The Precession of Simulacra

Simulacrum: image or representation of someone or something

Borges fable: "On Exactitude in Science," (1946) short story by Jorge Luis Borges about the map-territory relation. In an empire where cartography becomes an exact science, a map is made that portrays every element of the country with perfectly accurate detail.

A map that precedes what it depicts, and therefore causes the territory's rise, raises a simple but valuable dilemma of what is representation and what is real. The author says the sovereign difference between the representation and the real is what gives that abstraction charm. In this case, mapping is simply equating the real into a system of signs of the real. "The real will never have a chance to produce itself." It's like removing death as even an option in life.

Simulate (from text): to feign to have what one doesn't have

Dissimulate (from text): to pretend to not have what one has

If one were to simulate an illness, he would have to cause the symptoms in himself. In that case, simulation threatens the difference between the real and the imaginary. Medicine loses meaning if all symptoms can be self-induced. Psychosomatics is an interesting topic that I think the author could have expounded upon more. There is a complex relationship between the body and the mind, so why are physical symptoms generally taken more seriously if such symptoms can be simulated, and psychoanalysis is presumedly more safeguarded?

The point is: simulation can cause basically any system to collapse in on itself, because every element  of the process becomes meaningless when one negates objective truth.

(from text)
Representation stems from the principle of the equivalence of the sign and the real.

Simulation stems from the radical negation of the sign as value; sees the sign as the reversion and death sentence of the reference.

I really wish I could remember the semiotic definition of a sign, because having a clear understanding of signs vs. symbols (and vs. icons) feels important to understanding this reading. My best attempt to differentiate the two would be to say that a symbol is an arbitrary representation of something (i.e., a rose for love) and a sign resembles the thing it is trying to represent (i.e., silhouette of a woman in a dress for a women's restroom).