• simulacrum -
  • definition
    • an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute.

Every company is described by a set of data, financial and other operational metrics, next to message exchange and paper documents. What else we find that contributes to the simulacrum of an economic narrative will undeniably be constrained by the constitutive forces of its source data.

Interesting word choice--not truth but verisimilitude

The fact or quality of being verisimilar; the appearance of being true or real; likeness or resemblance to truth, reality, or fact; probability.

http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/222523?rskey=VlffzB&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid

How does one recognize when colour is "true and real" as opposed to phantasm?

Cf. Muckelbauer's Future of Invention, where the Model is an entity to be represented and representations are Copies or Simulacra.

Muckelbauer points out that a Copy, while true (or truer) to the Model to a certain extent, does less than a Simulacrum, which is just 'off' enough from the Model to have a distinct existence, to function in a different way. When Barad (a few lines below) questions whether these representations function accurately, she's questioning the purpose of the Copy, where its only role is to emulate the original. To me, it seems that an inaccurate representation might prove more interesting, to take on life of its own, separate from the Model.

Cf. Muckelbauer's Future of Invention, where the Model is an entity to be represented and representations are Copies or Simulacra.

Muckelbauer points out that a Copy, while true (or truer) to the Model to a certain extent, does less than a Simulacrum, which is just 'off' enough from the Model to have a distinct existence, to function in a different way. When Barad (a few lines below) questions whether these representations function accurately, she's questioning the purpose of the Copy, where its only role is to emulate the original. To me, it seems that an inaccurate representation might prove more interesting, to take on life of its own, separate from the Model.

As does Muckelbauer in Future of Invention, where one must be on the lookout for resemblances, dangerous because it is "difficult to tell them [resemblances] apart" from the things they resemble--the "two different things exist, two different and discrete identities, which blend with each other" (89). Of those resemblances, some are 'true'/faithful copies while others are "resemblance-effects," simulacra (88-90).

What I felt was interesting about Muckelbauer's examination is that he ultimately seems to say that the Simulacrum is the more compelling of the two (Copy vs Simulacrum) as it does more than the copy. Instead of existing only as imitation (as the Copy does), the Simulacrum has an existence which exceeds that.

I'm trying to remember Baudrillard's treatise on simulacra, because it sounds like Nietzsche's describing something very similar.

simulacrum definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/simulacrum