Depth in the Inexhaustible Surface of Things : Postmodernism and the Fetishism of Commodities

The aim of this contribution is to thematize some of the dialectical tensions that have animated modernity and that have been addressed, with sometimes dubious outcomes, in postmodern thought. In particular, we will focus on the distinction between use value and exchange value – as discussed by Jean-François Lyotard’s – and between surface and depth – as analyzed by Daniel Bell and Fredric Jameson. Our hypothesis is that these scholars, though they start from different political positions, they connect the ends of a certain epistemological model – paradigmatically represented by a linear perspective that identifies depth with distance – to the definitive defeat of use value in favor of exchange value. Yet, as we will show in the third section, according to Karl Marx it is impossible to completely erase use value: its dialectical tension is always present and cannot be cancelled altogether. Finally, in our conclusion we will try to lay the foundations for future research that identifies another kind of depth that is no longer linked to the opposition between appearance and reality and to the perspectival concept of distance. We will therefore attempt to hypothesize a different relationship between surface and depth through the concept of overlap.