Title of Talk: Patents as Capitalist Aesthetic Forms

Abstract: In this paper, I explore the meaning of patents as cultural economic signs by identifying patents’ aesthetic forms beyond their legal meanings and commercial functions. Its premises are twofold: Stuart Hall's understanding of cultural economy and its ideological function in modern capitalism, and Fredric Jameson's analysis of the close relation between aesthetic form and substance. I present the different modes of patents' representation - text vs. image – and trace their different functions and meanings. Drawing upon Sianne Ngai’s work on aesthetic theory and capitalism, the analysis shows that patent images circulate as nostalgic zany images, as well as ridiculous, but also high-tech, gimmicks in the contemporary cultural economy. The truncation and circulation of patents as a capitalist aesthetic form exists side by side with their legal and political economic reality as monopoly rights. Attending to patents’ cultural economic significance helps to understand why the ideology of intellectual property has proven so persistent, even during a lethal global pandemic.