No, I'm not talking about the fine sculpted torso featured in Mark's earlier post but rather, the definition of objectification. A quick online search yielded:
The act of representing an abstraction as a physical thing; a concrete representation of an abstract idea or principle.
The process by which abstract concepts are treated as if they were concrete things or physical objects. In this sense the term is a synonym for reification.
The process or manifestation of objectifying (something).
Treated as an object.
The positioning of Others as objects for the benefit of the Self. See Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic.
I am most intrigued by the first definition, that objectification occurs because a concept (such as "woman", "man", or "child") is just too complex to grasp without reducing it to concrete terms.
A cry for our ability to embrace complexity, may depth save our souls.
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