Digital dreams, by Edmundo Paz Soldán: simulacrum, violence, and symbolic exchange

Abstract

This paper uses Jean Baudrillard 's theory of simulation and symbolic exchange to analyze Edmundo Paz Soldán· s novel Digital Dreams (2000). It reviews the relationship the novel establishes between simulacrum and power in a neo-liberal, present-day Latin American country. Power is invisible and it uses simulacrum to rewrite the past and educate people for consumerism. The paper analyzes whether it is possible for the many suicides happening in the novel to achieve what Baudrillard calls 'symbolic exchange' even in a simulacrum-dominated environment,. It also contemplates whether suicide challenges and undermines power or if it is assimilated by the hyperreal sphere