ABSTRACT
During the mid-1970s, Baudrillard continued to broaden and deepen the analysis of the transformations, or, better, exorbitations, in crucial spheres of modern life under the impact of simulation processes. One key discussion focused on the meaning of fashion in this new context. This is an important continuation of reflections established in an earlier period and developed now in relation to his new conception of the structural law of value and how it invades modern cultures at every level. It specifies four processes which develop unequally but simultaneously: a movement towards the adoption of models and their simulation, in which there is, second, a differential play of elements, and in which, third, the elements become ‘indifferent’ to one another. Finally simulation is structured by the play of uniform values (equivalences made possible by the process of homogenization). All social spheres are affected by this process and one essential way in which this is achieved is through fashion: this is quite evident in clothes and consumer items, but it also begins to affect politics, science, and even sexuality. But lying even more deeply in the culture are crucial effects borne of the process of its formation. Adopting and extending Foucault’s analyses of the genesis of modern forms of normalization, Baudrillard argues that the destruction of the symbolic modes of relating to death has meant that there is an unresolved problem of facing the dead in our societies, just as there is in facing the ill, the disabled, the criminal: contemporary societies cannot find a solution to the problem that they have themselves created-that the dead are dead.
