virtualization of design and production a thesis - Bilkent University

In one of his earlier works Jean Baudrillard introduces the concept of sign value.
Consumption of objects is freed from the control of the subjects and gains
autonomous differential relations among the commodities. In this perspective,
there are no more objects in the consumption process but functionally
decontextualized forms and signs these forms keep within.
“The empirical ‘object’ given in its contingency of form,
color, material, function and discourse (or, if it is a cultural
object, in its aesthetic finality) is a myth. How often it has
been wished away! But the object is nothing. It is nothing but
different types of relations and significations that converge,
contradict themselves, and twist around it, as such –the hidden
logic that only arranges this bundle of relations, but directs the
manifest discourse that overlays and occludes it. […] The
object-become sign no longer gathers it’s meaning in the
concrete relationship between two people. It assumes its
meaning in differential relation to other signs. Somewhat like
Lévi Strauss’ myths, sign-objects exchange among
themselves. Thus, only when objects are autonomized as
differential signs and thereby rendered systematizable can one
speak of consumption and of objects of consumption”
(Baudrillard 63-66)
Baudrillard’s objective is to understand the logic of consumption and to make a
typology of objects that circulate within this logic. Taking Marx as basis he
proposes to distinguish the logic of consumption from other logics that are to be
confusing when they are considered from naïve perspectives and evidential
cases.
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