Self-Referentiality in the Crisis of Modernity

Abstract

The idea of self-referentiality in signs has been considered a symptom of the crisis of modernity. Images of the world no longer represent the real but rather a mere virtuality. Signs become instruments of simulation instead of representation. The self-referentiality of signs appears in all domains of culture: fashion, the press, advertising, and the production of goods.

Thus, if at the end of the millennium we arrive at the discovery that signs will become mere self-reflexive simulations, how can we avoid the realization that our own discourse annihilates itself when it reaches the conclusion that it too proves to be such a simulation?