These sources provide a theoretical exploration of the postmodern condition in relation to knowledge, culture, and power structures, drawing from the works of prominent French philosophers. The first excerpt, from Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, focuses on the concepts of the simulacrum—a copy without an original—and the hyperreal, arguing that modern society is characterized by the production of models that replace reality, examining examples from Disneyland to political scandals like Watergate. The second excerpt, Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, analyzes how the rise of information technology affects knowledge, arguing that the traditional legitimating "grand narratives" are collapsing, and that knowledge is increasingly valued for its performativity and technical efficiency rather than its truth, although he also notes that postmodern science paradoxically pursues instabilities and paralogy, or reasoning beyond established norms. Both texts grapple with the disappearance of the real and the resulting crisis of legitimation in contemporary society.

Ver todos los episodios