Abstract

Commodities have suffered multiple dis-figurations since they first appeared on the scene of speculation. From their spectacular beginnings in the era of mercantile capital, where, according to Debord, they "sang the praises of men and their passions," to their final consummation in the new-clear age, where they now make a spectacle of themselves, these objects of speculation have been "subject" to a series of metamorphoses. ;The case study of the California wine industry provides a unique 'experimental' setting for an evaluation of what Marx called the "metamorphosis of the commodity-form." Not simply a genealogy of the commodity-form, this investigation maps the arche-traces of our modern objects and situates the appearance of hyper-, or fluid commodities on our contemporary social horizon. The case of wine is offered as a sample of the fluidity of commodities in a culture obsessed with images and status. ;But this project not only speaks to the character of the commodity-form, it also addresses the problems of legitimation, representation and communication in a post-industrial symbolic economy. As such, these essays confront issues in the study of consumer culture, commodity fetishism, advertising, ideology and political discourse, the sociology of science and knowledge , as well as the history of ideas. This inquiry or quest is, therefore, interdisciplinary, bringing together Baudrillard's reading of contemporary mass/consumer culture; the discourse analysis of Foucault; Lyotard's version of the post-modern; and the foundational inquiry into "What is a thing?" offered by Aristotle, Descartes, and Heidegger