The Language of Simulation: Polysemy and Reversibility in Baudrillard
Thesis In Jean Baudrillard, polysemic words are conceptual operators: through puns, reversals, and etymological slippages, language itself performs the instability, reversibility, and disappearance that his theory attributes to contemporary reality. Introduction: From Concept to Word Philosophy has traditionally aligned itself with clarity. Its task, at least since the Enlightenment, has been to define concepts, stabilize meanings, and secure distinctions. Against this backdrop, the writing of Jean Baudrillard appears at once disconcerting and elusive. His texts resist definition, slipping between registers, multiplying meanings, and often assuming a tone closer to literature than to systematic philosophy. Yet this resistance is not a failure of rigor; it is the very condition of his thought. A useful point of entry lies in Sigmund Freud’s insight that language exceeds intention. In dreams, slips, and symptoms, words condense multiple meanings, revealing a logic that escapes co...
