Baudrillard's Simulacra Theory And Its Aesthetic Means

Jean Baudrillard was a famous contemporary French social theorist, and he dealt with a wide range of research fields. This thesis aims to study on his theory of simulacrum.It is well known that Jean Baudrillard was a Marxist in his early times, whose early works, such as The system of Objects, For a critique of the political economy of the sign and The consumer society, are all about political economics criticism from the angle of Marxism. However, The mirror of production (1973) signals Baudrillard's separating with Marxism, and at the same time, he began to create the theory of simulacrum. In 1976, Jean Baudrillard published the famous work Symbolic exchange and death, in which he had an integral expression of this theory. From The mirror of production to Symbolic exchange and death, Jean Baudrillard expressed clearly the theory of simulacrum. Through the exposition, we can easily find that the importance of the theory of simulacrum in his whole theory system consists in that simulacrum, as a history category, is related to the present and history, and is the key method to understand the present that we live in Baudrillard's mind.The theory of simulacrum is a view of history, so it is a historical theory to understand the present. From this point of view, simulacrum is also a theory with modernity. Thus, there are multiple perspectives to understand this theory. This thesis tries to research the relationship of the theory of simulacrum and its esthetics significance. More specifically, the thesis explores the relationship between modern western literary esthetics and the theory of simulacrum, and studies the development process of esthetics theory.The thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter one discusses the meaning and the origin of Baudrillard's theory of simulacrum, including the changes of his thought and the outside influence of other theories. Chapter two mainly explores the consumer society and its modernity under the context of theory of simulacrum, including the new understanding of the consumer society and reflections of modernity from the perspective of the theory of simulacrum. Chapter three researches the esthetics significance of the theory of simulacrum, including the relationship between literary esthetics and the theory of simulacrum, and development process of esthetics theory with influences of the theory of simulacrum.What this thesis mainly concerns is the theory of Baudrillard's simulacrum, which only occupies a small part of all his works, but we may observe Baudrillard's ideological system from a higher level through understanding his theory of simulacrum.