Jean Baudrillard and the Phenomenon of Exchange
To buy a consumer product, to find a pleasure in the acquisition of the material thing, one must base the emotion upon a derived experience associated with the act of purchase. Whether that act is one driven by need or desire need not matter. It is in the choice of purchase of that we discover the roots of consumerist motivations. For, when purchase is made, there exists an internal referencing associated with the external act; that is, there is something within the self whereby the purchase choice is validated. Shall the purchase result in the satisfaction of a utility? Or, shall the purchase enhance self-esteem through the creation of envy in the Other of the social interaction? For French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, these questions are both raised and answered through his ideas ofsymbolic exchange.
As consumption requires production, and production requires consumption, the notion of valuesbecome evermore vital in the people of the materialist society. Identity itself becomes attached to the consumer object, projecting itself toward the Other and defining for the them the instrumental features of the self. In other words, the vision of the object as perception reinforces the necessity of purchase as it is associated with a perceived lack in the person (that is, to maintain a fetish of goods through their promise of the product). In turn, the acquisition of the goods to fulfill their promise requires an exchange of value for those goods. In a capitalist society, such value is found in capitalitself—money, material, animals, earth, or any other such valuable asset.
Baudrillard wrote that this symbolic exchange must replace traditional concepts of value that are based upon spiritual notions of personal enhancement. Indeed, value and meaning are themselves, to Baudrillard, something of artificial constructs. With the advancement of envy of Others created through the acquisition of symbols for the self, the purpose of the product is complete and thereforevalued for its transformative ability—to transform the self into Another for the creation of social envy of Others. To a large degree this phenomenon has occurred and now has even begun to transmute itself into a new ideal of the self in relation to products—one in which human existence itself is realizing a new consciousness.
Indeed, Baudrillard argues that we have entered a new phase of human existence and experience; one in which production is the organizing form of society. Through his work, he observes that contemporary society is now a period of capitalism and the reign of the middle-class in which workers in corporate capitalism are exploited by capital and function in largely vacuous labor. Certainly, with the rise of advanced capitalism and the emergence of the “cubicle society”, wherein ream upon ream of paper is pushed through a system of constant validation and accountability, we are witnessing what Baudrillard declares in Symbolic Exchange and Death (1993) as the end of the traditional, linear forms of discourse, production, and commodities.
Dr. Renée Jarre is a Senior Research Fellow in Communication at the Academie du Monde, specialising in the works of Baudrillard, Viser, McLuhan, and Althusser. With its emphasis in the study of the Humanities, Academie du Monde is a primary philosophical institution headquartered in Tournai, Belgium.
e-mail: rjarre@academiedumonde.com
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