The Production Of Symbolic Meaning In Consumerism Era

Since the second half period of the 20th century, the approach of the consumerism ear has inevitably changed the aesthetics context and discourse. In the consumer society where the economic logic prevails, the aesthetics has already been integrated with commodity production, which leads to its identity crisis, namely the disintegration of the aesthetic perspective. The aestheticization of everyday life and the popularization of art deprive the aesthetics of its self-discipline; the confluence of the elite culture and popular culture together with the transformation of scholarship and knowledge production into the "cultural capital" results in the de-distantiation of the aesthetic critique; and the captivating view of the consumer society weakens the powers of "aesthetic salvation". All these confirm a kind of objective cultural existence: the consumerism ear has become a special cultural context for the existence of aesthetics. Meanwhile, the concern about the aesthetic phenomena and problems in the consumerism era has woven into the development of the western aesthetics of the 20th century, arousing the continuous consideration and exploration of important thinkers form the western Marxism and postmodernism; and recently Chinese aesthetic community has focused on the up-to-date research on "consumer culture" and "aestheticization of everyday life". Based on the investigation of the present culture studies by the domestic and international humanistic community, this paper aims at ,through an interpretation of the consumerism era and a reflection on the contemporary aesthetic phenomena ,making valuable attempts leading to the construction of significant meaning from the perspective of the production of symbolic meaning.The first part of this paper begins with a brief history of the word "consumption", with emphasis placed on the three layers (namely the consumption of the use value, the exchange value and the sign value) in its broad sense, which represent the three stages of the development of the western consumer culture. At the third stage, namely the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, people turn to consumption as the center of their life, particularly the consumption that satisfies their desire and has thesymbolic meaning, thus rendering the postmodernist consumer culture the mainstream of the popular culture. The consumption has become a kind of sign operation behavior and an exchange system for the construction of identity and differences, which makes the consumerism era a special cultural context. Consumer culture not only affects people's life style and their way to communicate and identify themselves, but also affects the artistic and aesthetic realms, making aesthetic activities and artistic production under the influence of consumer's economic logic. The evolution of postmodernist consumer culture and its characteristics determine its dilemma: while people are enjoying various conveniences and comforts of the prosperous consumer society as well as the pleasure and freedom provided by the consumer culture, they are gradually trapped in the spiritual mire characteristic of the consumerism era.The second part of this paper first points out, in today' s consumer society abundant in commodities, as a kind of "the systematical sign operation behavior"(by Baudrillard), consumption means the production of symbolic meaning, which is inseparable from the cultural logic of the consumerism era or that of the postmodernist consumer culture. Then, the philosophical and aesthetic interpretation of the production of symbolic meaning points out that, as the sophisticated organism with consciousness, man can treat his life activities as his own object for knowledge and insight at the same time, thus obtaining a meaningful world besides his physical life world. Consumption is the center of people's life in the consumerism era, which not only satisfies their physiological demands, but also is an important way of their production of symbolic meaning, since the products are not only commodities, but al...