The paper is trying to present a theoretical framework for understanding of the brand as a specific form of commodity fetishism. The author starts from Slavoj Žižek's article entitled What is a brand? Marketing redefines our lives in strange new ways, in which Žižek explains the logic of commodity fetishism that corresponds to cultural or experiental capitalism. In the following, the author accepts Žižek's argumentation and points to homology between the phanatsmatic logic of the brand and the logic of fetishism. The author then outlines the logic of commodity as elaborated by Marx and highlights Marx's understanding of it as use and exchange value and – following Lacan and Baudrillard – explains how, in the era of cultural capitalism (that is, in the light of sign culture and the logic of the signifier), commodity is logically transformed and how – from that perspective – one can understand the brand as a sign object of consumption. In the following, the author explains what is fetishism and highlights the function and place of inscription of the fetish-object in the libidinal economy of the individual and – with the help of a graphical shema – demonstraits its logic. In the next step the author outlines Baudrillard's conception of the object of consumption and points out its fundamental characteristics and – with the help of a theoretical model, that he develops – demonstrates three levels of perception of the brand concept: (i) the level of the sign or logotype, where the brand is perceived as the condition and fetishistic support of the subject’s desire, (ii) the signifying level, where the brand is a system of differences propelled by the promise of jouissance, and (iii) the phantasmatic level, where the brand is perceived as the actual and proper object of consumption and phantasmatic satisfaction. In the final part of the paper – with the help of the propositions he develops – the author tries to answer the question of how do brands, as sign objects of consumption, shape our identity and our way of life.
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