UNIVERSITY OF THE FREESTATE

WYS 603
A critical analysis of Jorge Luis Borges fictional
narrative The Circular Ruins with relation to
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
Francois Maritz, 2007034388
5/3/2012
Content
Introduction page 2

History of Ideas page 2

The Copy and the Simulacrum page 3

Culture and Identity page 3

The Circular Ruins page 4

Conclusion page 5

Bibliography page 6

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Introduction
In this paper I will make use of the idea of the simulacrum in order to critically analise a text by
Jorges Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins. I will first of explain the history of the idea of the simulacrum
in its essential form and then move on to some more contemporary ideas of the simulacrum,
including that of culture and identity.

With the theory on the proverbial table I will then analise the text of Borges in Baudrillian terms with
specific reference to the work Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard.

History of ideas
When one is talking about an idea it is important to be aware that the idea that is being spoken
about renders itself in a dualistic form, when seen in a platonic sense. This in turn gives rise to a
distinction between the model and the copy, the true idea and the copy thereof, more precisely, the
copies and the simulacra.

(Deleuze, 1990:2) points out in his The logic of sense that;

Pure becoming, the unlimited, is the matter of the simulacrum insofar as it eludes the
action of the Idea and insofar as it contests both model and copy at once.

What does this statement mean? What is pure becoming? This pure becoming according to
Deleuze is the self (or reality) in a constant state of being, not in the past, not in the future, but in
the present in a way of being in the past and future at the same time at once. This gives rise to the
paradoxical.

Paradox is initially that which destroys good sense as the only direction, but it is also that
which destroys common sense as the assignation of fixed identities. (Deleuze, 1990:3)

Thus we can see that when speaking about ideas and reality in the platonic sense that there is some
truth in the unseen, the unknown. The paradoxical that destroys, in Deleuzes terminology, the real
and gives an open space of being to the infinite, the constantly changing reality not defined be the
good or common.

We have then two realities, the one being a quasi-reality so to speak. The stoics also made this
distinction according to Deleuze, the one reality being that of the real, the force, and the other mere
facts, the surface, the skin.

This quasi-reality is merely quasi-causes followed out in obedience to the laws lain down by this
quasi-reality. When one would dissect this world of quasi-being one would come to realize that the
world on its own is without meaning and nothing more than a machine left to operate with the laws
given in order to keep the self engulfed in this order of being so that it would in effect become a
prison of the mind. Thus it is safe to say that the incorporeal is nothing more than effects becoming,
alive, embodied in the quasi-world.

With this linear world view being drawn by the quasi-world it is safe to assume that meaning will
only be meaning as to that what the cause implies meaning to be and not what self wants it to be.
And because of this linear state of affairs the one being affected would not be able to escape this
reality into a circular reality where the one being affected can again relate to cause and possibly
making a difference in the one causing.

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To quote Deleuze again on just this cause and effect relation of realization:

It climbs to the surface of things and becomes impassive. It is no longer a question of

simulacra which elude the ground and insinuate themselves everywhere, but rather a
question of effects which manifest themselves and act in their place. (Deleuze, 1990:7)

One comes to realize that time plays an important role in the understanding of reality and the
simulacra. Reality in its deepest sense is the present, the now. Simulacra is concerned with the past
and the future and through that it creates a false present, or rather a false being, that which is
constantly moving.

The copy and the simulacrum

The copy is an image endowed with resemblance the simulacrum is an image without
resemblance. The catechism, so much inspired by Platonism, has familiarized us with this
notion. God made man in his image and resemblance. Through sin, however, man lost the
resemblance while maintaining the image. We have become simulacra. We have forsaken
moral existence in order to enter into aesthetic existence. (Deleuze, 1990:257)

When talking explicitly about the simulacrum it is important to understand the difference between
the simulacrum and the copy, and the application of the implications thereof.

The copy is a mere copy of something, in its simplest form. But a simulacrum goes further than a
copy. A simulacrum is a copy without any reference to that which is being copied, without the
essence of the copied. It is also important to note that in the words of Deleuze, the simulacra is not a
degraded copy. It harbors a positive power which denies the original and the copy, the model and
the reproduction.

Here we can once again make reference to the temporal aspect of the simulacra. Where the
simulacra denies the original and the copy we can posit that it denies the past and future and
through that only exists in the present through the infinite being.

This lends a destructive force to the simulacra, in that it destroys the past and future in order to
create the present. This destruction should not be underestimated because creating a present
without a past is dangerous and makes fertile ground for ideology to take rise, especially when the
future on the present is also instrumentalised by the present created simulacra.

Culture and Identity

When talking about a culture and about identity there are always certain markers that indicate what
the specific culture and identity is. With the simulacra in mind it should be realised that the markers
or signs pointing to the identity of a culture or the self is manufactured by the simulacra in the
present, in order to conceal the workings of the past and the future, and to enslave the identified.

Abbinnett says the following:

What this means is that the system of signs or more precisely, the system of moral, legal,
economic and political norms through which the social expands its hyper functionality is
no longer encumbered by any reference to a reality beyond its autonomous self
generation...Sex, for example, ceases to be about the Freudian dynamics of sexual
difference, and is forced to conform to the universal standards of communicative

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 performance. It becomes, in other words, a sort of total promiscuity, in which desire is
conducted along channels of communication which are thoroughly functional, operational
and capitalized. (Abbinnett, 2003:99)

With the above in mind it is then sensible to note that in the simulacrum everything is controlled and
instrumentalised in order to conform to the universal standards lain out by that or whom who
created the simulacra. Abbinnett goes further to say that everything that appears in the system (the
hyperreality) is, by defenition, without objective reference to the real.

The Circular Ruins

...he closed his pallid eyes and slept, not through weakness of flesh but through
determination of will...he knew that his immediate obligation was to dream. (Borges, 1949)

The Circular Ruins is a fantasy short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. Published
in the literary journal Sur in December 1940, it was included in the 1941 collection The Garden cf
Forking Paths and then in part one of the 1944 collection Ficciones. It was first translated into English
in New Directions 11 in 1949.

The story in summary:

An experienced wizard retreats from the world to a location that possesses strong mystical
powers: the circular ruins. There, the wizard has but one goal: to make another human
beings from his own dreams. Sleeping and dreaming longer and longer each day, the
magician dreams of his young man becoming educated, and becoming wiser. After time,
though, the wizard can no longer find sleep, and he deems his first attempt an inevitable
failure. After many sleepless nights, the wizard dreams of a heart; vaguely at first, but more
and more clearly each night. Years pass and the wizard creates the boy piece by piece, in
agonizing detail. The wizard calls upon the god Fire to bring his creation to life. Fire agrees,
as long as the wizard accustoms his creation to the real world, and that only Fire and the
wizard will be able to tell the creation from a real human. Before deciding to bring the young
man into the world, the magician decides to abandon his hopes, and to sacrifice his life. As
he ultimately walks into the flaming house of Fire, the wizard notices that his skin does not
burn. "With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere
appearance, dreamt by another." (Anon., 2012)

With the above discussed in mind I will quote a few lines from the story itself to illustrate the four
stages that Baudrillard speaks of in his Simulacra and Simulation that one moves from reality to a
state where one cannot get hold of reality any more.

Before I quote from Borges short story I would like to discuss the four stages put forth by
Baudrillard:

Such would be the successive phases of the image: it is the reflection of a profound reality;
it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has
no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (Baudrillard, 1994:6)

The first phase of the image is where the image presents itself in a faithful form, where we believe
that this image is a reflection of a profound reality as Baudrillard puts it. The second phase then
masks and perverts the image into something that it is not. The image would not portray truth fully
but would still point towards it. The third phase of the image is known for the complete lack of
reality. Here the simulacrum pretends to be the reality, but it is a reality with a destroyed reality. As

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earlier mentioned, within the temporal aspect of the simulacrum the past needs to be destroyed in
order for the present to exist. The fourth phase of the simulacrum is the completion of the linear
line, the line that keeps on creating itself. Within the fourth phase there is no reality whatsoever and
the signs merely point to each other in order to create the illusion of reality, where in fact there is no
reality left to point to.

Phase 1:

At first, his dreams were chaotic; then in a short while they became dialectic in nature. The
stranger dreamed that he was in the center of a circular amphitheater which was more or
less the burnt temple; clouds of taciturn students filled the tiers of seats; the faces of the
farthest ones hung at a distance of many centuries and as high as the stars, but their
features were completely precise. (Borges, 1949)

Phase 2:

After nine or ten nights he understood with a certain bitterness that he could expect
nothing from those pupils who accepted his doctrine passively, but that he could expect
something from those who occasionally dared to oppose him. (Borges, 1949)

Phase 3:

One afternoon he dismissed the vast illusory student body for good and kept only one
pupil. He was a taciturn, sallow boy, at times intractable, and whose sharp features
resembled of those of his dreamer. (Borges, 1949)

Phase 4:

He dreamed that it was warm, secret, about the size of a clenched fist, and of a garnet color
within the penumbra of a human body as yet without face or sex; during fourteen lucid
nights he dreamt of it with meticulous love. Every night he perceived it more clearly. He did
not touch it; he only permitted himself to witness it, to observe it, and occasionally to rectify
it with a glance. He perceived it and lived it from all angles and distances. On the fourteenth
night he lightly touched the pulmonary artery with his index finger, then the whole heart,
outside and inside. He was satisfied with the examination. (Borges, 1949)

With the four phases now clearly highlighted within the text itself it can be seen through the short
story of Borges how a simulacrum is created. The magician at first just wanted to dream of himself in
a similar environment as he was in and ended up in a pseudo-reality or as Baudrillard would call it, a
hyper-reality of his own, where he himself was a mere projection of the other.

Conclusion
With this analysis of the concept of the simulacrum it should be noted that once a hyper-reality is
created it is very difficult if even possible to escape from that hyper-reality. The simulacrum, that
which is a image of the reality with no reference to reality, with its temporal aspect is thus a concept
with the potential to create and sustain ideology in a very powerful way because of its linear nature.

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Bibliography
Abbinnett, R., 2003. Information, Simulation and the 'Silent Majorities'. In: Culture and Identity -
Critical Theories. United Kingdom: Sage Publications Ltd, pp. 97-134.

Anon., 2012. The Circular Ruins. [Online]

Available at: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jatill/175/CircularRuins.htm
[Accessed 01 05 2012].

Baudrillard, J., 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.

Borges, J. L., 1949. The Circular Ruins. [Online]

Available at: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jatill/175/CircularRuins.htm
[Accessed 01 05 2012].

Deleuze, G., 1990. The Logic of Sense. London: The Athlone Press.