The Sickly Cultural Pathos Which The Whole

... 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.

Freud Thought He Was Bringing The Plague To The U.s.a., But The U.s.a. Has Victoriously Resisted The Psychoanalytical Frost By Real Deep Freezing, By Mental And Sexual Refrigeration. They Have Countered The Black Magic Of The Unconscious With The White Magic Of "doing Your Own Thing," Air Conditioning, Sterilization, Mental Frigidity And The Cold Media Of Information.

Kitschis One Of The Major Categories Of The Modern Object. Knick-knacks, Rustic Odds-and-ends, Souvenirs, Lampshades, And African Masks: The Kitsch-object Is Collectively This Whole Plethora Of "trashy," Sham Or Faked Objects, This Whole Museum Of Junk Which Proliferates Everywhere.... Kitsch Is The Equivalent To The "cliché" In Discourse.

The Image Is Not A Medium For Which We Have To Find The Proper Use. It Is What It Is And It Is Beyond All Our Moral Considerations. It Is By Its Essence Immoral, And The World's Becoming-image Is An Immoral Process.

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