Functionalist Myth

Definition

The functionalist myth is Baudrillard's term (The System of Objects, 1968, Part A) for the belief — inferred from signs rather than demonstrated — that the object-world is or can be made totally functional. "The concrete dynamic of effort has not disappeared completely into the abstraction of the mechanisms and gestures of control. It has been internalized as the mental dynamic of a functionalist myth: the myth of the possibility of a totally functional world of which every present-day technical object is already a sign." The myth is not the ideology of Progress, which "is still a hypothesis about structures based on actual technological development"; it is "the presumption, taken on faith from the mere testimony of signs, of the existence of a technological totality… an anticipatory fantasy." Baudrillard reads the everyday as "a world without effort, an abstract and completely mobile energy, and the total efficacy of sign-gestures" — the domestic register of sign-value.

Key Claims

The myth internalizes the lost gesture. "The repressed gestural system is thus transformed into myth, projection, transcendence" (see gestural-system).
It infers reality from signs. "Something is revived here of the ancient habit, prevalent in a world of magic, of inferring reality from signs." Simondon: "'Part of the feeling of the efficacy of primitive magic has survived in the unconditional belief in progress'."
It is a faith in total efficacy. "The way objects are used in everyday life implies an almost authoritarian set of assumptions about the world."
The pebble lighter as its rhetoric. "Oblong, elliptical and asymmetrical in form, it is described as 'highly functional' – not that it is better than any other lighter… but because it is 'perfectly shaped to fit into the palm of the hand'. 'The sea has polished it to the form of the hand': it is in a finished state."
Tail fins as its allegory. "The car's fins became the sign of victory over space – and they were purely a sign… It was the presence of these fins that in our imagination propelled the car… The engine was the real efficient principle, the fins the imaginary one."
Nature returns as camouflage. "It is the Idea of Nature which… everywhere becomes involved in the articulation of forms." "Hypocrisy in its modern version consists not in concealing the obscenity of nature but, rather, in being satisfied (or attempting to be satisfied) by the inoffensive naturalness of signs."

Key Thinkers

Jean Baudrillard — the concept's author: the functionalist myth vs. the ideology of Progress; the allegory of tail fins; naturalization as camouflage.
Gilbert Simondon (not yet paged) — the "unconditional belief in progress" and the energy-structure analysis.
Myth — the general category the concept instantiates (needs a page).
Roland Barthes (not yet paged) — the myth-as-naturalization method the concept echoes (Mythologies).
Sigfried Giedion — the "epic history of the technical object" Baudrillard names and partly faults.

Automatism — the technical connotation the myth ratifies.
Gadget — the myth's degenerate practical form.
Sign Value — the value the myth trades in ("efficacy as the virtue of signs").
Simulation / Hyperreality — the simulacrum of the natural/functional.
Everyday Life — the register the myth organizes.
Gestural System — the repressed gesture the myth compensates.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

The System of Objects (Baudrillard 1968) — the concept's defining source (Part A, ch. II and III): "The Functionalist Myth"; "Functional Form: The Lighter"; "Formal Connotation: Tail Fins"; "Form as Camouflage"; "Naturalness and Functionality."
Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (Butler 1999) — the book-length secondary study that reads Baudrillard "in his own terms": the paradox of the sign (paradox-of-the-sign), simulation as the realization rather than the loss of the real (simulation-hyperreality), seduction as the limit to simulation, and the doubling power of theory (doubling, the-real, double-strategy).

Open Questions

How does the functionalist myth differ from the "ideology of Progress," and is the distinction (fantasy vs. structure-hypothesis) sustainable?
Baudrillard's "naturalness" as camouflage anticipates greenwashing and "biophilic" marketing. Does the wiki's biophilic interior material escape the myth or re-enter it?
If the myth infers totality from signs, how does it differ from the wiki's enigmatic-signifier and spectacle accounts of image-power?
The lighter's "sea-polished" form is a designed object posing as naturally finished. Is this the same move as the wiki's the-decorative "naturalness by design"?