The Materiality of Simulacra and the Politics of De-Representation in Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, and Gille Deleuze

This paper tries to examine the critical possibility of simulacra in contemporary theories. Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze all share the point that the modern idea of representation functions as an oppressive mechanism not only to domesticate the intractable materiality of simulacra, but also to prevent them from interrupting the stable structure of representation. As alternatives, they intend to imagine simulacra as free of the domination of reality, presence, and representation. Baudrillard emphasizes the implosion between reality and simulacra and attends to the emergence of simulacral hyperreality more real than reality. Derrida criticizes the dichotomy between presence and absence and argues for the simulacral and spectral trace between them. Lastly, Deleuze tries to restore the intensity and potentiality of simulacra deprived by such representation as identity, resemblance, opposition and analogy. But what is more important than their similarity on the conception of simulacra is their difference in the political sense of simulacra. In Baudrillard's theory, simulacra, free from reality, immediately reduce themselves to imploded codes and signs. There remains no resistance in his theory. But in Derrida's and Deleuze's theories, simulacra work as a critical and practical possibility to go beyond or flee from the present order of representation. They, however, move in very different directions. Derrida's simulacra exist as a transcendent demand for justice and otherness, whereas Deleuze's are a practical sign to slip out of the oppression of transcendent representation and draw the line of becoming and flight in the plane of immanence.