The ldeological Genesis
of Needs 1
Jean Baudrillard
The rapturous satisfactions of consurnption surround
us. clinging to objects as if to the sensory residues of
the previous day in the delirious excursion of a drearn.
As to the logic that regulates this strange discourse
- surely it compares to what Freud uncovereif in
The lnterpretation of Dreams? But we have scarcely
advanced beyond the explanatory leve] of naive
psychology and the medieval drearnbook. We believe
in 'Consumption': we believe in a real subject, moti-
vated by needs and confronted by real objects as
sources of satisfaction. lt is a thoroughly vulgar meta-
physic. And contemporary psychology, sociology and
economic science are ali complicit in the fiasco. So
the time has come to deconstruct ali the assumptive
notions involved - object, need, aspiration, consumption
itself - for it would make as little sense to theorize
the quotidian from surface evidence as to interpret the
manifest discourse of a drearn: it is rather the dream-
work and the drearn-processes that must be analyzed
in order to recover the unconscious logic of a
more profound discourse. And it is the workings and
processes of an unconscious social logic that must
be retrieved beneath the consecrated ideology of
consurnption.
CONSUMPTION AS A LOGIC OF
SIGNIFICATIONS
The empirical 'object,' given in its contingency ofform,
color, material , function and discourse (or, if it is a
cultural object, in its aesthetic finality). is a myth. How
often it has been wished away! But the object is nothing.
It is nothing but the different types of relations and
significations that converge, contradict themselves.
and twist around it, as such - the hidden logic that not
only arranges this bundle of relations, but directs the
manifest discourse that overlays and occludes it.
The logical status of objects
Insofar as 1 make use of a refrigerator as a machine,
it is not an object. It is a refrigerator. Talking about
refrigerators or automobiles in terms of 'objects' is
something else. That is, it has nothing to do with them
in their 'objective' relation to keeping things cold or
transportation. It is to speak of the object as function-
ally decontextualized:
Either as an object of psychic investment 2 and
fascination, of passion and projection - qualified by
its exclusive relation with the subject, who then
cathects it as if it were his own body (a borderline
case). Useless and sublime. the object then loses
its common name, so to speak. and assumes
the title of Object as generic proper narne. For this
reason, the collector never refers to a statuette or a
vase as a beautiful statuette, vase, etc .. but as
'a beautiful Object.' This status is opposed to the
generic dictionary meaning of the word, that of
the 'object' plain and simple: 'Refrigerator: an object
that refrigerates . .. .'
2 Or (between the Object, as proper name and
projective equivalent of the subject. and the object.
with the status of a common name and implement)
asan object specified by its trademark. charged with
differential connotations of status, prestige and
fas hion. This is the 'object of consumption.' It can
justas easily be a vase as a refrigerator, or, for that
fm JEA N BAUDRILLARD
matter, a whoopee cushion. Properly speaking, it
has no more existence than a phoneme has an
absolute meaning in linguistics. This object does not
assume meaning either in a symbolic relation with
the subject (the Object) orinan operational relation
to the world (object-as-implement): it finds meaning
with other objects, in difference, according to a
hierarchical code of significations. This alone, at the
risk of the worst confusion, defines the object of
consumption.
Of symbolic exchange 'value'
In symbolic exchange, of which the gift is our most
proximate illustration, the object is notan object: it is
inseparable from the concrete relation in which it
is exchanged, the transferential pact that it seals
between two persons: it is thus not independ~t as
such. It has, properly speaking, neither u~ value
nor (economic) exchange value. The object given has
symbolic exchange value. This is the paradox of the
gift: it is on the one hand (relatively) arbitrary: it matters
little what object is involved. Provided it is given, it can
fully signify the relation. On the other hand, once it has
been given - and beca use of this - it is this object and not
another. The gift is unique. specified by the people
exchanging and the unique moment of the exchange.
It is arbitrary, and yet absolutely singular.
As distinct from language, whose material can
be dissassociated from the subjects speaking it, the
material of symbolic exchange, the objects given, are
not autonomous, hence not codifiable as signs. Since
they do not depend on economic exchange, they are
not amenable to systematization as commodities and
exchange value.
What constitutes the object as value in symbolic
exchange is that one separa tes himself from it in arder
to give it, to throw it at the feet of the other, under
the gaze of the other (ob-jicere); one divests himself as
if of a part ofhimself- an act which is significant in itself
as the basis, simultaneously, of both the mutual
presence of the terms of the relationship, and their
mutual absence (their distance). The ambivalence
of ali symbolic exchange material (looks, objects,
dreams, excrement) derives from this: the gift is a
medium of relation and distance; it is always love and
aggression.3
From symbolic exchange to sign value
It is from the (theoretically isolatable) moment when
the exchange is no longer purely transitive, when the
object (the material of exchange) is immediately
presented as such, that it is reified into a sign. Instead
of abolishing itself in the relation that it establishes, and
thus assuming symbolic value (as in the example ofthe
gift), the object becomes autonomous, intransitive,
opaque, and so begins to signify the abolition of the
relationship. Having become a sign object, it is no
longer the mobile signifier of a lack between two
beings, it is 'of and 'from' the reified relation (as is the
commodity at another level , in relation to reified labor
power). Whereas the symbol refers to lack (to absence)
as a virtual relation of desire, the sign object only
refers to the absence of relation itself. and to isolated
individual subjects.
The sign object is neither given nor exchanged: it is
appropriated, withheld and manipulated by individual
subjects as a sign, that is, as coded difference. Here lies
the object of consumption. And it is always of and from
a reified, abolished social relationship that is 'signified'
in acode.
What we perceive in the symbolic object (the
gift, and also the traditional, ritual and artisanal object)
is not only the concrete manifestation of a total rela-
tionship (ambivalent, and total because it is ambivalent)
of desire; but also, through the singularity of an object,
the transparency of social relations in a dual or inte-
grated group relationship. In the commodity, on the
other hand, we perceive the opacity of social relations
of production and the reality of the division of labor.
What is revealed in the contemporary profusion of
sign objects, objects of consumption, is precisely
this opacity, the total constraint ofthe code that govems
social value: it is the specific weight of signs that
regula tes the social logic of exchange.
The object-become-sign no longer gathers its
meaning in the concrete relationship between two
people. It assumes its meaning in its differential relation
to other signs. Somewhat like Lévi-Strauss' myths,
sign-objects exchange among themselves. Thus, only
when objects are autonomized as differential signs
and thereby rendered systematizable can one speak of
consumption and of objects of consumption.

A logic of signification
So it is necessary to distinguish the logic of con-
sumption, which is a logic of the sign and of clifference,
from severa! other logics that habitually get entangled
with it in the welter of evidential considerations. (This
confusion is echoed by ali the naive and authorized
literature on the question.) Four logics would be con-
cemed here:
A functional logic of use value;
2 An economic logic of exchange value;
3 A logic of syrnbolic exchange;
4 A logic of sign value.
The first is a logic of practica] operations, the second
one of equivalence, the third, ambivalence, and the
fourth , difference.
Or again: a logic of utility, a logic of the market~
Jogic of the gift, and a logic of status. Organized in
accordance with one of the above groupings, the object
assumes respectively the status of an instrument, a
commodity, a symbol, or a sign.
Only the last of these defines the specific field of
consumption. Let us compare two examples:
The wedding ring This is a unique object, symbol of
the relationship of the couple. One would neither think
of changing it (barring mishap) nor ofwearing severa!.
The symbolic object is made to last and to witness
in its duration the permanence of the relationship.
Fashion plays as negligible a role at the strictly
syrnbolic leve! as at the leve! ofpure instrumentality.
The ordinary ring is quite different: it does not
symbolize a relationship. It is a non-singular object, a
personal gratification, a sign in the eyes of others. l can
wear severa! of them. 1 can substitute them. The
ordinary ring takes part in the play of my accessories
and the constellation of fashion. It is an object of
consumption.
Living accommodations. The house, your lodgings,
your apartment: these terms involve semantic nuances
that are no doubt linked to the advent of industrial
production or to social standing. But, whatever one's
social leve! in France today, one's domicile is not
necessarily perceived as a 'consumption' good. The
question of residence is still very closely associated
with patrimonial goods in general, and its symbolic
scheme remains largely that of the body. Now, for the
logic of consumption to penetrate here. the exteriority
of the sign is required. The residence must cease to be
THE I DEOLOGICAL GENESIS OF NEEDS E.DJ
hereditary, or interiorized as an organic farnily space.
One must avoid the appearance of filiation and iden-
tifica tion if one's debut in the world of fashion is to be
successful.
In other words, domestic practice is still largely a
function of deterrninations, namely: symbolic (profound
emotional investment, etc.), and economic (scarcity).
Moreover. the two are linked: only a certain 'dis-
cretionary income' perrnits one to play with objects as
status signs - a stage of fashion and the 'game' where
the syrnbolic and the utilitarian are both exhausted.
Now, as to the question ofresidence-in France at least
- the margin offree play for the mobile combinatory of
prestige or for the game of substitution is limited. In the
United States, by contrast, one sees living arrange-
ments indexed to social mobility, to trajectories of
careers and status. Inserted into the global constel-
lation of status, and subjugated to the same accelerated
obsolescence of any other object of luxury, the house
truly becomes an object of consumption.
This example has a further interest: it demonstrates
the futility of any attempt to define the object empir-
ically. Pencils. books, fabrics, food , the car, curios - are
these objects? Is a house an object? Sorne would
1
contest this. The decisive point is to establish whether
the symbolism of the house (sustained by the shortage
of housing) is irreducible, or if even this can succumb
to the differential and reified connotations of fashion
logic: for ifthis is so, then the home becomes an object
of consumption - as any other object will, if it only
answers to the same definition: being, cultural trait,
ideal, gestural pattem, language, etc. - anything can
be made to fit the bill. The definition of an object
of consumption is entirely independent of objects
themselves and exclusive/y a function of the logic of
significations.
An object is notan object of consumption unless it
is released from its psychic deterrninations as symbol;
from its functional deterrninations as instrument, from its
commercial determinations as product, and is thus
liberated as a sign to be recaptured by the formal logic
of fashion, i.e. by the logic of differentiation.
The order of signs and social order
There is no object of consumption befo re the moment
of its substitution, and without this substitution having
been determined by the social law, which demands
not only the renewal of distinctive material, but the
6IJ JEAN BAU D RILL ARD
obligatory registration of individuals on the scale of
status, through the mediation of their group and as a
function of their relations with other groups. This sea/e
is properly the social arder, since the acceptance of this
hierarchy of differentiaI signs and the interiorization by
the individual of signs in general (i.e. of the norms.
values, and social imperatives that signs are) con-
stitutes the fundamental, decisive form of social control
- more so even than acquiescence to ideological
norms.
lt is now clear that there is no autonomous prob-
lematic of objects, but rather the much more urgent
need for a theory of social logic, and of the codes tha t
it puts into play (sign systems and distinctive material).
The common name, the proper name,
and the brand name
Let us recapituiate the various types of stat~ir the
object according to the specific and (theoretically)
exhaustive logics that may penetrate it:
The refrigerator is specified by its function and
irreplaceable in this respect. There is a necessary
relation between the object and its function. The
arbitrary nature of the sign is not involved. But ali
refrigerators are interchangeable in regard to this
function (their objective 'meaning').
2 By contrast. ifthe refrigerator is taken asan element
of comfort or of luxury (standing), then in principie
any other such element can be substituted for it. The
object tends to the status of sign, and each social
status will be signified by an entire constellation of
exchangeable signs. No necessary relation to the
subject or the world is involved. There is only a
systematic relation obligated to ali other signs. And
in this combinatory abstraction lie the elements
of acode.
3 In their symbolic relationship to the subject (or
in reciproca! exchange), ali objects are potentially
interchangeable. Any object can serve as a doll
for the little girl. But once cathected, it is this one
and not another. The symbolic material is relatively
arbitrary, but the subject-object relation is fused.
Symbolic discourse is an idiom.
NOTES
1 This piece first appeared in Cahiers lnternationaux de
Sociologie, 1969.
2 lnvestissement this is the standard, and literal, French
equivalent of Freud's Besetzung, which also means invest-
ment in ordinary German. The English, however, have
insisted on rendering this concept by coining a word that
sounds more technical: cathexis, to cathect, etc. The term
has been used here mainly to draw attention to the psycho-
analytic sense, which varies in intensity and precision,
of Baudrillard's investissement, investir. Loosely, Freud's
concept involves the quantitative transfer of psychic energy
to parts of the psyche. images. objects. etc. - Translator's
footnote.
3 Thus the structure of exchange (cf. Lévi-Strauss) is never
that of simple reciprocity. lt is not two simple terms, but
two ambiva/ent terms that exchange, and the exchange
establishes their relationship as ambivalent.