Here is the definition of simulacrum from an online dictionary:
sim·u·la·crum
ˌsimyəˈlākrəm,-ˈlak-/Submit
noun
1.
an image or representation of someone or something.
"a small-scale simulacrum of a skyscraper"
Although, Baudrillard in has so much to say about present day society that is of interest, I would like to focus for this discussion on the following quote about the nature of the free market:
And all that recrimination which replaced revolutionary thought today comes down to reproaching capital for not following the rules of the game. "Power is unjust, its justice is a class justice, capital exploits us, etc." - as if capital were linked by a contract to the society it rules. It is the left which holds out the mirror of equivalence, hoping that capital will fall for this phantasmagoria of the social contract and fulfull its obligation towards the whole of society (at the same time, no need for revolution: it is enough that capital accept the rational formula of exchange).
Capital in fact has never been linked by a contract to the society it dominates. It is a sorcery of the social relation, it is a challenge to society and should be responded to as such. It is not a scandal to be denounced according to moral and economic rationality, but a challenge to take up according to symbolic law. (Baudrillard Simulations and Simulacra)
Retrieved from
http://kareneliot.de/downloads/JeanBaudrillard_Simulations_and_Simulacra.pdf
Then examine the various stages of the travels of the T-Shirt and how its travels perfectly represent this nature. Here is what the
New York Times Business Section has to say about it:
The protests occurred on "a cold day in February 1999." Ms. Rivoli was watching as students gathered at the gothic centerpiece of Georgetown to demonstrate against the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and other putative villains of international trade. The crowd, Ms. Rivoli noticed with characteristic acuity, had "a moral certainty, a unity of purpose" that permitted it to distinguish black from white and good from evil "with perfect clarity." One woman seized the microphone and asked: "Who made your T-shirt? Was it a child in Vietnam? Or a young girl from India earning 18 cents per hour? ... Did you know that she lives 12 to a room? That she shares her bed and has only gruel to eat?"
Ms. Rivoli did not know these things, and she wondered how the woman at the microphone knew. But she decided to find out. In the rest of her narrative, the author tells the story of "her" T-shirt, which she purchased for $5.99 by the exit of a Walgreen's in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "It was white and printed with a flamboyantly colored parrot, with the word 'Florida' scripted beneath." A company in Miami had engraved the front, after buying the shirt from a factory in China. The Chinese manufacturer had purchased the cotton used to make the shirt from Texas. Eventually it will end up as part of a large but little-known market for used clothing destined for resale in East African ports.
Read more of this review at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/business/yourmoney/21shelf.html
Can you find other examples of the free market at work with surprising results? Please find an article to support your findings.
