Name: The System of Objects
Price: 146.93 HKD
Availability: InStock
Author: Jean Baudrillard
ISBN: 9781788738545

Type

Physical Book

Author

Jean Baudrillard

Publisher

Verso

Year

2020

Language

English

Pages

240

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

19.6 x 12.7 x 1.3 cm

Weight

0.20 kg.

ISBN13

9781788738545

Synopsis "The System of Objects "

The System of Objects is a tour de force--a theoretical letter-in-a-bottle tossed into the ocean in 1968, which brilliantly communicates to us all the live ideas of the day. Pressing Freudian and Saussurean categories into the service of a basically Marxist perspective, The System of Objects offers a cultural critique of the commodity in consumer society. Baudrillard classifies the everyday objects of the "new technical order" as functional, nonfunctional and metafunctional. He contrasts "modern" and "traditional" functional objects, subjecting home furnishing and interior design to a celebrated semiological analysis. His treatment of nonfunctional or "marginal" objects focuses on antiques and the psychology of collecting, while the metafunctional category extends to the useless, the aberrant and even the "schizofunctional." Finally, Baudrillard deals at length with the implications of credit and advertising for the commodification of everyday life. The System of Objects is a tour de force of the materialist semiotics of the early Baudrillard, who emerges in retrospect as something of a lightning rod for all the live ideas of the day: Bataille's political economy of "expenditure" and Mauss's theory of the gift; Reisman's lonely crowd and the "technological society" of Jacques Ellul; the structuralism of Roland Barthes in The System of Fashion; Henri Lefebvre's work on the social construction of space; and last, but not least, Guy Debord's situationist critique of the spectacle.

Jean Baudrillard

(Author)

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Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, and essayist, known for his critical analysis of mass culture, consumption, and media. His work falls within philosophical and sociological essays, with a provocative and speculative style that has widely influenced contemporary thought. A professor at the University of Paris X Nanterre, he was a key figure in postmodernism and simulation theory.

Among his most important works are Simulacra and Simulation (1981), The Transparency of Evil (1990), The Perfect Crime (1995), and The Total Screen (1996). He was the sole author of these texts, which have become benchmarks for understanding cultural transformations in the age of media and virtuality.

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