ABSTRACT
Written in 1900, the above passage suggests that hyper-reality, a state where simulacra or reproductions are preferred to the real thing, long predates the postmodern ruminations of hyper-realtor extraordinaire, Jean Baudrillard (1983, 1994a). Such an occurrence, of course, would hardly come as a surprise to the great illusionist of the end. After all, Baudrillard (1994b) has suggested that the final years of the twentieth century will be characterised, not by the fiery fate predicted by countless generations of apocalyptics, soothsayers and Biblethumpers, but by a systematic process of erasure, where history is thrown into reverse, the past is methodically expunged of its mistakes and misdemeanours, and the terrible temporal slate that is the twentieth century is completely wiped clean in preparation for a fresh start on the other side of the year 2000.1
Baudrillard, surprise, surprise, is somewhat imprecise about the precise point at which his hypothesised retroversion will terminate-he posits a ‘history barrier’, akin to the sound or speed barrier, beyond which the reversal of time cannot pass —but a strong case can surely be made for the late nineteenth century, since the fin de siècle appears to be exercising the imagination of innumerable intellectuals at present (e.g. Alexander 1995; Ledger and McCracken 1995; Meštrovič 1991). Many latter-day commentators have drawn attention to the intriguing parallels between the dogdays of the nineteenth century and our degraded, some would say decadent, postmodern times. Showalter (1991:1), for example, states that from ‘urban homelessness to imperial decline, from sexual revolution to sexual epidemics, the last decades of the twentieth century seem to be repeating the problems, themes and metaphors of the fin de siècle ’. Eagleton (1995) notes
the ‘uncanny’ resemblance between the global economic recessions of the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries, though the latter are accompanied by an all-pervasive air of political lassitude and ennui that was notably absent in the former. ‘What we seem left with in the nineties’, he concludes, ‘is something of the culture of the previous fin de siècle shorn of its politics’ (Eagleton 1995:11). For Briggs and Snowman (1996), moreover, the most striking concordance between now and then inheres in both societies’ retrospective propensity. Just as we are inclined to reflect on the last fin de siècle, so too the late Victorians were prone to ponder on the past and, like ourselves, prone to ponder their ponderings.
