I/Materialities

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 dimensions (the signified or the contents level). This perspective analyzes objects in terms of their specifically ideological dimension, to the detriment of their corporeal and sensorial dimensions. Have the instrumental and symbolic dimensions that are traditionally associated with objects in our Western culture put paid to all other possi- bilities 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 consump- tion may pave the way for an approach that will do a better job of incor- porating the specifically material embeddedness of our relationships with objects. Now is probably the time both to try and understand the infra-ordinary mode that surrounds us and also to transcend the satura- tion of the effects on our senses as well as the tyranny of symbolism.