6.

O valor dos produtos

Índice

Aestheticization of everyday life

The production of consumption
The modes of consumption
Tipos de valores das mercadorias

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Aestheticization of everyday life

There are three senses in which we can speak of the aestheticization of everyday life:

1. We can refer those artistic subcultures which produced the Dada, historical avant-garde and
surrealist movements in World War One and the 1920s, which sought in their work, writings,
and in some cases live, to efface the boundary between art and everydyay life.

2. We can refer to the project of turning life into a work of art. The fascination of this project on
the part of artists and intelectuals and would-be artists and intellectuals has a long history. It
can, for example, be found in the Bloomsburry Group around the turn of the century.

3. We can refer to the rapid flow of signs and images which saturate the fabric of everydyay life
in contemporary society. The theorization of this process has drawn much from Marx’s
theory of fettishism of commodities which has been developed in various ways by Luckacs,
the Frankfurt School, Benjamin, Haug, Lefebvre, Baudrillard and Jameson.

(Featherstone, 1994: 66-68).

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The modes of consumption

Consumption classes are defined in relation to the consumption of three sets goods: a staple
setting corresponding to the primary production sector (ex. food); a technology set
corresponding to the secondary production sector (travel and consumer’s capital equipment);
and an information set corresponding to a tertiary production (information goods, education,
arts, cultural and leisure pursuits).

The phasing, duraction and intensity of time invested in acquiring competences for hendling
information, goods and services as well as the day-to-day practice, conservation and
maintenance of these competences is a useful criterin of social class (Preteceille and Terrail,
1985:23).

The competition to acquire goods in the information class generates high admission barriers and
effective techniques of exclusion (Douglas and Isherwood, 1980:180) (Featherstone, 1994:17-
18).

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Aestheticization of everyday life

There are overload information provided by the media which now confront us with the endless
flow of fascinating images and simulations, so that ‘TV is the world’ (Baudrillard, 1983).

Art ceases to be a separate enclaved reality, it enters into production and reproduction so that
everything ‘even if it be the everyday and banal reality, falls by this token under the sign of art,
and becomes aesthetic’. The end of the real and the end of art moves us into a hyperreality in
which the secret discovered by surrealism becomes more widespread and generalised.

It is reality itself that is hyperrealist. Today it is quotidian reality in its entirely – political, social,
historical and economic – that from now on incorporates the simulating dimension of
hyperrealism. We live everywhere already in an ‘aesthetic’ hallucination of reality (Baudrillard,
1983:148). (Featherstone, 1994:69)

The consumer society becomes essentially cultural as social lifes becomes deregulated and social
relationships becomes more variable and less structured by stable norms. The overproduction of
signs and reproduction of images and simulations leads to a loss of stable meaning, and an
aestheticization of reality in which the masses becomes fascinated by the endless flow of bizarre
justapositions which takes the viewer beyond stable sense (Featherstone, 1994:15)

Ivo Domingues ICS/UM

The production of consumption

A produção material implica um elemento ideológico; da mesma maneira, a reprodução

ideológica implica um elemento material. O elemento cultural do sentimento humano é, assim,
tão importante na reprodução da força de trabalho quanto o elemento físico. O significado não é
secundário, ele faz parte da experiência humana (Baudrillard, sd:251).

A cultura do consumo resulta de processo histórico de desenvolvimento urbano e tecnológico:

o tecido moral e religioso dissolveu-se progressivamente, o anonimato da cidade trouxe consigo
sentimentos de depressão e de perda, o alargamento da economia de mercado aumentou a
interdependência entre as pessoas, o ‘eu’ deixou de ser definido em termos de individualidade e
personalidade, e passou a estar relacionado com elementos manipuláveis pelo indivíduo para
exibir junto dos outros (Lears, 1983: 6) (Baudrillard, sd:252).

A relação dialéctica entre as novas necessidades emocionais e as estratégias dos anunciantes, as

quais se reforçam continuamente (…) O declínio das estruturas simbólicas do significado
exteriores ao eu constituiu um processo fulcral para o desenvolvimento de uma cultura do
consumo, juntamente com as estratégias da publicidade, do ethos terapêutico (Lears, 1983:4 e
21).

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Une logique des significations

Quatre logiques seraient en cause:

1. Une logique funcionnelle de la valeur d’usage = logique des operations pratiques;

logique de l’utilité. L’object prendre le statut d’outil.
2. Une logique económique de la valeur d’échange = logique de l’équivalence, logique du
marché. L’object prendre le statut de merchandise.
3. Une logique de l’échange symbolique = logique de l’ambivalence; logique du don.
L’object prendre le statut de symbol.
4. Une logique de la valeur/signe = logique de la differénce; logique du statut. L’object
prendre le statut de sign.
(Baudrillard, 1972:64)

Il n’y a de veritable object de consommation que délié:

- De ses determinations psychiques comme symbole
- De ses determinations de fonction comme utensile;
- De ses determinations marchandes de produit;
- De ses determinations comme signe repris por la logique formelle de la mode, c’est-à-
dire, par la logique de la differenciation.

(Baudrillard, 1972:66)

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The modes of consumption

It is possible to claim a consumption logic which points to the socially structured ways in which
goods are used to demarcate social relationships.

In some cases, the object of purchasing may to be gain prestige through high exchange value
especially the case within societies where the aristocracy and old rich have been forced to yeld
power to the new rich (Veblen’s Conspicuous consumption)(Featherstone, 1994:16)

In a theory of conspicuous consumption that is faithful to Veblen’s analysis, utility should be

defined over consumption and status, rather than over consumption and prices (..) Since veblen
argued that individuals engage in conspicuous consumption to advertise and provide evidence
of wealth, the equilibrium relation between price and status should result from signaling
(Bagwell and Bernheim, 1996:350).

According Veblen theory, utility should be defined in terms of comsumption and status instead
of consumption and price: Thus, comsuming conspicuous goods is motivated by individuous
comparision and pecuniary emulation (Bagwell and Bernheim, 1996:350).

Our enjoyment of goods is only partly related to their physical consumption, being also crucially
linked to their uses as markers; we enjoy, for example, sharing the names of goods with others
(the sports fan or the wine connoisseur).

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References

Bagwell, Laurie Simon and Bernheim, B. Douglas (1996) Veblen effects in a theory of
conspicuous consumption, The American Economic Review, 86(3): 349-373;
Baudrillard, Jean (1983) Simulations, New York: Semiotext(e);
Baudrillard, Jean (1972) Pour une critique de léconomie politique du signe, Paris. Gallimard;
Jahly, Sut (sd) Os códigos da publicidade, Porto: Edições ASA;
Douglas, Mary and Isherwood, Baron (1980) The world of goods, Harmondsworth: Penguin;
Featherstone, Mike (1994) Consumer Culture postmodernism, London/Thousand Oaks/New
Delhi: Sage, pp. 65-82;
Lears, T.J. Jackson (1983) From salvation to self-realization, in Fox, Richard W. and Lears, T.J. (ed)
The culture of consumption: critical essays in american history (1880-1980), New York: Pantheon;
Leiss, William (1978) Needs, exchanges and the feitichism of objects, Canadian Journal of
Political and Social Rheory, 2(3);
Marx, Karl (1979)
Preteceille, Edmond and Terrail, Jean-Pierre (1985) Capitalism, consumption and needs, Oxford:
Basil Blackwell;

Ivo Domingues ICS/UM