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The System of Objects
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A tour de force of the materialist semiotics of the early Baudrillard.
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 cultu ...more
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 cultu ...more
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Paperback, Verso Radical Thinkers, 224 pages
Published
January 17th 2006
by Verso
(first published 1968)
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Oh Baudrillard, I wish that your intuition and insight could have been less psychoanalytically and unilaterally charged in its nature. I say this, of course, because The System of Objects is brilliant in many ways. Baudrillard had a way with observation and a keen ability to take singular examples and make them speak for larger phenomena that were but some signs of his brilliance. Nonetheless, his constant desire to close down readings of things in order to inscribe a singular meaning onto behav
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Baudrillard takes moments of insight and stretches them into a totalizing, suffocating system that attempts to explain far too much than his simple thesis can bear: possessions once meant more to us than they do now because once upon a time they were made by us to last for generation after generation. Now our possessions are disposable, and their functionality has been replaced by desire--for status, for the illusion of projecting our individuality (mass-produced objects!) in an industrial age t
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3.2/5.0 Minor Baudrillard. Stick to the simulacra, you dense French bastard.
Jan 23, 2010
Brooks Brown
rated it
really liked it
Recommends it for:
Fans of Fight Club's philosophy, Marxists looking for something new
It's fun to read a book which Tyler Durden would call 'inspirtional'
Baudrillard has quite the following, specially amongst those who preach post-modernist thought or post-Marxist thought, at least. A promising beginning, The System of Objects is a reasonably dry read which delves into exactly what purpose 'objects' themselves serve and represent within our lives, and how this has changed over the course of centuries.
Early on, this is explained to us in a very digestible manner - interior design. ...more
Baudrillard has quite the following, specially amongst those who preach post-modernist thought or post-Marxist thought, at least. A promising beginning, The System of Objects is a reasonably dry read which delves into exactly what purpose 'objects' themselves serve and represent within our lives, and how this has changed over the course of centuries.
Early on, this is explained to us in a very digestible manner - interior design. ...more
He's a fine writer, and an important one. But I'll say what I'm not supposed to say on an app for bookworms: just watch 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her instead.
Trying to build a phenomenology of the inanimate world creates crossed-eyes. ...more
Trying to build a phenomenology of the inanimate world creates crossed-eyes. ...more
Written back in ’68, this is some early Jean Baudrillard. The writing is more serious than his later stuff, and the focus—like much of his writing early on—is on consumer culture.
Considering this is fifty years old, there is much that is still poignant, if not a little overwrought. It’s a shame the real juice takes three quarters of the book to get to. I enjoyed the ideas around objects as signs; model and series; choice, personalisation and credit as the three cornerstones of consumer society; and the desire for status mediated by advertising as opposed to the actual acquisition of objects themselves as a definition of consumption.
good stuff. love it.
I found the first half of the book to be pretty boring, but the later parts on publicity, consumerisms and signs are all pretty interesting
One of Baudrillard's best. The System of Objects gives reason and perspective to the way Modernity abstracts objects into signifiers of an absent reality and to the drama of alienation in the spectacle.
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While this text is a bit too Freudian/Marxist for my taste, it does point out a very existential process between the consumer society and the individual. Many of the observations Baudrillard points toward are some I've noticed by observing both my own consumption habits/feelings associated in my relationship with objects, and the same dynamics in others. While this text was written long before iphones, it tends to really hit home in a quasi-prophetic way. Consumption is no longer about sustainin
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a little bit boring actually.
Surprisingly accessible, but lacks an explicit focal point. There are traces of his later concept of simulacra popping around, but mostly an elaborate rant against consumerism.
I did not read this book, but only skimmed it. It was not what I thought I was getting. I thought it would be a social theory, perhaps phenomenological, of relations to various kinds of objects, e.g. physical, symbolic, etc. The latter part I expected based on the emphasis on language.
The book is social theory, and about relations to objects, but only physical ones. Or more correctly, about the pairing of symbolic objects as signs, i.e. semiotics, with their physical object counterparts, but on ...more
The book is social theory, and about relations to objects, but only physical ones. Or more correctly, about the pairing of symbolic objects as signs, i.e. semiotics, with their physical object counterparts, but on ...more
In this book, Baudrillard tries to classify our consumerist obsession with objects. This text is a bit dated. He moves from a life-style hyperreal plateau of objects (in terms of how we experience them and then think about them) before moving towards describing the function of objects as a kind of functional-ontology. From there, he goes towards advertising and finance.
This book is not very big. I think he could have organized the text better in order to go from a "phenomenological" approach tow ...more
This book is not very big. I think he could have organized the text better in order to go from a "phenomenological" approach tow ...more
The book begins strong, particularly because Baudrillard's critique of interiors and the structure of obejcts is a very nice application of Lefebvre's criticism of geography. However, the later sections meander somewhat and lose the spark and the imagination of the initial chapters. I recognise that this is quite an old book by this point, and that it was heavily flavoured by the Situationist movement who are responsible for the cultural discourse regarding consumerism that we take for granted i
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I'm not smart enough to make a big review (but I will say a basic knowledge of Freudian psychoanalysis, Saussurean linguistics, and Marxism would help) so I'll just say three things that came to mind as I read this:
1. object-oriented sociology.... lol.
2. I was surprised at how engaging and very interesting on how a 20 page part on collecting objects was.
3. This book makes a lot of sense if you've played The Sims....!!! :) ...more
1. object-oriented sociology.... lol.
2. I was surprised at how engaging and very interesting on how a 20 page part on collecting objects was.
3. This book makes a lot of sense if you've played The Sims....!!! :) ...more
baudrillard is so repetitive he basically wrote the same book over and over again, this book lays out almost exactly the same ideas as the consumer society and even makes the same reference to the same Airborne chair for an example of personalization. lol
As an analysis of the place of the 'object' under capitalism and the way that capitalist production has transformed objects and their place in our lives, this book is second to none. Certainly a more incisive latter half, but this is built on the foundations laid by the opening sections.
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Jean Baudrillard takes a much needed look into everyday objects to dig out our naive assumptions about what we purchase and "consume". At first glance, the pedantry involved with systematically looking through a modern decor might seem pointless and unwarranted, but what Baudrillard does is reveal how we have transitioned from an older "symbolic" value system into a "functional" and then ultimately a "non-functional/ideological" system of objects. Many of our daily objects are addressing needs t
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It has been several months since I read this, so I am a little hazy.
In "System of Objects," Baudrillard illustrates how the modern experience is shaped, utterly, by the commodity form; how the privilege afforded the subject today is the right to disappear in the captain's seat of a ship that is totally automatic. "System of Objects" seems to me best read as an update of Lukacs' essay on reification. Of course, it takes the form of witty observations on interior design and advertising; the impli ...more
In "System of Objects," Baudrillard illustrates how the modern experience is shaped, utterly, by the commodity form; how the privilege afforded the subject today is the right to disappear in the captain's seat of a ship that is totally automatic. "System of Objects" seems to me best read as an update of Lukacs' essay on reification. Of course, it takes the form of witty observations on interior design and advertising; the impli ...more
I'm interested in design not from a commercial but a conceptual standpoint and this book has made me consider the many consequences that "functional" objects have in our daily lives. It is pretty dense at times but so comprehensive. I was especially interested in the section on "atmosphere."
...more
"Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars." - Walter Benjamin
“With the mass of objects grows the alien powers to which man is subjected, and each new product is a new potentiality of mutual fraud and mutual pillage.” – Karl Marx ...more
“With the mass of objects grows the alien powers to which man is subjected, and each new product is a new potentiality of mutual fraud and mutual pillage.” – Karl Marx ...more
I really need to read this again to understand it all.
Sometimes academically dull, sometimes exciting.
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really good early writings. Good analysis of modern staff surrounding us now.
review soon. rereading.
this one is one of my favorites.
this one is one of my favorites.
excellent. re-reading this one currently.
My favorite Baudrillards book, opened my eyes to another world.
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Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.
Jean Baudrillard was also a Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he taught an Intensive Summer Seminar.
Jean Baudrillard's phil ...more
Jean Baudrillard was also a Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he taught an Intensive Summer Seminar.
Jean Baudrillard's phil ...more
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“The whole gestural system of work was also obscene, in sharp contrast to the miniaturized and abstract gestural system of control to which it has now been reduced. The world of the objects of old seems like a theatre of cruelty and instinctual drives in comparison with the formal neutrality and prophylactic 'whiteness' of our perfect functional objects. Thus the handle of the flatiron gradually diminishes as it undergoes 'contouring' - the term is typical in its superficiality and abstractness; increasingly it suggests the very absence of gesture, and carried to its logical extreme this handle will no longer be manual - merely manipulable. At that point, the perfecting of the form will have relegated man to a pure contemplation of his power. ”
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“Everywhere today, in fact, the ideology of competition gives way to a 'philosophy' of self-fulfillment. In a more integrated society individuals no longer compete for the possession of goods, they actualize themselves in consumption.”
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