Marginal Difference

Definition

Marginal difference (also "inessential difference") is Baudrillard's term (The System of Objects, 1968, Part D) for the small, production-controlled variations — a colour, an accessory, a finish — that individualize a serially produced object and fuel the model-and-series dynamic. The term is borrowed from David Riesman but sharpened semiotically: marginal differences are the object-world's "combinative variants," analogous to the linguistic "field of dispersal." They are objectively irrelevant yet socially decisive: "they are in fact differences by default… They are always experienced, however, as features conferring distinction, indicative of value – as differences of overmeasure." The concept is the companion of personalization and the mechanism of fashion's turnover.

Key Claims

Marginal difference is never merely marginal. "The sole way to personalize cars is for the manufacturer to take a serially produced chassis, a serially produced engine, then change a few external characteristics or add a couple of accessory features… 'Marginal' difference is thus not solely marginal, for it can run counter to an object's technical essence."
It is systematically produced. "These 'specific' differences are themselves picked up and mass-produced in serial form. And this secondary seriality is what constitutes fashion."
It generates the model. "It is marginal differences that are the motor of the series, and fuel the mechanism of integration… each relative difference momentarily lends [an object] a privileged status – the status, in effect, of a model."
It has a semiological frame. Baudrillard aligns marginal difference with Barthes's "combinative variants" (fields of dispersal) but insists it differs decisively: "combinative variation remains external to the semiological plane of denotation, whereas marginal difference is, precisely, never 'marginal'." Connotation, here, reacts back on the technical structure.
It displaces the essential. "The imperatives of personalization and production combined cause a proliferation of accessory features to the detriment of strict use value" (see use-value).

Key Thinkers

Jean Baudrillard — the concept's author: marginal/inessential difference as the series' motor and fashion's material.
David Riesman (not yet paged) — source of the phrase "marginal differences."
Roland Barthes (not yet paged) — the semiological "field of dispersal" and "combinative variants" Baudrillard adapts and distinguishes.

Model and Series — the structure marginal difference activates.
Personalization — the ideology marginal difference serves.
Fashion — "secondary seriality," the accelerated regime of marginal difference.
Sign Value — the value a marginal difference carries in place of utility.
Consumerism — the social order reproduced by the play of differences.
Structuralism — the semiological frame (combinative variants; differential value).

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

The System of Objects (Baudrillard 1968) — the concept's defining source (Part D, ch. I, and the Introduction's semiological discussion): the car/chassis example; "differences by default" and "differences of overmeasure"; fashion as "secondary seriality"; the divergence from Barthes's combinative variants.
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

Baudrillard's marginal difference is the ancestor of later accounts of product differentiation and niche marketing (and of Bourdieu's "distinction"). Does it survive when the difference is not formal but algorithmic?
His semiological claim is that object-connotation uniquely "alter[s] technical structures." Is this the book's most original move — and is it defensible (see structuralism-vs-poststructuralism)?
How does marginal difference relate to the wiki's enigmatic-signifier and taste: is Jencks's signifier a super-marginal difference, or a different semiotic class?