| Popis: |
The meaning of ‘trade’ and the understanding of its role in human societies lies at the root of —at least to the modern observer— one of the most confusing paradoxes in the relationship between objects and people. The recognition of this puzzle was first formulated by Marx and his comments on the ‘commodity fetish’ (Marx 1906). Under capitalism, objects (or rather commodities) are collected, made or worked upon by human labor in certain social spheres (of ‘production’) and then wrenched and transported into totally different spheres (of ‘consumption’). The ‘value’ of these objects is realized primarily in the consumption sphere: authenticity and social credit accruing to the judicial buyer, whilst the skills and aura of the laborer are effaced through the transition between spheres. To use Weber’s borrowing from Schiller, most acts of production in capitalism are ‘disenchanted’ (Greisman 1976) and rational, except perhaps for certain ring-fenced and strictly regulated fields of labor -- bounded under the label of ‘art’ and created by specialist ‘artists’ who are often required to live slightly outside the conventions of ‘normal’ society in order to draw on the sublime or divine. |
