The Borges map fable now expresses only second-order simulacra

Evidence

If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts - the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction testifying to a pride equal to the Empire and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, a bit as the double ends by being confused with the real through aging) - as the most beautiful allegory of simulation, this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.*1 Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 5

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Borges’s map and Magritte’s images cannot serve as figures for anything in postmodern theory — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 1076; Maps can construct territory rather than merely represent it — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 661

Broader Connections

• Borges’s map and Magritte’s images cannot serve as figures for anything in postmodern theory #contradicts (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 1076
• Maps can construct territory rather than merely represent it #expands (0.72) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 661