In his book Simulations (1983), Jean Baudrillard introduced the notion of a new social order based on simulacra without originals. Malls, neighborhoods, amusement parks, even the political left and right—simulations of originals that no longer exist, imitations without real models. Baudrillard engaged academics and enraged Marxists and other social realists, when he later announced, with seeming blitheness, that the first Gulf War ‘wasn’t real.’ ‘Tell that to the estimated 15,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the war, or the estimated 100,000 dying in its aftermath, or the Gulf War veterans, suffering from Gulf War Syndrome.’But despite the critics of postmodernism’s dissolution...
