The Real Lies: The Simulacrum in Catherine Fisher’s The Oracle

Abstract

Fiction written for children and young adults has absorbed postmodern culture in many ways, overtly in some picture books, and more covertly in other young adult fiction. One aspect of postmodernism is concerned with what is real, what is more real, and what constitutes the simulacrum. the simulacrum concerns the surface of things, the ability to copy, and (in a postmodern sense) the ability of the original to disappear. examples of this in young adult cultures exist in abundance, and yet even though the text chosen for this paper is set in an imagined world it illuminates the confrontation between the real and the unreal for the postmodern young adult subject. Drawing on Jean Baudrillard (1994) and Jacques Derrida (1974), I investigate the simulacra and the surfaces that represent belief and social order in Catherine Fisher’s The Oracle (2003), where Mirany provides a sceptical subject position for young adult readers. I argue that peeling back the layers of representation, looking under the surface, reveals only more surface and more representation, making ‘surface’ (or ‘outer face’) a tautology. the ‘realness’ of the surface is deceptive. What can be seen with the eye, or touched with the hand is no longer trustworthy.