A Ghost of a Fiction: Fury and the Poetics of Simulacra

Abstract

This paper will illustrate the way in which a contemporary novel engages with the idea of the disappearance of the real. Its elaboration of a poetics of simulacra situates it within a Baudrillardean realm of simulation where all is narrative and postmodern man can only step from fiction to fiction. The defining location of the tale is a world recognisable from television, cinema and the Internet, a cross between Sex and the City, Tomb Raider, Pulp Fiction and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a recuperation of an infinity of recycled narratives which have become our response to existence, replacing spontaneity. Even the serious political struggle which takes place at the climax of the novel can do nothing more than imitate a debased fictional narrative, turning revolution into yet another story which failed to give satisfaction to its audience, reminiscent of Baudrillard’s infamous ‘Gulf War’. The novel’s nostalgia, not so much for realism as for the real emotion expressed in its title, is a surgical strike against this universe of simulacra while also being complicit with it, as its post-realist aesthetics suggest. A ghost of a fiction, using words as the transparent symbols of a depleted reality, it exhibits the courageous hyperscepticism of a post-tragic condition.