Today's postmodern social discourse is relentlessly
obsessed with naming and "namedropping". Proper names
(mainly brand names) quickly multiply around us, designating
objects with a relatively microscopic differences in material
function or content. These objects now mainly differ by name
and the symbolic fields behind those names.
Many proper names have become "self-sufficient" –
having incorporated in themselves the function of a common name.
These names now designate objects which represent a species of
their own and are fully describable only by using that name.
In the postmodern condition, the subject's basic intuition is
oriented towards differentiation rather than the essence, and
reference is often made towards the symbolic field behind the
name, rather than the material properties or functions of the
object. The present article tries to describe the postmodern
condition of names in culture and literature in terms of some
well-known theories of reference (Bertrand Russell, Saul A. Kripke).
