1
I want: I want something. Even when, through settling smoke, I moan, “I guess I just don’t know what I want,” I state implicitly, “I want… something, but damn me if I know what.”
2
Desire implies an object of desire, even when obscure. Want exists by absence of fulfillment, and by its promise. In short, desire is rooted in its object, and in its separation from its object. The object of desire exists as such only by its significance to desire. Tautology of desire and object.
3
The analogy in linguistics: a signified, being “neither an act of consciousness, nor a real thing,” exists only “within the signifying process, in a quasi-tautological way” (Barthes 43). The signified is the expression of the signifier—the signifier, that which expresses the sign. But the signifier and sign must remain distinct. Thus, existence of the sign rests on the dependence and non-identity of signifier and signified. This paradoxical duality of the sign belongs also to want and wanted.
4
As an experiment, treat desire as the signifier. Desire would signify its object, the signified. But the signified itself exists by deeper motivations: I want her, why? Affection, self-confirmation, ostentation, orgasm—and why these? A deeper reason. Always the signified signifies in an endless regression of sign. Escape the problem, name it all “fulfillment”—you want the orgasm because it’ll be fulfilling. But fulfillment exists only in dual relation to desire—“fulfillment” merely aggregates the entire regression of signs. I want fulfillment; I want her, to get fulfillment; I want her, for orgasm, for fulfillment. Equivalent statements.
5
Now, consider the object as signifier—inferior sign of desire’s regression. “She represents fulfillment” is equivalent to “I desire her,” and follows more intuitively than “Desire signifies her.” Thus, the object becomes the signifier, and fulfillment—a negative statement of desire—the signified. The elusiveness of desire follows from the complexity buried in “fulfillment.” If she was fulfillment, I would be happy, having her. But she merely signifies fulfillment, and the relation of sign depends on non-identity. I will, having her, not have fulfillment—which, anyway, is nothing but an endless regression of significance. From the frustrated tautology of the sign arises the absurdity of life. The Blues is a genre of longing, a song of the sign. Whether this frustrated longing belongs only to the modern individual, or whether it underlies the human condition, doesn’t concern these theses.
6
Related to the commodity, desire is use-value. Even when such use devolves into “direct, one-sided gratification—merely in the sense of possessing, of having,” the object’s use-value corresponds to that want, though the commodity itself lack functional utility (Marx 87). Even if, after use, the consumer is disenchanted, this rupture of the use-sign cannot retroactively undo the use-value that existed at purchase. Thus, use-value does not, as Marx posited, “become a reality only by use or consumption” (303), because, at that moment, experience will often efface the object’s promise. Rather, use-value becomes a reality by anticipation of that consumptive moment. In this structure of anticipation, use-value matches want.
7
In Capital, Marx refuses to comment on “the nature of such wants” (303). Elsewhere, though, he laments that “my desire is the inaccessible possession of another” in estranged society (100), that “every person speculates on creating a new need [want, use-value] in another, ...to seduce him into a new mode of gratification [fulfillment] and therefore economic ruin” (93). Beyond Marx, consider the practical: what is advertising today? Marketing has already dropped the pretense of informing consumers. Without apology, it now “speculates on creating a new need” (100).
8
Although brute, animal desires require no manufacture, this independence also accounts for their flaw. They exist beyond society, but for that reason they can’t grow infinitely with society’s beckon, can’t absorb the dynamic productivity of capitalism. Only manmade desires expand at man’s command. Thus, the unending postponement of overproduction depends on wedding use-value to wealth—the synthesis of desire. At every precarious moment, capital endures through signification, “the act [of binding] signifier and the signified, [producing] the sign” (Barthes 48).
9
The commodity, “a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour,” forms a word (Marx 305). Baudrillard’s “analogy with linguistic phenomena” leads him to break the commodity-word into “technemes” (Baudrillard 5). But what size of object forms a techneme? Subdividing the commodity into technemes, Baudrillard stopped too soon, leaving undiscovered the techneme’s irreducible unit, substance: exchange-value. Finally, technemes are merely crystallizations of labour—their combination forms a qualitative form. The function, Baudrillard may as well call use-value. Beyond Baudrillard’s formulation: exchange-value technemes, arranged into commodity, signify use-value. The arrangement of technemes into commodities, and the signification of those commodities—by this process alone can capitalism postpone contradiction.
10
Signification in speech occurs through the “dialectical process which unites” language and speech: “there is no language without speech, and no speech outside language” (Barthes 15). The internalization of sign-systems “is the outcome of a collective training” by previously-witnessed usage (50). Usage after this training, according to preextant rules, forms the “collective training” for subsequent usage (50). Here, though, language “is not subject to any premeditation… autonomous” (14). Signs of desire dispense with the dialectical autonomy of language. The dynamism of production motivates—must motivate, to exist—the signification of use-value. No longer the “unmotivated” dialectics of language (50).
11
“A collective training,” too, constructs use-value (50). But a consumer must sensuously internalize the usage. An consumer’s usage of the signs—purchase—hardly influences the language of desire, since a negligible number of consumers witness this usage. The real usage must issue not from a collective but must impact a collective. The signification of desire manifests most saliently in advertising.
12
Usage must achieve “the association of [signs] and representation” (50). Here, the productive process provides signs; but representation must always be fulfillment. Since fulfillment itself only exists as in the sign-duality of desire, it exists only as signified. No advertisement could promise fulfillment without a sign of fulfillment—either the linguistic sign itself, or a preexisting sign of desire, such as sex, affection, or domestic cleanliness. The language of desire inherited by the commercial must provide this sign. Commodity-signification fuses the commodity-signifier to fulfillment—but transitively, through an intermediary signifier.
13
But as the signification process commands larger proportions of the consumer’s time—which it must, to keep pace with production—it isolates the consumer from the usage of the real. Society’s established language of desire, too, exists only by collective training, and commodity-signification must compete with this “real” usage for consumer attention. Thus, in appropriating “real” signs, this “false” usage also eliminates the real.
14
Finally, as the “false” tends towards a final conquest of consumer attention—driven by the imperatives of production—it exhausts the supply of “real” signs to liquidate. Luckily, it might turn on itself, devour its own signs—the commodity signifies fulfillment no longer through sex, rebellion, domestic cleanliness, but through lingerie, VW bugs, and aprons. Already, a contradiction emerges: new desires depend on the absence of fulfillment. These earlier commodities must have failed in their promise—rending the use-value, the significance, from the sign. Signification encounters a shortage of virgin signs, and only consumer forgetfulness grants signification a pardon. And luckily, the signification process encodes more than the commodities themselves.
15
Besides welding the commodity to fulfillment, signification processes, since consumable, attach fulfillment to their own consumption, and create a use-value of spectacle. Thus, commercials find an entry into fulfillment through each other, and finally through themselves, having liquidated all other signs of desire. Simulation without referent. The hyperreal.
16
In the desire for spectacle—signification’s shadow—endures the image of capital’s contradiction. Signification must compete with the real for attention, yet its purpose remains bound to real commodities. The time demanded by signification must ultimately encroach upon the time necessary for consumption. Furthermore, so long some fuel for signification remains, the spectacle cannot avoid binding itself to desire. The use-values of consumption must compete with this by-product, this semiotic waste of spectacle’s use-value. We consume the stage itself, ignoring the troupe of toasters pirouetting upon it.
17
To resolve this contradiction, capital must direct its productive capacities into signification. By producing signs for their own sake, no longer anchored in “real” commodities, capital can absorb its ever-increasing production. The sorcery of capital summoned commodity-signification, but now the magic has turned on its master. Once production motivated the language of desire; now signification itself motivates capital. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer...”
18
Signification, now the main course, weds itself to earlier significations, promising fulfillment by invoking earlier signifiers. But if, on consumption, we immediately discover the promise empty, this commodity/image ceases to signify. If it continued to signify—that is, if it sated our desire—we would cease new consumption, and merely watch Superbowl ads again, again, again. But since each spectacle wears out, ceases to signify fulfillment—and must—the old spectacle can no longer provide fuel for future signification. Only unconsumed spectacles still signify, except when disappointed memory yields to nostalgia. Otherwise, unable to invoke either the deflowered promises of yesterday, or tomorrow’s yet-unconstituted desires, spectacles must refer to the present, to themselves.
19
But a viewer consumes the spectacle in seeing it, and in consumption, the commodity loses its use. Thus, at once, signification constructs and devours its own appeal. It must found its use on uselessness. The apotheosis of image, then emerges—the final formula for Spectacle—self-parody. The commercial that chuckles with hip detachment, “Yeah, I know my product could never live up to this promise—and seriously, how dumb do you have to be to believe that purchasing an object can give you a slice of ‘hip’? The funny thing is, most of America falls for it—they think they can be as hip as this ad, just if they buy a certain razor. But not you and I, we’re smarter than them. You and I know how utterly empty this commercial is. That’s why we shave with Gilette.” Although this is a parody of self-ironic commercials, it would also make an extremely effective commercial. That’s because the content of parody and self-parody are identical. So the plausibility of this joke demonstrates self-parody’s present ubiquity.
20
Irony is appearance of discrepancy; self-irony entails discrepancy between self and self. What attitude could better embody the self-contradictions of capital?
21
Spectacles explicitly promising nothing but their own sound and fury, signifying nothing and celebrating their vacancy—selling their own statement of their own worthlessness. We consume an ornate, self-conscious nothing, and love it for its worthlessness. This is the irony we love—the only thing we still have. Use-value born from uselessness—negation of all but exchange. The signified vanishes into the sign—this is the origin of Baudrillard’s seduction, hyperreal. The pretense of use, of the sign, of desire, of the real, vanish under the weight of ouroboric spectacle and irony.
22
How long, before the years of disenchantment outweigh the hour’s sign? Before irony begins to signify the sadness and longing it denies? “The center cannot hold…” How long before things fall apart?
23
Thus far we’ve treated “fuel” as signs of fulfillment. But another kind of fuel: signs of betrayal, estrangement, and disillusionment. In negating these signs, a purely negative sign of desire emerges. Already, in considering “sex” and other animal wants as fuel for signification, we’ve encountered the negation. Signification—the artifice of desire—denies precisely these animal urges it invokes. The animal, then, represents the negation of artifice, and signification invokes its own negation when promising the animal through the commodity. An ad might promise a world without ads, a world where life is authentic and real, a world “you can best access through this commodity/this spectacle!” This is the negation of frustrated-desire—but the most powerful negative lies outside the spheres of leasure.
24
Signification, though it can dominate all of consumptive time, cannot invade the workday. Thus, signs of fulfillment in employment itself will always provide fuel—but these signs of fulfillment arise not from the productive activity itself, since it is estranging, but form the fantasy negation of production. Spectacle-commodities, then, might always found themselves on a promised negation of, or escape from, estrangement. This revolutionary deposit of signs will exist as long as capitalism exists. Thus capitalism stays revolution by consuming revolutionary consciousness itself.
25
Though signification might consume this consciousness, it cannot liquidate it. Here lies its appeal, and also its threat. Spectacle now binds an anti-revolutionary commodity (signification itself) to a revolutionary force. But here the signifier-signified duality almost collapses: the signifier and the signified exist on the same plane of reality, and oppose each other.
26
Another fuel follows, from the negation and parody of this revolution-commodity sign. Just as that sign promised escape from estrangement through its commodity, so the second-order signification promises escape from the first-order’s cooptation and betrayal—through another commodity instead.
27
But the second-order negation negates itself, and we arrive again at the self-parody, self-irony—now with revolutionary content. But whereas the first merely celebrated uselessness, this irony attempts to laud cynicism, fatalism, and estrangement. The former depended on its own non-signification; but the latter’s subject (estrangement) is the indestructible sign itself, is itself revolutionary discontent. Finally, this signification becomes a mirror of revolutionary consciousness itself, incompatible with irony, negating itself into oblivion. Leisure-time is Capital’s beauty-rest, but now it dreams only of self-escape, its imminent end.
28
Even while the consumptive self-irony implodes under its own cynicism, a bitter, revolutionary negation emerges—the final, unstable recourse of signification. But in the proliferation of last-ditch negations, death-spasms, which infuse the spectacle-commodity with a fragile vitality, spectacle itself summons the revolutionary consciousness of its undoing. True, the rebellious commodities sell well, but they necessarily disappoint, frustrating the consumer’s escape again and again. Each failed rebellion only sharpens our longing for the parousia of authentic life, each advertisement a messianic gospel of communism. What was once the libido of capitalism sours into Thanatos. Until, finally, a spark…
29
The “recuperations” dreaded by the Situationists — decoy-revolutions selling commodities — revolt against Capital as fiercely any “détournement.” Culture jamming, ideological campaigns, and revolutionary theory (like this), just echo and externalize Capital’s dreams of suicide. No need to flatter ourselves. We’re just projections of the system’s own death-drive, its own fantasy of escape.
