Baudrillard helpfully distills the four "successive phases of the image" as follows (letters inserted to facilitate future references):
"the image is the reflection of a profound reality; [a]
-- masks and denatures a profound reality; [b]
-- masks the absence of a profound reality; [c]
-- has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum" [d] (6).
Then on page 9, he turns to the example of the the Lascaux caves, and the precious cave art contained inside. An exact replica of the caves have been constructed near the original, "so that everyone could see them" (presumably without incurring any damage to the original). Baudrillard then writes "It is possible that the memory of the original grottoes is itself stamped in the minds of future generations, but from now on there is no longer any difference: the duplication suffices to render both artificial" (9).
This seemingly puts the Lascaux duplication as option d from above--if both are artificial now, then neither can have any relation to reality. Though I guess artificial implies _not_reality, which is still related to reality, as a contradiction--is that a valid distinction to make?
But the issue I have is to question whether a duplication completely invalidates the original, which still exists. It's not as if it's been destroyed and replaced, merely preserved. This approach puts Lascaux as either option A, or, if you're cynical, option b. But to make them both artificial? That seems needlessly, deliberately cynical--as if you're tabling the knowledge that the original is still extant in order to wallow in the depression of acknowledging that it's been duplicated. As long as there's no confusion as to which is which (not hard in this case, given the geographical fixity of the original), I don't buy the artificiality of both.
Maybe in a different scenario where there's a duplication and the original becomes immediately indistinguishable from the copy--like, hmm, Campbel's soup cans? Trite example, but there I can understand the artificiality/removal from relation to an original reality.
Thoughts? A flawed example from Baud., a good example from Baud. and bollocks to my quibbles?
'Whereas representation attempts to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum' (p.6).
I think that this is the kind of 'relationship to reality' that Baudrillard will allow for simulacra (note that I am willfully, and perhaps incorrectly, reading a mutual constitutiveness into the terms 'representation' and 'reality' here, which requires reading 'representation' in this sentence largely in terms of the first level of the image ['representation is a reflection of reality']).
The simulator develops symptoms of the very sickness that she simulates, with the result that questions of whether the simulator is 'really' sick or whether the sick person is 'really' simulating become irrelevant - or think of Jameson's example of the statues that are so lifelike that doubt is 'returned upon' the living, breathing humans in the gallery, who are now suspected to themselves be simulacra: this is how simulation envelops the edifice of representation (read 'reality'). Conversely, representational systems (e.g. Los Angeles; a polis) can posit certain simulacra as opposites (e.g. Disneyland; an ideologically antonymous polis) in order to conceal the fact that they themselves are merely simulacra (e.g. 'We know that Los Angeles is really real because we can visit Disneyland and see what the unreal looks like'; 'We know that our system is authentic because at least it isn't this other system'): this is how representation (read 'reality') absorbs simulation by interpreting it as //false// representation.
So one way of reading the perfect duplicate of the cave is that it 'returns suspicion upon' the original cave, not in the sense that the original cave is no longer 'real' or 'authentic' but in the sense that what did reality and authenticity ever even mean anyway. This may be overly cynical, but the alternative, i.e. reading the duplicate cave as merely the 'false' version of the 'real' cave, serves to defibrillate the very simulacrum of 'True Authenticity' that pomo theory, here as elsewhere, is at pains to euthanize.
Which is all only to say that simulacra and reality do, in fact, interact.
You're right to point out that this seems like a direct contradiction of what Baudrillard writes at [d], namely that the image, at its fourth (simulacral) stage, 'bears no relation' to reality. But I think that what he means here is only that 'unmasking' the image reveals nothing - not even the absence of a reality - and so doesn't 'relate' to it in the way that an image reflecting, denaturing, or concealing-the-absence-of a reality would. This 'mask' relation notwithstanding, simulacra and 'reality' (i.e. that first level of representation that posits the duplicate as 'false') can and do still relate, either by returning doubt upon or reincorporating one another, and that's what we're seeing in your example of the caves.
--Guattari Hero
"has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum" [d]
I tend to agree with Baudrillard on this point because he seems to be searching for the authenticity, agency, or legitimation of the image and an image without a strong basis becomes something less than a true image; it becomes simulacrum. The referent of the simulacrum exists; use the example of a painting of a photograph. There is no doubt that the photograph the artist used to base his painting on exists, and is therefore real, but hat photo is a representation of something more "real", namely reality. Because the painting is a representation of a representation it has no grounds for legitimacy; it's the equivalent of a bad rumor floating around. The lack of a sound base makes simulacrum less than desirable, yet it surrounds us more than we let on or would like.
I hope that answered something and wasn't just a bunch of nothingness.