" A gene segment has no more need of an imaginary mediation in order to reproduce than does an earthworm, any segment of which can reproduce autonomously as an entire worm. Any cell of an American chief executive officer likewise suffices to produce a new chief executive officer. Similarly, any portion of a hologram may become the matrix of a new complete hologram: each discrete portion of the original hologram contains all the information needed for reproduction (though a slight loss of definition may occur).
This is how the totality is eliminated. If all information is contained in each of its parts, the whole loses its significance. This means the end of the body also, the end of that unique object which we call the body, whose secret is precisely that it cannot be broken down into an accumulation of cells because it is an indivisible configuration - as witness the very fact that it is sexed.
Paradoxically, cloning is destined to continue producing sexed beings indefinitely - clones must, of course, remain identical to their model - even as it turns sex itself into a useless function; not that sex was ever a function: on the contrary, it is what makes a body a body, something which transcends all that body's diverse functions. Sex (or death) is something that transcends the entirety of the information that can be collected concerning a given body. The genetic formula, by contrast, contains all such information, but cannot transcend it. It must therefore find its own autonomous path to reproduction, independently of sexuality and death. "
― Jean Baudrillard , The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena