ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a range of theoretical responses to meaning in our allegedly post-super-hyper-modern times, that media-saturated world in which we consume images of other images more often than images of a direct reality. It does this by visiting key moments and theorists and their work, starting with Debord’s prophetic Society of the Spectacle. It then considers the postmodern turn and in particular Baudrillard’s ideas about simulation, simulacra and hyperreality. All of this is illustrated by reference to media products and their meanings. The chapter then progresses via Barthes’s ‘Death of the Author’ to understand the limitations of structuralism and clarify the character of the post-structuralist turn. This is exemplified in ideas of discourse and différance in the work of Foucault and Derrida.
