Abstract

The article deals with the relationship between signification and representation in the context of social, cultural and philosophical topicalities of today. Sustaining by the differential theory of language of the French structuralist F. de Saussure and by the theory of simulation of the contemporary philosopher of media J. Baudrillard, it is maintained that under the influence of historical transformations of capitalism the sign and the referent sever from each other. Under the influence of changing of the engineering and the order of fabrication, the production is replaced by the reproduction. That is why, according to J. Baudrillard, the overall process of simulation establishes and the post-marxistic political economy constitutes self–defining non–referential system of signification. Sustaining by the semiotics of F. de Saussure, the signs of the social status become autonomic in point of the Real, and they exist only in relation with the other signs in the medium of contemporary simulacrum. That is why the social life can be treated as the fighting for the prestige and status. Under these circumstances the classical principle of representation is displaced by the contemporary principle of simulation.