Paradox of the Sign

Definition

The paradox of the sign is, in Butler's reading, "one simple paradox of the sign repeated throughout all of Baudrillard's work": "insofar as the copy completely resembles the original, it is no longer a copy but another original; or, to invert this, the copy is only able to resemble the original insofar as it is different from it" (Butler 1999, p. 14). There is thus an absolute limit to how close a copy can come to the original while still resembling it — and it is this limit that simulation runs up against: past a certain perfection, "further increases in perfection, instead of bringing the system closer to this original, only drive it further away. The system begins to reverse upon itself, gives rise to the opposite effects from those intended" (p. 25). Butler notes (n. 5) that the paradox was first raised by Plato in the Cratylus and treated by Derrida in 'Plato's Pharmacy' — the grounds on which he would compare Baudrillard and Derrida ("not in terms of any shared 'themes' or 'influences'").

Every total system inherits the paradox: "if the system is able to expand forever and nothing is outside of it, it is also never entirely closed, something is always left out of it" (p. 17). What is left out — the difference that makes resemblance possible — is what Baudrillard calls the real (see the-real).

Key Thinkers

• Rex Butler — the paradox's formulation as the unity of Baudrillard's oeuvre: the "single simple paradox" (p. 14) that his Introduction proposes and each chapter re-encounters (the system of objects' function, the collection's missing piece, the auction's first/last bid, the poll's circular answer, the stereo's lost music).
• Jean Baudrillard — the paradox in practice: the 'OS' passage on the counterfeit ('OS', 84–5), the automaton's maintained difference ('OS', 93–4), the assembly line's loss of it ('OS', 97), the third order's simulated real, the Genosko-cited "cancelling of the bar" between signifier and signified (Genosko 1994, via Butler p. 13).
• Plato (referenced, no page) — the Cratylus origin of the paradox; Derrida's 'Plato's Pharmacy' as its deconstructive treatment (Butler n. 5).

Related Concepts

• the-real — the paradox's remainder: the difference the system excludes to allow resemblance is the real.
• orders-of-simulacra — the paradox periodized: the first order preserves the difference (stucco, automaton), the second abolishes it (production, equivalence), the third reintroduces it as a simulated effect.
• simulation-hyperreality — the paradox's cultural endpoint: simulation as the attempt to realize the world that founders on its own perfection.
• seduction — the limit the paradox opens: the distance between same and other that makes resemblance possible and impossible.
• doubling — the theoretical response: a statement that repeats the world exactly, and so differs from it.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (Butler 1999)

Open Questions

• Butler claims the paradox is one paradox across Baudrillard's work — the wiki's Baudrillard pages have so far treated simulation, seduction, symbolic exchange and the remainder as distinct concepts. Does the paradox-of-the-sign frame unify them, and what is lost in the unification?
• The paradox belongs to a lineage running from Plato through Derrida — is the wiki's structuralism-vs-poststructuralism debate missing this specific hinge, on which Butler would rather compare Baudrillard and Derrida than any shared themes?