Lost Intellect: May 2013

I aim to investigate how Jean Baudrillard constructed a theory of modern society through the use signs and symbols that represent objects in the and analysis of consumption. Today society is governed by consumerism; we are a ‘consumer society’. One shall explain how Baudrillard used Saussure’s theory of signs and structural linguistics concerning the language used today. One will discuss how society is coded into consumerism through the use of a system of values that society take on as personal in order to develop an identity. Semiological analysis is applied to the consumer objects, how nothing is offered alone and the use of the display technique shops apply in order to entice consumers into buying a whole new identity and not just one object. One shall explain how Baudrillard argued that objects and our desires for an object are given a system of values, controlled by codes and unconscious social logic; resulting in the consumer buying an object for its value and status in society, not its function. Also investigated is the theory of hysteria and its similar paradigms to the theory of consumption when portraying meaning. To conclude one shall determine whether Baudrillard did construct a theory of modern society, which as one shall show is a ‘consumer’ society. Ideology today represents consumerism, and the control that the ‘system’ has over commodity consumption.

The structural, cultural theory of signs was first discovered by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913); he had established ideas that aided Baudrillard’s study of the processes of structuralism and semiology in terms of objects and commodities. Parts of these processes are the structural linguistics, made up of langue; “the object which linguists should study, forming both the focus of their analyses and their principle of relevance.” (Strinati, 1995, page 90) it is the structure of wording and meanings in advertising for consumption. Saussure is “the creator of structural linguistics, the signs we had just stumbled upon were now chief components of our language and communication” (Bishop, 2009, page 126) Saussure states that the sign is not just composed of a signifier, signified, an auditory image, sound or mental idea, but the parts of a ‘sign’ and the signs itself was composed of both physical and psychological associations that were conventional when considering language and communication. Baudrillard uses Saussurean linguistics in his analysis of consumption, he states that the advertising for objects is coded through the use of symbols that differentiate the objects from one another that creates a series of products, objects or also referred to as commodities. Society is ‘coded’ through a differentiated system of signs, giving the consumer a sense of freedom and self-determination; the choosing of objects in order to create a personality, an identity, and as Baudrillard argues we follow unconscious logic in our desire for consumer objects are tried to functions or a defined need. Self-differentiation, self-integrating and class differentiated social structure, conforming to societal influences in the present culture.

Baudrillard applies semiological analysis to the way in which shops advertise products. Profusion is one method of advertising a product; stacked in a pyramid or seen in abundance on the shelf drawing the consumer to the product. But the method that shows evidence of a semiological aspect is the method of display; the consumer is surrounded by signs and symbols in an arrangement that sparks a psychological reaction and draws them in to commit mass consumerism. The display shows the consumer a range of objects, as objects are not offered alone, but within a context of other objects, such as accessories to go with a pair of trousers a jumper, a pair of shoes and so on. This group of objects; a whole new look, has a different meaning to the objects individual meaning (such as the jumper for warmth). Poster (2001) expresses that displays, adverts and manufacturers all impose coherent and collective visions. Objects are signifieds as the object does not have meaning; this is projected onto the object by the consumer. Williamson states “a product may be connected with a way of life through being an accessory to it, but come to signify it” (Williamson, 1978, page 35). These accessories have other related objects that send the consumer into a spending frenzy. “Each object can signify the other in a more complex super-object, and lead the consumer to a series of more complex choices” (Poster, 2001, page 34). The displays are specifically arranged to trace out directive paths. Consumers caught up in, as Baudrillard says, the “calculus of objects”, differs from the frenzy state of purchasing and possessing something to ‘show off’, to the use of commodities and profusion. Baudrillard argues that displays and consumption are fully integrated in consumer society. Kellner states that

Baudrillard sees the entire society as organized around consumption and display of commodities through which individuals gain prestige, identity and standing […] just as words take on meaning according to their status in a differential system of language, so sign values take on meaning according to their place in a differential system of prestige and status.

(Kellner, 1989, page 21).

Using this system, the possession of high end commodities, issues the consumer with higher status. Baudrillard uses Saussure’s semiological language theory to portray signs as a differential system to analyse commodities and the object. Baudrillard established commodities as signifiers and signifieds, and interchangeable in their subject; which was Saussure’s same framework for the linguistic sign.

Baudrillard argues that objects are given “a system of sign values governed by rules, codes and a social logic” (Kellner, 1989, page 21) and Genosko states that no one can escape a pact with objects in a culture of consumption” (Genosko, 1994, page 119) A Sign or symbol’s meaning is only evident in a total context; analysing the objects in relation to an individual (biological or social) ‘need’ that it satisfies. Individual object (and our ‘need’ of it) must be considered as part of a differential system. Baudrillard argues we follow an unconscious social logic in our desire for consumer objects. We want it not for the actual function, but for the statement of difference, to communicate the individuals identity; objects are always endowed with meaning in modern society. Baudrillard states that according to Riesman products are not machines or objects anymore, but part of a personality. Personal satisfaction is achieved through consumerism but “it is clear that in the act of personalized consumption the subject, in his very insistence on being a subject, succeeds in manifesting himself only as an object of economic demand” (Baudrillard, 1996, page 152).

Consumption is the theory of needs and satisfactions that are within an object; it then becomes substitutable in an unlimited fashion outside the field of its denotation. Objects take on the value of a sign; a designer handbag, serves as a normal everyday bag would, but plays as an element of status and individuality. The field of play is the field of consumption.” In the logic of signs and symbols, objects are no longer tied to a defined need, as they respond to the social logic of the logic of desire […]where they serve as a fluid and unconscious field of signification” (Poster, 2001, page 47). Objects and needs are interchangeable to fit the necessary needs and desires of an individual. Consumption has the same system as concept of hysteria, just as Glickman explains,

In the hysterical or psychosomatic conversion the symptom, like the sign, is (relatively) arbitrary. Migraine, colitis, lumbago, angina, or general fatigue form a chain of somatic signifiers along which the symptom “parades.” This is just the interconnection of object/signs, or of object/symbols, along which parades, not needs (which remain tied to the object’s rational goal), but desire, and some other determination, derived from an unconscious social logic”.

(Glickman, 1999, page 46).

Objects therefore, as Baudrillard argues, create a world of “general hysteria”, just as the bodily organs become a paradigm, the object also becomes a paradigm that uses the language of signs to portray a meaning, just as with symptoms portraying a certain illness or disease. This connection of object with a sign or symbol does not use the idea of a need but that of desire arising from an unconscious social logic. The world of objects and desires would then become a world of general hysteria and in terms of consumption objects use a language of signs through which something else provides meaning. The system of signs makes it impossible to determine specific needs, and as Baudrillard states “just as it is impossible in hysteria to define the specific objectivity of an illness, for the simple reason that it does not exist” (Poster, 2001, page 48). Baudrillard argues that a need is more significant in terms of social meaning than it is in terms of a need for an object, in this sense we can understand that personal satisfaction cannot be achieved and needs are never defined. Consumption is therefore unlimited and not a function of our desire but a function of production. This is not an individual function such as personal desire but a collective function. Personal desire is a mandatory unconscious feeling of needing to be satisfied. “This is the ideological function of the system: increasing status is nothing but a game, for all differences are integrated in advance. The very deceit with which the whole arrangement is shot through is an integral part of that arrangement, on account of the system’s perpetual forward flight” (Baudrillard, 1996, page 153). Consumerism is Ideology today and a form of ideological control in terms of the consumer and commodities. The consumer has an ideological obligation to purchase and possess the latest product and the ideological operation is simultaneous to the psychic structure and social structure; “the operation amounts to defining the subject by means of the object and the object in terms of the subject” (Hawkes, 1996, page 173). The need for an object is determined by cultural meaning not biological. It is part of a differential system and the differential codes are the ideological apparatus that is present in the system of coded signs and symbols.

The consumption system regulates signs and integrates social groups; a system of ideological values and communication; a social function which transcends individual desires and encapsulates the unconscious social constraints and values, when an object is bought it is not used to show individuality but the object is used to signify and show the meaning in the differential system, communicating status to others. Mathewes state that Baudrillard implores that

Consumer behaviour, which appears to be focused and directed at the object and at pleasure, in fact, responds to quite different objectives: the metaphoric or displaced expression of desire, and the production of a code of social values through the use of differentiating signs. That which is determinant is not the function of individual interest within a corpus of objects, but rather the specifically social function of exchange, communication and distribution of values within a corpus of sign.

(Baudrillard, 1970 in Schweiker and Mathewes, 2004, page 198).

The system of consumption and the social logic denies personal pleasure as the individuals ‘needs’ or objectives are collective and socially constrained. Pleasure is one’s own personal need for satisfaction and gratification, yet this is not an individual venture but a collective one, implicated in a system of exchange and coded values. So consumption is a system of meaning, a system of sociological signs replacing the bio-functional and bio-economic systems that determine objects and commodities. This consumer communication governs the communication between individuals in society. Even though there are biological needs and important utilities for human consumption, such as clothing to keep us warm and washing machines to ensure we have clean clothing, the point one is trying to establish is that; consumption does not fit into this system of thinking and this is true in all societies’ groupings. The system of signs communicating consumer objects reorganises consumerism and aids in the transition of nature to culture, the need to search for desires. Baudrillard suggest that this is now “the specific mode of our era” (Poster, 2001, page 51). Commodities, objects, signs, marketing, all play a role in communication, a language (langue) in its own right, a code that society conforms to as a whole. Baudrillard argues that to ‘consume’ is now a compulsory element of personal satisfaction. He states that “the consumer, the modern citizen, cannot evade the constraint of happiness and pleasure, which in the new ethics is equivalent to the traditional constraint of labour and production” (Poster, 2001, page 51). He then continues to argue that man now spends more time producing and creating personal needs and desire, continuously reproducing the need to consume. If this process is no longer used then man is satisfied with his objects and has become asocial, no longer needing to consume. The universal concept of curiosity has enlightened individuals to try anything, as the consumer does not want to miss out on any form of pleasure, need or curiosity.

Consumption is systematic and references signs collectively forming a code that governs communication. This collective behaviour is actively pursued and the system of values attached to an object concern social control, integration and conformity; creating a new “mode of socialization”. Baudrillard considers that Weber’s analysis of self-discipline for the workers of capitalist production is the same process that is evident in contemporary consumption. Baudrillard’s work shows that objects in consumer society are the productions of “human practice, they have come to surround us in the modern world” (Gane, 1991, page 55) not as objects suggested by Marx, but that in a capitalist society, the object that is produced is that of a commodity, something that is bought and sold, so in this sense a product is not produced for a particular consumer but it is produced for the collective consumer society. The consumer society is the twentieth century’s equivalent to the indoctrination of industrial labour that had constraints on the rural population, “there has been a revolutionary transformation in the structure of social control and power” (Kellner, 1994, page 168). Now the masses have been socialized by way of a labour force, the ‘system’ had to now create another form of control. The masses are now controlled by consumption, the new socialisation. The needs of the consumer are now controlled and rationalised like the other forces such as labour, as they are now productive force that can be controlled and that feed the economy. A new morality governed by these processes creates “an objective state” corresponding to the forces of production and socialisation.

Concluding Baudrillard arguments and theories on modern society, consumption uses objects and distinctions differentiating the collective and assigning a code to the consumer. Baudrillard argues that the twentieth century consumers are, just as the labour workers were, unorganised and producing at an unconscious level. The consumer is portrayed as ‘public opinion’, a sovereign reality. He continues in saying that, the consumer sovereignty is recognised by power as long as they do not act this way socially. He states “the people – these are the labourers, provided they are unorganized: The Public or public opinion – these are consumers, provided they are content to consume” (Poster, 2001, page 58) as consumption is seen as discourse to one’s own desires. This plays out and consumption is continuously reproduced within one’s own unconscious. Baudrillard suggests that modern society is a ‘consumer’ society due to how people continuously consume objects that represent that person’s identity or class status (the products are created by someone else to start with so they can never be exclusively individual). These objects are consumed due to the system of social values attached to the objects by the use of signs and symbols. Society is regulated by consumer objects and these objects govern our lives, they are not a biological necessity as food and clothing may be, but the objects allow social differentiation via the objects; the choices made are objective and external not internal and subjective. For example, wearing designer clothes and driving a Bentley or a Rolls Royce, would give the consumer the high status that the consumer strives for and desires, ‘this is what I wear (or this is who I want to be)… not who I am).

The consumer personalises themselves through the use of objects, systems, values and codes. The individual does fall prey to narcissism due to the way products are advertised. For example, Cheryl Cole is the face for the L’Oreal Elvive shampoo advert, stating “because you worth it” (Heat Magazine, 2010), implying that if you think anything of yourself you should use this shampoo (and maybe look as good as Cheryl). So the notion of independent consumerism is lost and we are collectively consuming a shared desire. As one has shown Baudrillard does construct a valid theory of modern society through the analysis of consumption. The modern society is a ‘consumer’ society and one perceives that society will continuously be this way; controlled by the collective social values that make the consumer pursue these relatively meaningless objects, in order to create an identity or be part of a social group (Goths – wearing dark clothing and make-up). The consumer does not care for the function of the object, but the ideal, therefore communicating an ‘individual’ identity. Baudrillard correctly concludes that this results in Self-integrating and class-differentiating social structure.

Bibliography

Baudrillard, J., (1996) The System of Objects. London: Verso

Bishop, R., (2009) Baudrillard Now: Current Perspectives in Baudrillard Studies. Cambridge: Polity Press

Gane, M., (1991) Baudrillard’s Bestiary: Baudrillard and culture. London: Routledge

Genosko, G., (1994) Baudrillard and Signs: Signification Ablaze. London: Routledge.

Glickman, L., (1999) Consumer Society in American History: A Reader. United States of America: Cornell University Press.

Hawkes, D., (1996) Ideology: The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge.

Heat Magazine (2010) ‘L’Oreal Elvive Advertisement’. Issue: 23rd-29th January 2010

Kellner, D., (1989) Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Kellner, D., (1994) Baudrillard: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

Poster, M., (2001) Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings (second Edition). Cambridge Polity Press.

Schweiker, W., and Mathewes, C. T, (2004) Having: Property and Possession in Religious and Social Life. United States of America: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Strinati, D., (1995) An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. London: Routledge.

Williamson, J., (1978) Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd.

:: Cheryl Cole Advertisement taken from Heat Magazine dated 23rd-29th January 2010.

By Lea Weller BA

Lost Intellect

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