{"product_id":"the-system-of-objects-radical-thinkers","title":"The System of Objects (Radical Thinkers)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe System of Objects is a tour de forcea 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 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.  The System of Objects 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: Batailles political economy of expenditure and Mausss theory of the gift; Reismans lonely crowd and the technological society of Jacques Ellul; the structuralism of Roland Barthes in The System of Fashion; Henri Lefebvres work on the social construction of space; and last  but not least  Guy Debords situationist critique of the spectacle.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44946543050805,"sku":"ByrdShop_1844670538","price":26.72,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781844670536.jpg?v=1769955546","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-system-of-objects-radical-thinkers","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}