The Desert Is No Longer A Landscape,

But What If God Himself Can Be Simulated, That Is To Say Can Be Reduced To Signs That Constitute Faith? Then The Whole System Becomes Weightless, It Is No Longer Anything But A Gigantic Simulacrum - Not Unreal, But Simulacrum, That Is To Say Never Exchanged For The Real, But Exchanged For Itself, In An Uninterrupted Circuit Without Reference Or Circumference.

... The Age Of Simulation Thus Begins With A Liquidation Of All Referentials - Worse: By Their Artificial Resurrection In Systems Of Signs, A More Ductile Material Than Meaning... It Is No Longer A Question Of Imitation, Nor Of Reduplication, Nor Even Of Parody. It Is Rather A Question Of Substituting Signs Of The Real For The Real Itself.

A Sociosphere Of Contact, Control, Persuasion And Dissuasion, Of Exhibitions Of Inhibitions In Massive Or Homeopathic Doses...: This Is Obscenity. All Structures Turned Inside Out And Exhibited, All Operations Rendered Visible. In America This Goes All The Way From The Bewildering Network Of Aerial Telephone And Electric Wiresto The Concrete Multiplication Of All The Bodily Functions In The Home, The Litany Of Ingredients On The Tiniest Can Of Food, The Exhibition Of Income Or Iq.

Television Knows No Night. It Is Perpetual Day. Tv Embodies Our Fear Of The Dark, Of Night, Of The Other Side Of Things.

Illusion Is No Longer Possible, Because The Real Is No Longer Possible.