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Juicy Salif as a Cultish Totem

This book chapter addresses the issue of value in seduction by examining a design case study, Philippe Starck’s lemon squeezer Juicy Salif. It interrogates and challenges existing accounts on the functional and the symbolic value of the object, and asks whether its success with users and in the market derives from its seductive value, above all others. The research is interdisciplinary especially in its methodology, drawing from design studies on function, usability and ergonomics (especially through the work of Julie Khaslavsky and Nathan Shedroff), captology – the field studying computers as persuasive tecnhnology–, cultural and material studies’ accounts on the symbolic value of objects and Jean Baudrillard’s ideas on seduction. The main focus, however, is psychoanalytic, drawing from Jacques Lacan’s theories of desire and Objet Petit a, and comparing those and Sigmund Freud’s fetishism with Karl Marx’s commodity fetishism. Drawing on Lacan’s discourse of the analyst, it proposes that Juicy Salif is seductive because it takes, for the user, the place as the analyst in the consulting room. The book chapter developed from a series of conferences on creativity and its management, and in particular from an event entitled ‘Ars Longa: Establishing Value’, which took place at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland on 2 May 2007. The context for these events was very varied, raging from all creative fields to management studies, which is reflected in the editorship of the book and the other chapters. While the focus of the book is on managing creativity, this chapter examines problems emerging from a creative engagement, rather than in management studies. It contextualizes the problem of seduction with a mixed methodology, adapting psychoanalysis and captolgy to study this object. Professor Guy Julier, scholar on design culture and an expert on Juicy Salif, also contributed to the book.