Concept Vlog: Signs, Postmodernism & The Consumer Society (Video Exclusive)
Added 2022-11-15 23:38:35 +0000 UTCLooking at Baudrillard's divergence from Marxism, and why we aren't done with postmodernism yet (because it aint done with you yet).
Reading is The Consumer Society by Baudrillard
Comments
This was great. Id love to hear more!
Matt S
2022-11-20 15:07:38 +0000 UTCIsn't the concept of commodity fetishism used to explain why people don't see the labour of others in commodities though, why it opens the way for sign value to come into its own as capitalism progresses? It seems to me that Marx isn't denying the sign in that sense, but that the sign value we confer onto a given commodity is a fetishisation which masks real social relations. But yeah, sign value has definitely overtaken the traditional Marxist view I'd say, not replaced it, but built on top of it. Like all the branded, hyperreal commodities are still created by labour, including digital commodities like Spotify, social media, advertisements themselves, etc. Our society still cannot function without labour, fundamentally. So at least for me it feels like Baudrillard is post-Marxist, which works linguistically in that orthodox Marxism is a modernist philosophy, so you can just replace post-Marxist with postmodernist. Otherwise fantastic stuff, I really, really missed these lectures and would welcome more Baudrillard if you're not tired of the subject matter. Really love how you linked this book with The System of Objects in how commodities refer to each other in a set. I think people try to dismiss postmodernism because they want to still believe in a metanarrative, in an objective real to hold onto. Postmodernism in this sense can be seen as a kind of cultural, society-level Lacanian Real that people are trying to avoid confronting.
anacidcommie
2022-11-19 20:02:17 +0000 UTC
