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Abstract
Hyperreality is an important aspect of postmodernism. This article covers the sensitive issues, arising out of virtual situation. Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality will further help to investigate the issue. Mohsin Hamid's work, Moth Smoke exhibits a world suffering from hyperreal situation. The artificial environment causes insecurity and uneasiness and highlights the catastrophic desire of society to emulate and mimic. It shows how penetration of simulation has resulted in deterioration of meaning. The significance of this study would be the systematic study of prevailing situation in society of artificial reality which is the result of technological impacts. This research reveals the inner turbulences, makes an attempt to present the other side of reality. This article highlights in detail the hyper real relation created by technological impacts.
Keywords. Simulation, Simulacra, Hyper reality, Technology
Introduction
Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid highlights a frayed world of incompatible and divergent identities that inculcate a feeling of distress and agitation among the individual in any particular society. Born in 1971, Mohsin Hamid spent most of time abroad. He called himself a mongrel that means that he is born of two opposite cultures and backgrounds. The novel portrays simulated world of deceptive and baffling identities, merging with the technological mediation of facts. Hamid's, Moth Smoke is about the decline of values, morality, identification of one's soul and self. In Postmodernity and its Discontents, Bauman (1997) explains, "None of us is able to build the world of significations and meanings from scratch; each of us enters a 'prefabricated' world, in which certain things are important and others are not" (p.8). The myriad world of hyperreal technological facts, seem to occupy the individuals. People like Darashikoh and Changez feel to be so assure of themselves and their destinies. In the end, they find it painful to accept that they are already caught in the web of confusing perspectives. In POSTMODERNISM, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism it is stated that, "Each Thought is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting whatever it realized as its Self to its own later proprietor" (Jameson, F, 1991, p.193).
Moth Smoke reverberates the story of the decline of Darashikoh and his insane struggle with the Baudrillardian world of simulation and mediation where...