If rhetoric is
transposition
of representation
with communication
with interpretation,
reification
is the way the world is
in an ontological sense.
Here is an image taken
in a shopping mall.
The large
advertisement hanging
across the atrium
is rhetorical.
It is trying to speak to
shoppers with an
explicit message,
but the mall
itself reifies.
Reify comes from the
Latin word “res,”
which means "thing."
Reification is the thinginess 
of the mall.
It happens that this
particular mall
is a world historical
importance.
It is the very first
mall in the world.
The Southdale Center in
Minneapolis opened in 1956.
Now lets parse
several aspects of
reification here in
this mall. Downstairs
you can see
brightly lit shops,
commodities that
you may need to
purchase that you may
or may not be
able to afford.
But these commodities and
your purchasing power are
related to a whole complex
social and material
formation of
manufacture, corporations,
work, and perhaps
also exploitation,
poverty, and
existential angst.
But the resistant
thinginess
of this reality makes
it seemed to be
a state of affairs
that is inevitable and
forever, when of course
it is historical.
1956 was in
historical terms
the day before yesterday.
And if it is historical,
it is arguable.
Upstairs, another reification -
you can see
shuttered stores.
With the rise of
online shopping, malls and
in-person stores
are in decline.
And where the decline is most
serious, they become ruins.
This is another version
of reification,
the sense of decline
when you find
yourself living in ruins.
Now we're going to
enter the shops.
This is the world's
very first supermarket,
Piggy-Wiggly, opened
in Memphis in 1916.
Its inventor was
Clarence Saunders,
and here is his
patent application.
The patent applications
at the following:
"The object of my said
invention is to provide
a store equipment by which
the customer will be
enabled to serve himself,
and in doing so, will
be required to review the
the entire assortment
of goods carried in
stock, conveniently
and attractively displayed.
The goods may be selected
and taken by the customers
themselves while making
a circuitous path
through the store."
Supermarkets have
since become
ubiquitous parts
of our lives as
if they have always
been with us and always
will. Though in
historical terms,
they only entered human
life very recently.
Here is a supermarket
consultant,
Siemon Scamell-Katz, and
he's parsing the meaning
of the supermarket.
1 is the grab zone,
or the impulse area
at the checkout point.
And 5 is the traffic builder
where essential
items like milk are
positioned in the most
inconvenient place
possible in order
to force you past
4, where less
essential items
are placed at
the "buy level,"
which is at an average
adult's waist or
chest level.
Items children
might want are placed lower.
Or to get to the milk,
you might have to
go down 6, called
the power aisle, for heavily
promoted items.
Some parts of this
experience are
rhetorical - signs
or advertisements.
But this consultant advises
a store owners
for whom he works to
keep these to a minimum.
Let the objects and
the configuration of
the space speak for itself,
he says. 
Reification Is
the inexorable
existential reality of
having to live
with experience
in order to consume milk.
The price of reification is
the invisibility
for the moment of
the social relationships of
corporations to
workers and consumers.
And the environmental
consequences
of this mode of living
is radically removed
from its environment.
The meaning and the
selective blindness is in
the insistent thinginess
of this arrangement,
its apparent ontological
inevitability.
Here we contrast across
the various forms
of meaning,
the processes of expression
of interests via
reification,
the first row, with
the rhetorical
expression of
interests in
the second row.
Roughly speaking,
rhetoric is
the explicit expression
of interest.
Reification is implicit where
interest is realized by
the ways that are not
directly expressed.
Indeed, reification
is often
a kind of cover-up,
one that benefits
some interests
at the expense of others.
The cover up then becomes
an essential part
of the meaning.
Parsing interests
may uncover
human inequalities
and travesties
of nature that
throw into question
established patterns
of interest.
And of course, as
our theory of
transposition,
there is no hard and
fast distinction
between rhetoric
and reification.
The one is always ready
to become the other.
If the cover-up in
reification is exposed,
the participants under
question may resort to
rhetoric. Or rhetoric
may beckon participants
into meanings where
reification can kick in -
the advertisements
that bring
somebody into a
supermarket, for instance.
Which leads me now to
mentioned two modes
of reification.
Activation, in which I am
wanting milk to
satisfy my human need,
and alienation, when getting
the milk may involve
needless exploitation
of people and
nature, and senses
of disquiet
given the underlying
cynicism and
spiritual emptiness of
the commodity
entranced world.
The great social and
cultural theorist
Walter Benjamin
parsed the commodity
as a process of
reification.
The Paris arcades of
the 19th century,
which in some
respects prefigure
the 20th century
shopping mall, were,
quoting Benjamin now, "street
galleries of lascivious
commerce, wholly
adapted to
arousing desires.
The commodity proliferates
along the margins
and enters into
fantastic combinations."
This portrait of
Benjamin was taken
by photographer who
he greatly admired,
Germaine Krull, a
pioneer of photorealism.
He wrote about her and
included her shop in
imagery in his little
history of photography.
This is one of Germaine 
Krull's photographs,
and these are
Benjamin's words:
"The commodity whispers
to a poor wretch who
passes a shop window
containing beautiful
and expensive things."
Or to quiet artist
Barbara Kruger,
in her modern update
of Descartes'
"I think therefore, I am,"
reification is a
state of being,
a way of life, an
ontology of ordinariness.
To escape the thrall
of reification,
we need to parse
its underlying
patterns of interest.
