Jean Baudrillard argues that replication and cloning represent the final stage of modeling the human body. From here on we begin to model “the model.”
This is where we lose access to Walter Benjamin’s concept of the unique “aura” that gives something a nominal spirit and a sense of authenticity in the here and now.
Once we reach this stage, similar to the mass-produced items discussed by Benjamin, the only way back to “authenticity” is through the creation of a manufactured historical nostalgia: we must artificially recreate aura.
~ From Mark Fisher