{"product_id":"the-system-of-objects","title":"The System of Objects","description":"\u003ci\u003eThe System of Objects\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePressing Freudian and Saussurean categories into the service of a basically Marxist perspective, \u003ci\u003eThe System of Objects \u003c\/i\u003eoffers 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe System of Objects\u003c\/i\u003e 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\u003ci\u003e The System of Fashion;\u003c\/i\u003e Henri Lefebvre’s work on the social construction of space; and last, but not least, Guy Debord’s situationist critique of the spectacle.","brand":"Jean Baudrillard","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":51399611384024,"sku":"9781788738545","price":25.95,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2770\/5320\/files\/cover-9781788738545.jpg?v=1771272461","url":"https:\/\/destiil.com\/products\/the-system-of-objects","provider":"De Stiil Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}