icon consciousness

is when value is transmitted as the result of contact of the senses (sight, smell, taste, touch) with an aesthetic thing.

As he defines it, iconic consciousness occurs 'when an aesthetically shaped materiality signifies social value. Contact with this aesthetic surface, whether by sight, smell, taste, touch provides a sensual experience that transmits meaning '.[21] In contradistinction with various sociologies of culture that have tended to see the visual or the material as a form of falsity or degradation, Alexander draws on the Durkheimian notion of the symbolic collective representation to argue that the ways in which culture operates both in instilling and in recreating values is intrinsically tied to symbolic material forms.'(wiki),

icon consciousness, n.Definitions

icon consciousness