“In The Practice of Everyday Life, the astonishing structuralist Michel de Certeau examines the hidden movements beneath the surface of the Production-Consumption pair, showing that far from being purely passive, the consumer engages in a set of processes comparable to an almost clandestine, “silent” production. To use an object is necessarily to interpret it. To use a product is to betray its concept. To read, to view, to envision a work is to know how to divert it: use is an act of micropirating that constitues postproduction. We never read a book the way its author would like us to. By using television, books, or records, the user of culture deploys a rhetoric of practices and “ruses” that has to do with enunciation and therefore with language whose figures and codes may be catalogued.”
From Nicolas Bourriaud’s Postproduction.
2 Comments
February 18, 2008 at 9:10 pm
To use a product is to betray its concept. … We never read a book the way its author would like us to.
That would be difficult to prove, ne c’est pas? Anyone have a spare “probably” that Nicholas can loan?
February 20, 2008 at 8:13 am
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