Specifically, they become 'objects.' Baudrillard's notion of sign value is based on an analogy between a system of objects (commodity) and a system of sign (language). Initially, Baudrillard argued that when products move from the realm of function (reflecting use value and exchange value) to the realm of signification (reflecting sign value), they become carriers of social meaning.

Baudrillard's early work is divided into three phases: ( a) the reworking of Marxist social theory, as evident in The System of Objects (1968), The Consumer Society (1970), and For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1972) and with an emphasis on the 'sign' ( b) a critique of Marxism, as seen in The Mirror of Production (1975) and Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976), where Baudrillard substitutes symbolic exchange for utilitarian exchange as an explanation of consumerism ( c) a break with Marxism, as manifest in Seduction (1979), Simulations (1983), Fatal Strategies (1983), and The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena (1993), which substitutes the carnival-esque principle (celebration, pleasure, excess, and waste) for the utility principle. This scheme postulated a transition from 'dress,' in which sartorial meaning (of differentiation and distinction) resided in natural signs, through 'fashion,' in which meaning resided in oppositional (structuralist) signs, to 'post-fashion,' in which signs are freed from the link to referents and to meaning (poststructuralist). The theory of consumption that he began to articulate in the 1970s fore-saw the development of consumer society, with its dual focus first on the visual culture (material objects) and, later, on the virtual (electronic and cyberspace) culture.īaudrillard's fashion-relevant theorizing dates from his earlier writing: it forms part of his broader analysis of objects in consumer society. After the late 1960s Baudrillard's social theory witnessed major paradigm shifts. He was trained as a sociologist, and his early critique was influenced by a certain style of radicalism that appeared in France after 1968, which included critical challenge to the disciplines, methods, theories, styles, and discourses of the academic intellectual establishment. 1929) is widely acclaimed as one of the master visionary thinkers of postmodernism and post-structuralism. The French intellectual Jean Baudrillard (b.

Baudrillard the system of objects