ABSTRACT

Marketing talks often about products, but seldom about objects. Moreover, when people evoke products, they are often referring to sign systems. The semantic approach makes a clear distinction between the material dimensions of objects (the signifier or the expressive level) and their idea-related dimension (the signified or the contents level). This perspective analyzes objects in terms of their specifically ideological dimension, to the detriment of their corporal and sensorial dimensions. Have the instrumental and symbolic dimensions that are traditionally associated with objects in our western culture put paid to all other possibilities for ascribing coherence and meaning to objects – despite the fact that these other possibilities continue to crop up, as if by stealth, in people’s daily lives? But how is it then that objects are still able to surprise us time and again, enchanting us despite the familiar place they have in our daily lives? By no longer focusing only on the symbolic dimensions of products and brands, the experientialization of consumption may pave the way for an approach that will do a better job of incorporating the specifically material embeddedness of our relationships with objects. Now is probably the time both to try and understand the infraordinary mode that surrounds us, and also to transcend the saturation of the effects on our senses as well as the tyranny of symbolism. Both these factors have imprisoned objects in a register that tends to empty them of their meaning and emotionality, and very probably of their effectiveness. The present chapter aims to reveal insights into the objects that surround us on a daily basis, insights that will marginalize the commonplace and the spectacular, and help show how our daily experiences with such objects epitomize a sort of constant iteration

n An object is more than a mere system of signs.