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lives solely in the discourses that surround every object in the world. From this brief introduction one can conclude that discourse has an important role to play in the creation of objects. Discourses undoubtedly construct our reality to a great extent. They affect things such as our personal identity and our perceptions of the identity of others, as well as our knowledge about objects. However, Baudrillard never explains where discourse originates from, and, I believe, this is where one must look to other explanations in order to complete the jigsaw of discourse. In this dissertation materialism provides the answer to this conundrum. Section four will put forward a model which places discourse firmly in the realm of the material world, ie. discourse will be explained in terms of its origins. I shall show these to be the sphere of production and its relationship with institutions such as the State, the media, and the individual and society. I will argue that to look at discourse solely as discourse per se is not sufficient for it ignores important factors surrounding their origins and therefore their purpose. There will be particular reference to Marx and Gramsci in order to support my argument at this point. The concepts which receive special attention are , the political economy and hegemony. The fifth section will take the model and apply it to the phenomena of nostalgia with a particular focus on the music industry. Within this chapter there will be references to the theoretical frameworks of the above mentioned theorists. The aim of this chapter is to illustrate how production transcends the State, the media, the object, and the individual. In addition there will be an illustration of how discourse about objects has been used to increase capital accumulation during crises of capitalism by creating commodity fetishism. Finally there will be a short conclusion in section six, which aims to draw together the salient points made in the preceding chapters, and to summarise the annexation of materialist theorising onto Baudrillards original work. 2. The concept of postmodernism. "What is the nature of our present?" (Foucault, 1983:206) 2.1. The general features of postmodernism. Prior to carrying out any critical analysis on the work of Baudrillard, I shall identify the key tenets of postmodern theory. Postmodernism is a movement which encapsulates the arts, science, society, and culture. Indeed postmodernist influence infiltrates every aspect of what we as individuals experience in our day to day lives. It is argued that the postmodern era represents a clean break from the era of modernity1, that is to say that it is an era that is as distinct from modernity as feudalism is from capitalism. What then are the key features of this way of interpreting the social world? It is suggested that the tenets of postmodernism fall into six equivocal categories (although postmodernists would deny this for reasons which will become apparent in the following paragraphs.). 2.2. Postmodernism as pastiche. Firstly, postmodernists take an eclectic view of the world. They see the social world in particular as a pastiche of different styles and cultures from different contexts and historical eras, hence the illustration on the cover of this paper. The singer Madonna has oft been quoted as the epitome of the postmodern artiste. Madonna is born of a Roman Catholic family with Italian roots and lives in the United States. Her home culture is un