abstract systems ofmodem society were established as human creations~ of 102 course, butas simulations they have become increasingly autonomous. On an important ( level abstract culture is alienating because it marginalizes the concrete and converts the particularto one minordifference in a field ofdigital equivalence. Ephemera rule; significant social processes no longer require a referent in the proximal realm, and yet have profound influence there. We continue to live in our proximal micro-environments, buffeted by change that seems increasingly to issuefrom an abstract elsewhere. Ifculture is organizing on an abstract level, we must be prepared ta accept constant instability. An abstract culture is committed ta a constantly expanding set ofconceptual tools that are derived from its research sector. Much as Lévi-Strauss' engineer orients himself towards 'the universe' instead ofmanipulating a finite set ofcultural operators like bis colleague the bricoleur, ourculture is committed to rooting out abstract principles and setting them to work. Concepts are always being modified by the engineer, and we may weil wonderifthis cao lead ta a stable cultural base at sorne later time. As Gellnerdescribes modemculture: Its cognitive bank-of ideas is open: consensus is not imposed, innovation and experimentation are pennitted and encouraged and required, no element within it is profoundly entrenched, or protected by sacredness from query or 1 \ modification. Change is legitimate, expected and valued. This being sa, ta \ use genuinely cognitive convictions as bases for the social arder is ta build on sand. Precisely because they make a genuine contribution ta serious cognition, they are precluded from providing hallowed, firm, suitable bases for a social arder. They are ephemeral and are meant to he such. (Gellner 151) With Gellner, we must agree that there is no longer a hallowed solid ground on which ta found dynastie orders. However, we have had no cboice but ta build sociallife on cognitive conviction, for who could counsel retuming wholeheartedly ta symbolic culture? At least when it cornes ta the question ofsocietal arder and provisionrnent, it would he unthinkable. And sa we live with instability and profit from abstract systems oforder that are profoundly non-cultural, fonnal, distal, and humanly a1ienating. Ifthey have not evaporated as ephemerajust yet, it is because so much is now staked on them, and 50 few alternatives have been articulated as yet, that noone can counsel theirdismantlement. The mechanisms with which we create arder thus withstand constant query by nature oftheir tried and true practicality, not theirtheoretical perfection. The antithesisoftradional culture, they must he as inclusive and value oeutraI as possible. Ooly in this way can they inspire a ( relatively strong degree ofconsensual participation, though few in modem society are lucky 103 enough to have the option ofopting out ofthe system. The modem form. ofmultiple ( simulations and mobile actors diminishes the possibility ofany one simulation holding influence overail the rest, for actors must he free to exercise choice. Finally, digitized culture is a culture ofsimulations in the plural, a culture built on the systemic and empty functionality offonnal structures. But what ofculture in the sense ofthose cultures ofvivid proximal intensity that fed the anthropological imaginary for so long? The constant yeaming for community indicates that the culture offonnal abstractions leaves a gap in contemPOrary emotionallife that is filled with a utopian longing for shared consensus, for cultures ordered at a humanly understandable level. Culture in that sense is irretrievable as a sustained way oflife. There most certainly continue to he isolated instances ofspontaneous communal experience of great intensity, but they are ifanything more ephemeral than today's cognitively supPOrted simulations. Zygmunt Bauman discusses the present condition in terms oftribes: Tribes, as we know them, from ethnographie reports and ancient accounts, were tightly structured bodies with controlled memhership... Remaining inside or outside the tribe was seldom a matter of individual choice... The tribes of the contemporary world, on the contrary, are formed - as concepts rather than integrated social bodies - by the multitude ofindividual acts of selfidentification. Tribes 'exist' solely by individual decisions to sport the symbolic traits oftribal a1legiance. They vanish once the decisions are revoked ortheirdetermination fades out. They persevere thanks only to their continuing seductivity. They cannot outlive their power ofattraction. (Bauman Ambivalence 249) Here we have another fonn ofsimulation then, the concept-tribe, or cultural simulation, tbat mobilizes the unrequited longing for symbolic ordering, but offers none ofthe stability or certainty oftriballife. This weakness is also their greatest strength, for they are not coercive and their halting ability to define us is precisely what otIers the POssibiiity ofthe reflexive appropriation ofthe self. Without having much choice in the matteras individuals, we have traded certainty for the POssibility ofexperimentation and change. Perhaps the most vibrant fonns ofcontemPQrary cultural simulations (that have been steadilyobjectified to the pointofgenerating a related academic discipline) are the contestatory youth cultures and subcultures ofthe last four decades. They take the commodity as theirdefining token, and appropriate the sign-object and make subversive use ofit. They are the first in Hne to master the new technologies, as they have come to dominate the World Wide Web. They are young, beautiful, and increasiogJy multiply 104 sexed, raced and identified. They are obsessivcly concemed with the body and body l inscription. Theirconstituents make a way oflife out oftheir culture. But their cultures are obvious simulations, as one ofthe doyens ofAnglo-American cultural studies, Iain Chambers, makes clear: Overthe surfaces ofthe contemponuy commercial scene subcultures have affected what Dick Hebidge once characterized as the 40 theology ofthe look', the world of the conditional tense, the lOas if... world' ofadvertising. It is a world seemingly at one remove from daily routines, where our bodies are cut-up and reassembled in quotations borrowed from the other, the imaginary, side ofHfe. (Chambers 68) Eisewhere there is the sense ofa new cultural economy in which everything is a fittle less precise, a little more complex. Where there are boys and girls, black and British, youth and Asian, hetero and homosexual, leisure and work (or unemployment), public and domestic cultures, olderdistinctions begin to collapse and give way to less traditional, multiple, less historicized, hence lOlighter' (not to be confused with less serious) and more open prospects. (69) Where subcultures once offered a 'strong' sense ofstylistic opposition to the status quo and the world of 'them', the lO straights' and the 'squares', this has been extended and then gradually reworked ioto a wider sense of differences; the lOOther' becomes more simply, but no less significantly, the 'others'. (70) Clearly, these are simulated cultures that show the typical trajectory ofsimulation and digitization that 1have analyzed in tbis chapter. In a sense modem culture is built on sand, but we must see it as a construction of varying durability. The foundational base ofsolid ground has receded with our knowledge, and is probably lost to us forever. But we can stake contingent order in the sand that remains. Without implying anything like a Marxist relation ofbase and superstrocture. 1 would suggest that we are seeing a parallel process ofabstraction in the subculturaJ and the societal simulations that is sustained primarily by the latter. That is to say that the explosion ofsubcultural 'argots' that cluster around the commodity dePend for their well-being and expression on the containing field ofthe societal simulations. Structurally there is no great difference between them. But to the latter we ascribe ontological status and make great ( efforts to sustain them. The former are viewed as marginal, disposable, but are far more 105 narcissistically engaging than an equivalentabstraction more finnly lodged in the distal ( realm. Tbere is something patently adolescent about many ofthe subcultural simulations, but they offera degree ofimmersiveness and even closure in their often arcane worlds of in-group signification tbat begins to satisfy the perpetuai need for communitiesofidentity. But they depend on the meta-cultural envelope offonnalized abstract systems to protect them from censure and overt control. Ofcourse this dual structure is not exhaustive, and 1 look forward to finding alternatives to this hypothesis, orat least other possible avenues of reconciling our need for the concrete with the societal drive to the abstract In the conclusion that follows, 1will propose one such possibility. c- 106 ( Conclusion How does any information processing system answer questions about what it is doing? It sets up within itselfa model ofitselfand then examines that mode/. (Martin Eger, in Fischer 43) Part ofthe unresolvable duality ofsimulation concems its ethical and political import. ft has figured in my discussion both as an agent ofculturalliberation ofsorts, when it dissolves rigid hierarchies ofrepresentation, and oflimitation, when it functions as a "cultural analogon" that imposes a reductive orderofmeaning on its subjects. The 'emancipatory' potential ofsimulation seems at oost to add up to the destabilization ofmeaning, and at its worst it seems to lead us closerto mind control, authoritarianism and a techoologically disembodied, impoverished life experience. The strictly controlledJesuit communities that Foucault describes, and Martine Rothblatt's proposais for social engineering, speak ofa strong tendeocy to prefer rigid schemes oforder to the potential chaos ofthe liberated 'sign.' Does the new level ofreflexive control that simulation has equipped us with offer notbing more than these dire options? Is it best summed up as a means ofcultural control? ( To both of these questions, we must answer no. Stanley Milgram's notorious obedience experiments were interpreted as evidence of the malleability ofhuman psychology in circumstaoces ofgreatly reduced, authoritarian frames ofmeaning. The experimentallaboratory itselfsupplied one sucb frame, a carefully calculated simulation that Milgram did not hesitate to relate to the controlled environments ofthe Nazi death camps, and later ofthe mass suicide at Jonestown. More important than the characterological deficiencies ofthe cultists was their immersion in an authoritarian group Iife, the isolation ofthe group from the larger society, and the virtual control ofthe informational field by their leader... (Miller (83) Milgram takes the closed environments ofthe cuits and the death camps, and the reduction ofinfonnation within their artificially sustained order, to be the most important factor in causing humans to suspend their moral and ethicaljudgment. Such social experimeots are widely feared for their brainwashiog techniques, and the seemingly fanatical devotion oftheir members to mono-principle worlds. There is something intuitively abhorrent about the reductioo ofspontaneity, affect and expressiveoess in culture, even ifit does bring with it civilization and a necessary social order. The intuition ( behind this fear is that we are psychologically vulnerable to manipulation ata subconscious 107 level, often the result ofenvironmental deprivation. As Michael Argyle, a British social ( psychologist, comments on Milgram's experiments, "When a subject steps inside a psychologicallaboratory he steps out ofculture, and all the nonnal roles and conventions are temPOrarily discarded and replaced by the single mie oflaboratory culture - do what the experimenter says, no matter how absurd and unethical it may he." (Miller, (77) Simulations create social environments sealed offfrom the flux ofthe broader culture, functioning on their own specialized principles, and we understandably maintain grave doubts as to the ethical implications ofthese constructed orders. Butthis same technique of social experimentation also drives work like Seymour Papert's, which creates enriched pedagogical environments that c10sely resemble simulations. Papert's pedagogy builds on many oftbe themes that are important to simulation. A brief review of bis work cao a1so help to summarize some ofthe main points ofthis thesis, and suggest a few potentially beneficial aspects ofsimulation. PaPert is interested in promoting new conceptual 'tools for thought' in orderto help children acquire the abstract thinking skills necessary to understand math and physics, often al an uncommonly early age. There is no question ofmind control here, but rather the disposition ofintellectual resources in an artificialleaming environment that clearly resembles a simulation. The chiId ( is engaged in active 'play' with no imposed goals or models to follow, writing rudimentary computer programs that control a robot drawing cursor. Embedded in the design of the programs and the environment are key intellectual concepts for mathematics and physics. At the lime that Papert wrote his book the Macintosh computer was still four years away from production, but already he sees the computer as a major cultural force of what we have called reproximation. Even at this early stage, Papertsuggests that the computer is the likely implement ofcultural change, having effects that penetrate to the cognitive level. Papert's pedagogjcal environments share with simulation the characteristic ofa closed environment in which infonnational elements are limited and reduced in complexity. He calls these constructed environments micro-worlds. the relevant micro-world is stripped ofcomplexity, is simple, graspable. In both cases the child is allowed to play freely with its elements. Although there are constraints on the materials, there are no constraints on the exploration ofcombinations. And in bath cases the power of the environment is that it is 'discovery rich'. (Papert 162) Papert's method, which he calls LOGO, is aimed at creating the conditions for procedural learning, the creative appropriation oftools 'found' within an environment, rather than the ( more common pedagogical methods. Papert's interest is in the development ofnew orlatent lœ intellectual structures, and the originality ofhis approach lies in the transposition of ( conceptual material into concrete objects. ln the methodology ofsimulation outlined in chapter two, the object is isolated in a discrete environment and broken down into its productive elements, then arranged in an abstract model that can he used to reconstruct the object in ail ofits various permutations. The first step ofLOGO is quite similar. Il is to titrate the formai structures ofmathematics through '~a research agenda that included separating what was most powerful in the idea of differential from the accidents ofinaccessible formalisms. The goal was then to connect these scientifically fundamental structures with psychologically powerful ones:' (Papert 161) Papert creates a material counterpart to these concepts through anotber process familiar to practitioners ofsimulation, the fundamental technique ofsubstitution. In this case Papert substitutes the concrete for the abstract, an inversion ofsimulation, which most often moves from the abject to the sign. The key to Papert's approach is this use ofa transitional object, wbich we may recall was the tenn used by D.W. Winnicott to describe an object that allows the child to acknowledge the real separation between mother and self, but to hold open the connection on an imaginative level. It is not clearwhether Papert draws on Winnicott or the object relations school ofpsychoanalysis in bis work, but in bis pedagogical simulations the transitional object plays a similar role ofbridging two leveIs ofexperience. It is called the 'turtle', a mobile robot cursor thatcao he programmed by the child to execute geometric drawings on the floorofthe classroom. Papert makes a fascinating additioo to Winnicott's notion: The transitional object serves explicitly to aochor a set ofabstract principles in the physical environmeot, thereby making them accessible to the cbild io a form tailored to its developing cognitive abilities. The simple programming language offers a controlled set of instructions that may he varied and combined 00 a trial and error basis, and de-bugged step by-step uotil the program executes the cbild's design. The geometric operations programmed 00 the screen are drawn out 'life-sized' by the turde, so that children may feel the parallel between experiential and abstraet worlds. The idea is based on Piagetian developmeotal psychology (genetic epistemology) and Papert'S OWD childhood fascination with gears, which helped him understand mathematical principles in an intuitive manner. As weil as connecting with the fonnal knowledge ofmathematics, it also connects with the 'body knowledge', the sensorimotorschemata ofthe child. You cao he the gear, you cao uoderstand how it tums by projecting yourselfioto ils place and tuming with il. It is this double relationsbip - both ( 109 abstract and seosory - that gives the gear the powerto carry powetful ( mathematics ioto the miod. (Papert viü) Winnicottemphasized that the poteotial space between subject andobject became the site ofplay and latercultural experience, the protected realm ofexperieoce lived 'as if' the imaginary mightexistsimultaneously with a cootradictory empirical 6 reality.' Papert's metaphorofcarrying the gears ioto the miod clearly iovolves the relaxiog ofboundaries between subject and object to briog a 'tool for thought' ioto the miod. The tool is engineered with the intention ofshaping new intellectual structures. This can only happen in a relatively secure environment where sncb blurring ofthe two levels is encouraged and protected. Papen: profits from this transitional quality to bridge the abstract and the concrete. The abstract principlesofmathematics are difficult for the child to grasp in terms of cognitive models that are still primarily proximal. In this the child is much like any adult confronted by the highly specialized knowledge that is necessary to function in a society dominated by abstract systems. Papert's technique makes purposeful use ofa powerful type of reproximation. [0 Papert's system, abstrac~ distal mathematics is reconfigured in tenns that are accessible to the proximal knowledge ofthe sensorimotorschemata ofthe body. [n addition, the computersimulation is designed to transpose abstract operations into terms that are accessible to the procedural know[edge that the child cao assimilate. We may use the example that Papert sets us to emphasize that reproximation is not simply the shrouding ofobjective ordistal knowledge in mythic understandings, negating its rational utility. It is not simply the anarchic play ofthe imaginary. Rather, Papert suggests tbat snch intentional reproximation promises to greatly increase our understanding ofthe Many abstract concepts that require intensive conceptual work to master presently, and consequently remain beyond the grasp ofthe non-expert. He is convinced that the computer win he the most influeotial technology yet created in this regard: [ believe that it can allow us to sbift the boundary separating concrete and formaI. Knowledge that was accessible ooly through formai processes cau OOW he apprehended concretely. And the reaI magic comes from the fact that this knowledge includes those elements one needs to become a fonnal thinker. (Papert 21 ) One ofmy main themes has been that the organization ofourculture has been shifting from the concrete to a greater level ofabstraction, at least in part through the (. diverse effects ofcommunication technologies. As 1pointed out, this culture is becoming 110 increasingly opaque because it is organized on a conceptuallevel, at a remove from unaided ( sensory perception and the intuitive cognitive abilities ofthe body. Modem culture is dedicated to uocoveriog new concepts and operatiooalizing them, and depends on continuai innovation for its well-heing that cao only come from the knowledge ofthe 'engineer,' in Lévi-Strauss' tenns. Papert's suggestion is that through the simulational capabilities ofthe computer, we May he able to work with abstract knowledge as 'bricoleurs.' Within the simulated environments generated by the computer, a limited numberofpowerful transitional objects might he embedded in structures that encourage the acquisition of procedulël1 knowledge. Like the bricoleur, the leamercould eXPeriment with varions combinations ofthese powerful cultural operators, that might he tied through their 'as ir quality ta abstract referents. The simulation invites sucb exploratory learning because ofits ability to represent entire domaios ioto which we May imaginatively project ourselves and our bodies, interacting with simulated objects. Hy encountering concepts as transitional objects, figuring in constructed environments ofreduced complexity, we May develop a more intuitive way ofworking on the conceptuallevel demanded by ourculture. This would involve technologically reproximating distal knowledge to make it somebow resonate meaningfully with the sensorimotorschema ofthe body. Farfrom hiding complex functions behind deceptively simple interfaces, sucb computer based reproximation would 1 " consist ofthe transposition ofabstract concepts in ways that make them accessible to proximal understanding through simulations. The computerwould make us more efficient reproximators, and in a sense, more intelligent bodies, capable ofgreater and more profound understanding ofour environment, both concrete and abstract There is a strong indication that the computer is more thanjust the ultimate abstracting engine, it is perhaps a new means ofpenetrating the Many abstract rea1ms that have eluded proximal understanding up until now. By adding another informationalloop between our selves and the environment, we create the space to simulate, to discover within that simulation, and to ponder how that relates back to the culture externat to the simulation. Papert has deliberately sougbt to achieve this effect in bis micro-worlds. Many new and primarily recreational areas ofabstraction are being developed with great enthusiasm, among them the simulated social environments ofthe MUD. These are ail instances ofthe reproximation that constitutes the main social function ofsimulation. The speculative hypothesis that 1have suggested in this thesis is that simulation is the process by which distal knowledge is reintegrated ioto the proximal realm. Through reproximation, the boundary ofthe concrete and the abstract is presently being bridged in powerful ways by simulations 0Perating at many different levels. Reproximation is most evident as a feedback ( loop functioning at the level ofsocial organization. 1discussed this in the cootext of III simulation as a systemic fonn ofaffect control, a cause ofwhat Anthony Giddens has ( called the sequestering of experience. As Giddens himselfpoints ou~ the suppressed affective content ofdaily life is fed back into society by representational simulations. ft seems that the mass media increasingly become the punreyors ofnarratives ofviolence, disease, seduction, and death as these experiences are drained offfrom the proximal realm by otherabstract systems. A similarlooping effect was also discemible al the level of primitive classification, where we found evidence ofa continuing tendency to classify inanimate objects, especially machines, as social beings. In the cyberpunk imaginary the signs ofa corresponding reclassification ofthe body as machine are already visible. This particularfantasy may he an imaginative extrapolationofthe potential fordisembodied social interaction in the simulated environments created with the computer. This blurring of the conceptual and the abstract is already being manifested in the mainstream culture. Through the influence ofthe technology, the feedback loopsjoining the distal and the proximal are growing tighter, so that the separation ofthe two realms has a tendency DOW to slip indetenninately. The concrete now dematerializes through the substitution ofthe sign for its referent, and the abstract materializes in the concrete environment through reproximation and the integration ofthe sign mto even the most mundane ofman-made objects. Thus, simulation has a specifiable social function; to bridge the distal and the ( proximal realms ofexperience. Simulation is an adaptive link between science, technology and society. Papert showed great foresight conceming the shifting ofthe boundary between the concrete and the abstract. At least within the increasingly significant domains ofcomputer simulations, this is already occurring. This is an important development on the basic argument ofthis thesis, that simulation is contributing to the reorganization ofculture on a more abstract level. The appearance ofa breakdown oforderat the surface level ofculture, the evidence ofa vast disinvestment in a uoitary cultural design, May in fact he the indication ofreorganization at a level furtherremoved from intuitive, proximal understanding. The relatively empty value fonns promoted by the twin abstract structures ofthe market and democratic govemment, coupled with the automation ofso many infrastructural functions through infonnation technology, have turned society into an increasingly autonomous abstraction. Sociality and its shadowy projection, the symbolic component ofculture, have been stripped oftheir role in societal reproduction, and have become purified at the proximallevel ofthe individual.1 would like to suggest that within these admittedlyabstract environments, we may he able to develop modes ofthought that have Iain donnant in the broader cultural context, but which may connect more intuitively ( with our proximal experience. Simulation may very weil help us think and create tbrough 112 the procedural knowledge ofthe bricoleur, ora simulation-enhanced 'body knowledge' ( geared to the body schema. This would in sorne sense he a retrieval ofmodes ofthought that are de-emphasized by abstract thinking. Papert's notion is not so far removed from the metaphysical assertion that within the hyperrational abstract environment ofsimulation, another important and irrational dimension ofhuman experience may be nurtured, the imaginary and myth. Simulation is not simply a locking in ofmeanings in an artÏficially controlled environment, but also a playful fonn ofexperience. Simulation creates bounded spaces where 'culture' cao he stepped out of, perbaps long enough to elaborate new and unexpected meanings. Hard and fast roles ofmeaning cao he suspended within the safety ofthe simulated domain. These are places of experimentation, where the meaning ofthe experiences fashioned within them cao be worked out, largely free from the constraints imposed by prior models, or the moral concerns ofthe widerculture. Many simulations become cuIturally sanctioned spaces of regression, in the positive sense ofallowing users to suspend the structuring mental strategies adopted in order to live within a conventional model ofreality. Within the protected space ofthe simulation, the boundaries that are normally maintained between subject and object can be relaxed, and experience cao be acquired in an 'as if' fashion, where the results ofthe experiment are always reversible. People cao take risks with ( \. themselves, and with their identities, secure in the knowledge that the consequences of action within the simulation are limited. As Winnicott pointed out, it also goes sorne way to relieving the psychic tension inhering in the maintenance ofsuch boundaries. Psychoanalytic theory is frequently misapplied to cultural criticism. The most important insight that it bas to offer is at the level ofprocess, not content. Its emphasis on the suspension ofthe usual constrictions on thought, the elaboration of meaning, its focus on process and fonn, and the enriched symbolic content uncovered in the objective world are ail elements applicable in a wider sense to culture. The psychoanalyst Marion Milner has written ofa "different kind ofintegrative force than that which results from any attempt, of whatevernature, to copy a preexisting ordered model." (Milner (48) Milner sees the imposition oforderas a defensive strategy, motivated by the fear ofchaos tbat might result ifself-control is relaxed. Milner insists that dissolviog the boundaries between subject and object does oot result in a chaotic loss ofcoherence. Rather, when these psychic boundaries are relaxed, a different sort ofpreconscious, prelinguistic organizational capacity associated. with an irrational and prelogical mode ofthougbt cornes into play. This is anotheremergent form oforder that leads to "the free interplay ofdifferences with equal rights to be ( different," sidestepping the rational structuring that often accompanies a consciously 113 imposed order. (146) Milner's notion ofan intuitive, preconscious level oforganization ( centred around the body is intriguingly similarto Papert's, who attempted to implicate the sensorimotor body schemaofthe child in the acquisition ofprocedural knowledge. The choice that simulation offers us, between the authoritarian model and the chaotic liberation ofthe sign, is thus oot sa clean cut or dire. Ifwe do Dot follow a pre existiog model, chaos does not necessarily ensue. Rather, an emergent arder, a balancing among differences, is made possible through the suspension ofdefensive structures that may itselftake place within the sheltering fold ofa simulation. Cultural experimentation cao ooly take place when the defensive rush to arder, to banish indetenninacy, is suspended long enough for a different order ta emerge. In the micro-world ofSeymour Papert's LOGO, orthe postmodem play spaces ofthe MOO, the greatest value is placed on allowing meaning to evolve within the relatively neutral structures seeded in the environment. We can think ofthis as being anaIogous to running a simulation under the controlled conditions ofthe laboratory, where substances are subjected to various transformations, and reacted with different substances, to yield knowledge. Simulation becomes the site ofcultural experimentation, a holding space for exploring the compatibility ofdifferences that is suitably insulated from culture ta enjoy autonomy and freedom from censure and constraint. We've seen something like this orderdeveloping in the wake ofthe simulation process and the resulting abstraction ofculture. Within the equivalencies established by difference and the relaxation ofhierarchies in culture, anotherorder is emerging that rests upon an agreed upon framework ofconvenience, but is relatively value empty. Such an order also concords with Deleuze's treatment ofthe simulacrum, particularly its capacity to integrate opposites and represent radical contradictions. True to their metaphysical roots, simulations hold out a rich potential to harbour the inevitable differences deriving from a cultural sphere ordered aloog the Iines of 'play.' My perspective on simulation joins the metaphor of'play' both through Winnicott's notion ofthe 'potential space,' and through its post-structuralist mots. 10 this context, 'play' refers to open-ended exploration for its own sake. The essential first step in any process ofculturalleaming is ta seek the possibility ofsomething different, to imagine what might possibly he attained, and that cannot occur under the coercive influence ofa preestablished model. That the insights derived from such speculative 'play' rarely add up to any project for social change is not surprising, but this does not obviate the value ofthe process. Il is an attempt to promote the conditions for the emergence ofmeanings that were fonnerly repressed, or even unimaginable under given notions ofconsciousness, or ( philosophy. Such meanings may weil he thought impossible al the level commonly beld to 114 he reality, but the cultural importance ofsimulation demonstrates our propensity for ( transposing the imaginary and the real, ourwillingness to hold open a connection that often defies rationallogic, and to leam from the results. As Lévi-Strauss pointed out, play has a cathartic power to make what is impossible at the empiricallevel ofexistence possible at a symbolic level. Play tries to promote a different kind oflogic that has recently begun to find its acknowledged place in human affairs again: This logic ofthe imaginary is one of bath/and rather than either/or. It is inclusive and, by extension, tolerant: it a1lows opposites to stand, irreconcilables to co-exist, refusing to deny the daim ofone for the sake of its contrary, to sacrifice the strange on the a1tar ofself-identity... Poetics is the carnival of possibilities where everything is pennitted, nothing censored. Il is the willingness ta imamne oneself in the other person's skin, to see things as ifone were, momentarily at least, another... (Kearney 368) The cultural status ofplay has risen in tandem with the spread ofsimulation, at least in part because ofa newfound awareness of the 'fabling of the world,' as Vattimo put il. The valuation ofplay is the correlate ofthe retrieval ofthe mythical dimension of ( experience, with its emphasis on narrative and subjectivism. The play ofidentity in the MOO, orthe symbolic participation in the Zapatista rebellion, are examples ofthis suspension ofrationallogic in favour ofa highly valued and often intensely eXPerienced participation on an imaginative level. Meaning takes form through elaboration and play, which the poststructuralists see transcending egocentric, anthropocentric consciousness. Simulations may lock this process into an overtly coded identity, ifa single-principle is exhaustively enforced, or it may provide the circumstances for a flourishing of meaning. Despite its demonic undertones and its unsettling effect on the notion ofthe 'natural', simulation bas no intrinsic ethical content. The undermining ofrepresentational stability that characterizes ourculture ofsimulation creates anxieties which may in turn stimulate a defensive desire fororder. Or, the opportunities created by the 'liberation ofthe sign' may he transfonned into experimentation and play within culturally sanctioned simulations, if the conditions of trust within the culture cao be nurtured. There is reason to hope that this can he established, given the degree to which modemity a1ready requires a daily commitment to trust in a multitude ofabstract systems. But this means attributing the utmost importance to sorne fonn ofopen and inventive public sphere, and tolerating the ditTerence (and contention) that will doubtlessly he expressed within il. Those who would ( limit the proliferation ofmeanings, on the other hand, have an impossible task. The order 115 that may he imposed through simulation is at oost fleeting. Whether it is the arbitrariness of ( the sigo, an excess ofrational skepticism, or the playful inversions issuing spontaneously from the imaginary, sorne agent ofnegativity eventually reasserts indeterminacy. No text, no sign can take on a pennanent meaning, no matter how great an effort is made to sustain it. The act ofabstraction that detaches it from i15 intended contextopens it up to other readings. As the degree to which Marx's celebrated dictum 'ail that is solid melts into air' becomes realized in truly remarkable ways, the free floating and indeterminate aspect of meaning in a culture ofsimulation hecomes generalized, and naturalized. 1must extend this last line ofdiscussion to my own project ofrepresentation. In the present context ofcultural theory, the older dominant frameworks ofMarxism, structuralism, or functionalism no longerdrive the research agenda. They are in suspension and new approaches are being conceived, often drawing on the 'grand narratives' for resources applicable to more limited epistemologies. Theory itselfhas oscillated between realism and imny with a greater emphasis on the latterat the moment. 1have found it possible to recuperate the concept ofsimulation from Baudrillard's neartotal imny through recourse to a limited fonn ofrelativism. This approach has been particularly pleasing to me because it bas a feel ofexperiential accuracy about it, and it escapes the Pessimism ofpure 1 reJativism.1t has become increasingly evident that the culture(s) that we inhabit are ~ composed ofmultiple contexts, each with ils specific social reality thatdefies reduction to one overriding description ordescriptive strategy, but ail ofwhich are potentially commensurate in sorne limited degree through the human construction ofmeaning. Thus the metaphor ofsimulation might even he applied to itselfas part ofa stage in theoretical discourse without too much difficulty. 1have tried to use the notion ofsimulation to throw into definition a recognizable cultural pattern, one ofincreasing abstraction, and substitution ofthe sign for the referent. The Most obvious example ofthis is to be found in the functioning ofcommunication technologies, but it is a process that extends to many more subtle levels ofsociallife. A broad cultural awareness ofthe utility and pervasiveness ofsimulation is now coming to the fore, with a distinct emphasis on the computeras a potent new technology ofsimulation, and increasingly as an 'other' against which the human cao he gauged. Comparisons of mind and machine, or MUD and 'community,' are now widespread. Those cultural practices already opened up to reinterpretation by social simulation are often sites of contention, as theirabstract characterentails a floating and more or less malleable meaning. As technology evolves, the means at the disposai ofsimulators in the domains ofscience ( and entertainment also improves, further destabilizing received cultural notions. 116 In a sense this thesis is a1so a work ofsimulatioo. A simulation is a particular type ( oftext that pretends some sort ofsimilarity with reality, while problematizing its own representational function. Working with tbis metaphor implies a self-conscious awareness ofthe timits ofmy own methodology to arrive at the 'truth' about culture, orsimulation. The very process ofselecting out the metaphorand projecting it onto the culture determines to a large extent the results ofthe research. The goal becomes to see what insights may he gleaned from the fit ofthe metaphor and the objectofresearch that it helps to delineate, and to find continuities with other concepts and correspondences between levels ofsocial reality, rather than to find some stable foundation for daims to 'tnlth.' This sort of theoretical approach does notfit the typical objectivist social science paradigm; instead it is overt about ils literary leanings. Any attempt to draw final conclusions about simulation, or to close this discussion without remarking on its contingent nature and the still uninvestigated areas where simulation may surely he found operating, would he to impose a false closure on a vital, emergeot process. ( 117 ( WorksCited Anderson. Benedict. Ima&ined Communities: Reflections OnThe Orlan AndSpreadOf Nationalism. London: Vers09 1991. Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Exchanae and Death. Trans. Iain Hamilton Grant. London: Sage, 1993. -- 'L'Amérique ou la Pensée de l'espace.' Citoyenneté Et Urbanité. Paris: Esprit, 1991. 155-64. -- The Ecstasy ofCommunication. New York: Semiotexte9 1988. --- Simulations. New York: Semiotexte. 1983. -- ln the Shadow ofthe Silent Majorities. or. The End ofthe Social: and Oilier Essays. New York: Semiotexte, 1983. Babti, Timothy. "Ambiguityand Indetenninacy: The Juncture." Comparative Literature. 38 (1986). 209-223. Bauman, Zygmunt. Intimations ofPostmodemity. London: Routledge, 1992. --- ModemityandAmbivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press, 199I. Best, Steven. "TheCommodification ofReality and the Reality ofCommodification: Baudrillard, Debord and Postmodem Theory." Baudrillard: A Critical Reader. Eds. Best and Douglas Kellner. Cambridge, MA.: Blackwell, 1994.41-65. Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner. Postmodem Theory: Criticallnterroaations. New York: Guilford, 1991. Binkley, Timothy. "Refiguring Culture." Future Visions: New Technolo&ies ofthe Screen, Eds. Philip Hayward and Tana Wollen. London: British Film Institute, 1993.90 122. Bumett9 Ron. Cultures ofVision: 1males, Media and the Ima&imu)'. 8100OOogton: Indiana UP, 1995. Butler9 Judith. GenderTrouble: Feminism And TheSubversion OfIdentity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Calhoun, Craig. "Indirect Relationships and Imagined Communities: Large Scale Social Integration and the Transfonnation ofEveryday Life." Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives. Eds. Calhoun, LiPuma and Postone. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1993. 95-i21. ( 118 Carey, James. Communication As Culture: Essays On Media And Society. Boston: Unwin l Hyman, 1989. Chambers, Iain. Border Dialo&ues: Joumeys in Postmodernity. London: Comedia Routledge, 1990. Cleaver, Harry. (1994, February). "The Chiapas Uprising And The Future OfClass Stnlggle In The New World Order." R1FF-RAFF {On-line} Available ftp: profmexis.dgsca.unam.mx Deleuze, Gilles. The Lowc ofSense. Trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale. Ed. Constantin V. Boundas. New York: Columbia UP, 1990. Del Rio, Pablo, and Amelia Alvarez. "Tossing, Praying And Reasoning: The Changing Architectures ofMind and Agency." Sociocultural Studies orThe Mind. Eds. Wertsch, Del Rio, Alvarez. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1995.215-247. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizin& Process: The History ofManners and State Formation and Civilization. Oxford, Eng.: Blackwell, 1994. Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. "Constituents ForA Theory OfThe Media." in Video Culture: A Criticallnvestieation. Ed. John G. Hanhardt. Layton, lIT: Peregrine Smith, 1986. Featherstone, Mike. Undoinl: Cultures. Globalization. Postmodemity and Identity. ( London: Sage, 1995. Fekete, John. Moral Panic: Biopolitics Risin&. Montréal, PQ: Robert Davies, 1994. Fischer, M.J. "Eye(l)ing the Sciences." in Techno-scientificlma&inaries. Ed. George Marcus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Foucault, Michel. "La Prose d'Actéon" Ditset Ecrits Vol. 1 Paris: Gallimard, 1994. --- "OfOther Spaces," Diacritics 16 (1986): 22-27. Fuentes, Carlos. "Chiapas: Latin America's First Post-Communist Rebellion." New PerspectivesQuarterly. 11.2 (1994): 54-58. Gellner, Ernest. Reason and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Giddens, Anthony. ModernityandSelf-Identity. Cambridge, Eng.: PolitY Press, 1991. --- The Conseguences ofModemity. Cambridge, Eng.: Polity Press, 1990. Goody, Jack. The Domestication ofthe Savaee Mind. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1'TI7. Goody, Jack and lan Watt, "The Consequences Of Literacy." Communication in Hist0O': TechnoloiY. Culture. Society. Eds. Crowley and Heyer. New York: Longman, 1991. Guillermoprieto, Alma. 1995. "The Shadow War." New York Review of Books. March ( 2 (1995): 34-44. 119 Halleck, Deedee. --Zapatistas on-Hne." NACLA Report on the Americas. 28. 2 (1994). ( Habennas. Jurgen. The Structural Transfonnation ofthe Public Sphere. Trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1989. Heim, Michael. The MetaphysicsofVirtual Reality. New York: Oxford up. 1993. Jacot. Martine. --Les Zapatistes et la Désinfonnation Cybernétique:' Le Monde 2409 (1995). np. My translation. Katz, Jon. --The Rights of Kids in the Digital Age." Wired. 4. 7 ( 1996). 120-170. Kearney, Richard. The Wake ofImaeination. Minneapolis, University ofMinnesota Press. 1988. Kellner. Douglas. Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodemism and Beyond. Cambridge: Polity Press 1989. KnorrCetina, Karin. --Primitive Classification and Postmodemity: Towards a Sociological Notion of Fiction." TheoJY Culture and Society. II. 2 (1994) 1-22. Lakoff, George. Women. Fire and DanaerousThines: WhatCateeories Reveal About the Mind. Chicago: University ofChicago Press. 1987. Landow, George. Hypertext: The Conveœence ofContemporaQ' Critical Theory and Technolo&"y. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1992. Levin. Charles. Jean Baudrillard: A Study in Cultural Metaphysics. Prentice Hall, 1996. ( Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savaee Mind. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1966. MacCannell, Dean. --Social Class in Postmodemity: Sirnulacrom or Retum ofthe Real?" ForeetBaudrillard? Eds. Chris Rojek and Bryan S. Turner. New York: Routledge, 1993. MacKinnon, Richard. --Searching for the Leviathan in Usenet." Cybersociety. Ed. Steve Jones. London: Sage, 1995. 112-137. McLuhan, Marshall. --Address at Vision 65." Essential McLuhan. Eds. McLuhan and Zingrone. Concord, ON.: Anansi, 1995.219-232. McNay. Lois. Foucault and Feminism. Cambridge: PolitY Press, 1992. Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place. New York: Oxford University Press. 1985. Miller, Arthur G. The Obedience Experiments: A Case Study OfControversy In Social Science. New York: Praeger, 1986. Milner, Marion. On Not Beine Able to Paint. London: Heinemann, 1950. Papert, Seymour. Mindstonns: Chiidren, Computers And Powerful Ideas. New Yorle Basic Books, 1980. Paz, Octavio. uThe Media Spectacle Cornes to Mexico." New Perspectives Ouarterly. 11.2 (1994): 59-60. ( Poster, Mark. The ModeofCommunication. Chicago: University ofChicago Press. 1990. 120 Reid, Elizabeth. "Virtual Worlds: Culture and Imagination." Cybersociety. Ed. Steve ( Jones. London: Sage~ 1995. 1~183. Rothbla~ Martine. The Apartheid OfSex: A Manifesto On The Freedom OfGender. New York: Crown~ 1995. Sahlins~ Marshall. Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press~ 1976. Shweder~ Richard. Thinki0a Tbroup Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural PsycholoKY. Cambridge~ MA.: Harvard UP~ 1991. Schmid~ Siegfried J. Conventions and Literary Systems. Rules And Conventions : Literature. Philosophy. Social Theory. Trans. and Ed. Mette Hjort. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP~ 1992. 215-249. Shade~ Leslie Regan. (1993, August). "Gender Issues in Computer Networking." Availableftp: ncf.carleton.calNational Capital FreenetlCommunity Network Conference/Conference Papers. Stott~ William. Documentary Expression andThirtiesAmerica. New York: Oxford University Press~ 1973. T rueheart~ Charles. "Welcome to the Next Cburch.~~ TheAtlantic Monthly. 278. 2 ( 1996). 37-58. ( \ Turlde, Sherry. LiCe on the Screen. New York: Simon and Shuster~ 1995. Vattimo~ Gianni. TheTransparent Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992. Wagner~ Roy. Symbols That Stand ForThemselves. Chicago: University ofChicago Press~ 1986. Warner~ Michael. .vrhe Mass Public And The Mass Subject." The Phaotom Public Sphere. Ed. Bruce Robbins. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press~ 1993. 234-256. Watson, Russell. "When Words are the Best Weapon". Newsweek. Feb. 27 (1995). 36 40. Zapatista Net. {on-fine} available al: http://www.aetlab.utexas.edul- zapatistaslzaPatista.html or http://web.maxwell.syr.edulnativeweb/geographyllatinam/mexicolchiapas2.html ( 121 1•0 :~ Iii 1111 := Iii 122 ~Ii: 111111.1 ~ w t ~ 111111.25 ~~ 1.4 ~ 1 LF_-=====-~15~om:.m~ -=_---=---=---=---=---=-=-=-=--=-j--.J~; I _ 6" ---.Jl.....,- 1 APPLIEO_~ IMAGE .ne1 -=: 1653 East Main Street ~~ Rochester. NY 14609 USA -=-4S Phone:71~7161482 _.:::::: Fax: C 1993. A;lPied .'-""- Inc.. AI RigI'lIS Ftes8MId