The Myth Of Sign-Critique Of Baudrillard's Thoery Of Consumer Society

This thesis is trying to comb thoroughly the evolution of Jean Baudrillard's sign theory and reveal the critical paths and methods by the comparisons of Jean Baudrillard's sign theory and Marxist Philosophy--Social theory of goods, Political Economy, as well as the theory of historical materialism and is also trying to evaluate Jean Baudrillard's theory by using text explanation and comparison methods.The introduction of this thesis describes the origins of this paper, the current course of domestic and abroad studies of Jean Baudrillard sign, the study methodology, besides the outline and the practical significance of this paper.The first chapter, which is entitled as: from production logic to sign logic. Issue to be addressed in this chapter is that different views and conclusions of Baudrillard and Marx's in the analysis of capitalist society are mainly due to the differences of the two methodologies (Marx's "production - needs" analysis, while the use of Jean Baudrillard is the symbol of discourse). In addition, this chapter summarized Marx's production theory and the theory of Jean Baudrillard's sign.The second chapter entitled: materials and their value of "deconstruction of codes." This chapter is based on Baudrillard's theory of analysis of objects and the consumer society of The System of Objects. Then it expanded by combining Marx's theory of the value of goods of deconstruction of codes of The Mirror of Production. This is Baudrillard's first attempt to critique reality by using semiotics. This chapter's logical sequence as follows: Marx's objects of the commodity society—Debord's"Landscape material"—Baudrillard's"Sign Objects". And then give a brief description of the state of existence of objects in a sign society.The third chapter is entitled: Baudrillard's political economy of the sign--political economy of deconstruction of codes. By comparing with Marxist political economy, this chapter analyzes the framework of Jean Baudrillard's "political economy of sign". Undertaken the second chapter, with the transformation of objects to the symbols, the critical will turn from capitalist consumer society to the field of consumer culture and which resulted in solitary opposition between Marxist political economy and Baudrillard's political economy. And thus lead to its thorough critique to Marxist historical materialism in The mirror of Production.The fourth chapter is entitled: "The Mirror of Production" and the"criticism"of historical materialism - the deconstruction of codes of the history of mankind. Baudrillard believes that the creation of Marx's historical materialism is only the theory drawn from the history development of the reflection of pre-set mirror of production. The concept of productive labor is only an abstraction created by capitalism with the control of sign. This is the representative of his symbol theory in philosophy and anthropology after this theory was used in objects and political economics. This view would be analyzed and criticized in here.The title of chapter V as follows: the re-evaluation of Baudrillard. This chapter is mainly to evaluate the theory of Jean Baudrillard's sign and explain its positive meaning and inadequate. By trying the perspective of economic integration, the author attempt to analyze the change of Marxist political economics in today's society and eventually come to Marx's Critique of Political Economy and his theory of historical materialism still have strong practical ability to think critically even in the developed capitalist period.Finally, summary section is the summary of the full text.