Emptiness and Value Generation - A Generative Relational Economics Study of Luxury Retail Space

Posted on 2026-07-15 In Philosophy , Social Science Views: Disqus: Word count in article: 26k Reading time ≈ 1:33

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Emptiness and Value Generation

A Generative Relational Economics Study of Luxury Retail Space

Wanhong Huang · huangwanhong@serendip.ngo

Abstract

Luxury retail exhibits a configuration that departs from what scarce-resource allocation would predict: in space rented at the highest rates, the deliberate refusal to use that space densely, and at times the refusal to sell at all. Free and sparsely hung art shows, flagship floors holding a handful of pieces, near-empty airport counters are its instances. A scarce-resource reading treats such emptiness as forgone yield; the mature design literatures, atmospherics, servicescapes, the experience economy, and luxury-retail strategy, read it more richly, as the staging of aura, affect, and experience upon the shopper. This paper argues that both readings, for all their differences, address what the space does to a visitor rather than what relation the space generates. It proposes that emptiness is better understood as a field in which relation is generated, and that the governance of that relation becomes possible only upon such a field. Two mechanisms by which such a field generates trust are distinguished, the governance of a relation, and common experience, the latter being the more difficult to counterfeit, since it rests on co-presence rather than on what is said. On this account the value of a commercial space need not issue from immediate exchange: an unfinished common experience may itself constitute the relational ground of trust. What then warrants scrutiny is not whether a given space generates relation, but where the relation it generates is subsequently directed, back into the relation itself, or toward a sale. The paper offers a three-layer line of analysis, whether a space constitutes a relational field, by what mechanism the field generates trust, and where the generated relation is directed, as a supplement to the scarce-resource view of this class of phenomena.

Keywords: emptiness; relational generation; relational governance; common experience; trust; spatial configuration; luxury retail.

A note on the standing of this paper. This is a case study. It takes one commercial phenomenon, the deliberate emptiness of luxury retail space, and asks whether the established accounts of that phenomenon exhaust it. The order of exposition follows the order of the argument: the existing explanations and their limits are set out first, and the relational account is introduced only as what they leave unaddressed. Should the design literatures be shown already to answer the question posed here, the later sections lose their ground. Objection, correction, and counter-evidence are welcome at huangwanhong@serendip.ngo.

§1 Introduction

The prevailing understanding of commercial space treats it as a scarce resource whose configuration aims at the maximization of yield. On this understanding the value of a selling space is a function of the transactions it can promote per unit of area; the space is organized as a container for goods and an array of points of sale, and yield per unit area is the natural measure of a configuration’s merit. The understanding serves well across most commercial forms and underwrites a settled repertoire of practice, from the arrangement of shelving to the design of circulation.

Luxury retail presents a class of configurations that departs from this understanding in a systematic way. In locations rented at the highest rates, certain actors decline to use their space densely and instead leave large tracts of it deliberately empty. Tokyo’s Ginza district offers a concentrated sample. A department building devotes a full floor of prime-rent space to a free art exhibition, hung sparsely, a few works rather than as many as the wall will bear; a stand-alone luxury flagship may fill a lavish building with a few cabinets and a few representative pieces, the remainder left open; the luxury counter in an airport is more extreme still, at times a single case amid near-total emptiness. What these share, and what this paper calls emptiness, is the deliberate refusal to use the most expensive space densely, at the limit, the refusal of immediate sale.

Emptiness of this kind constitutes a theoretical problem because of the identity of those who choose it. Were emptiness confined to actors who calculate poorly, it would be mere error and would require no theory. But it is chosen, repeatedly and systematically, by the actors least able to afford waste and most practiced in calculation. Why should an actor whom the scarce-resource assumption casts as a maximizer of yield depart from that maximum, and do so persistently rather than by accident? One answer is that the actor is not rational; but this sits poorly with the high calculation such actors display elsewhere. A more plausible answer is that the scarce-resource framework fails to register something these actors are in fact optimizing. If so, emptiness is not an incidental deviation from a settled framework but a signal that a dimension of value exists which that framework does not measure. Identifying that dimension is the point of departure here.

The phenomenon to be explained resolves into three connected observations. The first is emptiness itself: high-end retail leaves costly space open, and does so in proportion to, rather than in inverse proportion to, the calculating capacity of the actor, the more practiced the calculator, the more inclined to emptiness. The second is the difference in density: emptiness is not uniform even within the high end, for the stand-alone flagship tends to the open while the department-store concession tends to the dense, and this difference calls for explanation. The third is the anomaly of the airport: a site of enormous footfall, brief dwell, surrounding competition, and travelers in a state receptive to impulse would, if density were governed by the contest for attention, be the densest of all; in fact the airport luxury counter is among the emptiest, and what its emptiness generates takes a form other than immediate sale. Together the three observations suggest that density is not a variable that yield or attention alone can explain.

Existing theory has offered several accounts of this emptiness, each with its truth and each with its limit; they are taken here as the background against which the argument is set, not as adversaries, and are reviewed in the three sections that follow. The economics of commercial space, the allocation of scarce space toward yield, the competition for attention, and the analysis of consumption as a system of signs, accounts for emptiness as forgone yield recouped elsewhere, as a bid for notice, or as a sign of status and distinction (§2). The design literatures of retail space, atmospherics, servicescapes, the experience economy, and luxury-retail strategy, account for the affect, aura, and experience the configured space produces in the visitor (§3). Lacan’s account of lack and desire supplies a thread for why emptiness should kindle anything at all, desire being aroused by the void an object marks rather than by the object (§4). What the three share, and what opens the space for this paper, is that each explains what emptiness signifies or what it does to the visitor, while leaving unasked what relation the emptiness generates, and where that relation is directed.

The account this paper offers in response may be stated as a single claim.

Central claim. Emptiness need not be a deficiency in the use of a resource; it is better understood as a field in which relation is generated, and the governance of relation tends to become possible only upon such a field. The mechanisms by which such a field generates trust may be divided into two, the governance of a relation, and common experience, of which common experience is the more authentic and the harder to counterfeit. On this account the value of a commercial space does not always issue from immediate exchange: an unfinished common experience may itself constitute the relational ground of trust. What warrants scrutiny is accordingly not whether a given space generates relation, but where the relation it generates is subsequently directed, back into the continuation of the relation, or toward a sale.

The claim unfolds in four steps. The first distinguishes absence, the shortfall of a resource, from emptiness, the opening of relational possibility, and so recovers emptiness as a field of generation rather than a void awaiting fill. The second holds that the governance of relation presupposes such a field, and that whether a space can constitute a field of its own that it is in a position to govern turns on the disposition of configurational control; this accounts for the difference in density among the stand-alone, the airport, and the concession. The third distinguishes the two mechanisms of trust generation, governance and common experience, and argues the greater authenticity of the second. The fourth asks after the destination of the generated relation, observing that even a trust as authentic as common experience tends, in high-end retail, to be directed in advance toward a sale, and that the gravity of this direction is aggravated, not lessened, by the authenticity of what is so directed.

The paper’s contribution is accordingly not a verdict upon luxury but a line of analysis in three layers: whether a space constitutes a relational field (the condition of generation), by what mechanism the field generates trust (the condition of governance), and where the generated relation is directed (the direction of value). This line turns the question about emptiness away from “what does it display, at what yield” and from “what does it signify” toward “what relation does it generate, and toward what is that relation governed.” It does not presuppose that commercial space is without generativity; on the contrary, it grants that real generation occurs, and places the weight of analysis on the destination that follows generation. Its interest exceeds the single case of luxury: the same line of analysis may, in principle, be brought to any arrangement that presents as the generation of relation while serving some external end.

The remainder proceeds as follows. §2 reviews the economic accounts of commercial space, scarce-resource allocation, the economics of attention, and the economics of consumption as sign, and argues that what a space generates is prior to what it attracts. §3 reviews the design literatures of retail space, which explain the effect of the configured environment upon the visitor. §4 sets out the theoretical background, taking Lacan’s account of lack and desire as a thread for how emptiness kindles and generates relation, together with the qualification that thread requires. §5 develops the first two layers of the claim: emptiness as a field of generation, and the dependence of governability on configurational control. §6 treats the mechanisms of trust and argues the authenticity of common experience. §7 asks after the destination of the generated relation. A closing section states the limits of the account and the work it leaves open.

§2 The Economics of Commercial Space

The economic literature offers the most direct explanations of why commercial space is configured as it is, and three strands bear on luxury emptiness: the allocation of scarce space toward yield, the competition for attention, and the economics of consumption as a system of signs. Each explains something of the phenomenon; each stops short of the question this paper poses.

2.1 Scarce-Resource Allocation

The baseline account treats retail space as a scarce input whose configuration maximizes yield. Rent having been paid, the return-maximizing use of an area is the one that promotes the most transaction: goods are displayed, points of sale multiplied, and the merit of a configuration read off as sales per unit area. Under this account emptiness is forgone yield, area that could have carried goods and did not, and its persistence in luxury retail can be reconciled only by treating the empty space as an indirect investment that raises returns elsewhere, whether by protecting brand equity or by justifying a price premium. The account is powerful where it applies, and it is calculable. Its limit, for the present phenomenon, is the one already noted: it explains the tolerance of emptiness only by positing an external return that the emptiness secures, and it does not inquire into what, within the empty space itself, produces that return. The value is attributed to the emptiness; the mechanism is left in the dark.

2.2 The Economics of Attention

A second strand locates the scarce resource not in space but in notice. In the economics of attention, the binding constraint on commerce is the limited attention of consumers, competition is in large part a competition for it, and the configuration of space is one of its instruments. The strand suggests a ready explanation of luxury emptiness, since emptiness is conspicuous: a sparse display, in a field of dense ones, is seen first. Luxury retail would then empty its space to command notice, and emptiness would be the scarce-resource logic transposed from yield to attention, what is maximized being not sales per unit area but notice per unit area. The reading has the appeal of introducing no new dimension of value, only a new quantity to be maximized. It meets, however, two difficulties, and they point the same way.

The first concerns the dependence of attention on background. Attention is drawn by difference, and difference is defined against a surround: a patch of emptiness is conspicuous because its surroundings are dense, and where all is empty, emptiness is no longer seen. Were the aim simply to command attention, the effective means in an already dense environment would itself be emptiness; the mechanism the explanation invokes, difference producing salience, would recommend emptiness and density with equal ease, according to a background the actor does not solely control. Attention therefore underdetermines density: the same notice may be won by the dense display or by the empty one, and the appeal to attention does not fix which.

The second concerns the airport. Were density governed by the contest for attention, the site where attention is scarcest and competition fiercest should be the densest. The airport is such a site: enormous footfall, brief dwell, a surround of competing shops, travelers in a state receptive to impulse. The attention logic predicts that the airport luxury counter would turn every inch to the winning of notice. The observation is the reverse; the airport counter is among the emptiest of all. The framework can accommodate the airport only as an exception, and an explanation obliged to enter its most typical instance as an exception is one whose force is in doubt. A measure of empirical caution is owed: the emptiness of the airport implicates several factors, the constraints of security and logistics, the structure of footfall, the brevity of dwell, the particular condition of the cross-border traveler, and none of these is claimed to be irrelevant. The narrower claim is that the appeal to attention does not suffice to explain the airport’s emptiness, since the direction it predicts is the opposite of what is observed.

Together the two difficulties reposition attention. It is at most the result of something prior: where a space has first generated some relation, notice, meaning, and identification may follow, but notice does not itself constitute a relation, as the resting of the gaze is not the establishing of trust. This gives the paper’s first claim.

Claim 1. In commercial space, attention is a consequence of relational generation more than its cause. The observable order tends to run from the space, which constitutes a field of some relation, to the relation generated within it, and only then to the notice, meaning, and identification derived thereafter, the reverse of an order in which attention comes first and the space is designed to capture it. What emptiness generates is, on this reading, prior to what it attracts.

The claim repositions attentional phenomena without denying their reality. Demoting attention from cause to consequence vacates the question it had occupied: what makes a space a field in which relation may be generated. That question the economics of attention, fixed on notice, does not pose.

2.3 The Economics of Consumption as Sign

A third strand reaches past the transacted good to the social meaning of consumption, and it comes nearest the phenomenon. Veblen [9] identified conspicuous consumption, in which expenditure signals standing precisely by its visible wastefulness: to consume without evident use is to display the capacity to waste, and thus one’s rank. Luxury emptiness reads immediately in these terms, the costly floor left open is waste made visible, and the visibility is the point. Bourdieu [3] refined the mechanism from wealth to taste, showing consumption to be a marker of distinction and a bearer of cultural capital; the sparse, museum-like interior signals a cultivated discrimination that the dense display would not, and addresses those able to read it. Baudrillard [1] carried the line furthest, arguing that the commodity has become a sign, its value lying in its place within a system of signification rather than in use; emptiness, in this idiom, is a sign operation, a statement made in the grammar of consumption.

These accounts are correct in what they identify, and their advance over the scarce-resource view is real: they recognize that emptiness produces something other than immediate sale, status, distinction, sign-value, and so that value need not issue from the transacted good. Their limit is that the something they identify is the use of a symbol: what the emptiness means, to whom it signals, what standing it confers. The question of what relation the emptiness generates, and of where that relation is subsequently directed, lies outside their frame, which reads the empty space as a sign to be interpreted more than as a mechanism that generates and governs a relation. This frame contains, in Baudrillard, an anticipation of the present concern: his later critique charges consumer society with abolishing wealth by aborting “the concrete, relational dialectic of social interchange.” The relational dimension this paper pursues thus has a precedent in the consumption literature, which names it as what the system forecloses and leaves it undeveloped as a positive account. Developing it is part of the work undertaken here.

§3 The Design Literatures of Retail Space

The emptiness of luxury retail is not an unexplained phenomenon. A mature body of theory addresses precisely how such space is designed and why it works, and any account that would supplement it must first say what it explains and where it stops. Four literatures are pertinent, and they are treated here in turn.

The study of retail atmospherics begins with the observation that the built environment of a store is itself an instrument of selling. Kotler [7] defined atmospherics as the deliberate design of buying environments to produce in the buyer emotional effects that raise the probability of purchase, and located the means in the sensory register: light, color, scale, sound, the shapes of things. On this account emptiness is intelligible as an atmospheric choice, the sparse, high-ceilinged, softly lit interior induces an affective state of calm, deference, or elevation that a dense environment could not. The account is powerful and largely correct as far as it reaches. Its reach, for present purposes, is the affective state of an individual shopper: it explains what the environment does to the buyer’s mood and, through mood, to the buyer’s disposition to purchase.

The concept of the servicescape generalizes the point. Bitner [2] assembled the physical dimensions of a service environment, ambient conditions, spatial layout, signs and symbols, into a single construct and traced its effects on the behavior of customers and employees alike. Emptiness, in these terms, is a spatial-layout decision whose holistic effect is apprehended by the customer as a quality of the whole. The servicescape literature advances beyond atmospherics in treating the environment as a system rather than a sum of cues, but the terminus is the same: the object of explanation is the effect of the environment upon the persons who function within it, and the currency of that effect is perception, affect, and behavior.

The experience economy reframes the whole enterprise. Pine and Gilmore [8] argued that firms increasingly stage experiences rather than furnish goods or services, positioning the seller as a stager of memorable events and the buyer as their guest. Luxury emptiness reads naturally in this idiom: the near-empty flagship is a stage, the sparse placement a piece of dramaturgy, and what the visitor carries away is less an object than a memory. This is a genuine deepening, for it recognizes that value may reside in something other than the transacted good. Yet the experience it names is still an experience had by the visitor, an affect, a memory, a satisfaction lodged in the individual, and its measure remains that individual’s engagement and eventual custom.

The literature on luxury-retail strategy is the most specific and the most instructive here. Dion and Arnould [4], on the basis of ethnographic work in luxury stores, describe how such retail assembles “charisma” through the principles of art and magic, staging the store as a site of aura around a charismatic creative director, mixing artworks with merchandise, sacralizing the brand. Joy and colleagues [6] document the same in flagship stores that interleave art and object, and a related line reads the luxury store as temple or cathedral in which ritual is staged. This literature comes closest to the phenomenon of this paper: the free art exhibition on a costly floor is, in its terms, exactly the assembling of charisma through art. And it is precise about the aim. Dion and Arnould conclude that luxury retail is producer rather than consumer oriented, and that it seeks to generate awe rather than community.

That conclusion marks, with unusual exactness, the seam at which the present account enters. The design literatures, across their differences, converge on a single form of question: what does the configured space do to the visitor, to the visitor’s affect, perception, memory, sense of awe, and how does that bear upon the visitor’s disposition to buy. That question they answer well, and it concerns one party. What relation the emptiness generates between the visitor and the brand, and where that relation is subsequently directed, falls outside it. Awe is a state of the shopper; community, which Dion and Arnould find luxury retail explicitly to decline, would have been a relation. That luxury retail is theorized as producing the former and forgoing the latter is a finding of the literature, and it is the finding this paper takes up, by asking after precisely the relational dimension the strategy is said to forgo.

§4 A Psychoanalytic Approach to Emptiness

Two clarifications precede the positive account, one terminological and one theoretical. The terminological one separates two things that ordinary usage runs together under the word “empty.” The theoretical one borrows, and then qualifies, an existing explanation of why emptiness should have any generative power at all.

4.1 The Concept of Emptiness

To call a space empty may mean either of two things, and the difference is decisive for what follows. It may mean that something which ought to be present is missing, the shelf that should hold goods holds none, the position that should be staffed is unstaffed. Call this absence: the shortfall of a resource against a standard that specifies what should fill it. Or it may mean that a space has been left open, not against a standard of fill but as a condition for something to occur within it, the clearing in which a thing can appear, the interval that lets a sequence be heard as rhythm. Call this emptiness: not the lack of a thing but the opening of a possibility.

The scarce-resource framework recognizes only the first. Under a standard that specifies goods-per-area, every unfilled area is an absence, a shortfall to be corrected, and the reading of luxury emptiness as forgone yield follows necessarily from admitting only this sense. But the emptiness at issue is of the second kind. It is not that the flagship’s floor lacks the cabinets it ought to have; it is that the openness is itself doing something, holding a space in which something between visitor and brand may take place. The distinction is not a play on words. It marks the difference between a quantity measured against a target and a condition measured by what it makes possible, and only the latter can be a field of generation rather than a deficit.

This second sense is not novel. It is close to the notion of ma in Japanese aesthetics, the interval or negative space that is not the absence of form but the very condition of form’s legibility, the silence that makes the phrase, the gap that makes the composition. What ma names in art, emptiness names here in commercial space: an openness that is generative rather than deficient. The point of the distinction, for this paper, is to license a question the first sense forecloses. If the emptiness of luxury space is absence, the only question is why the shortfall is tolerated. If it is emptiness in the second sense, a prior question opens: what does the openness generate?

4.2 Lack, Desire, and the Objet a

That emptiness should generate anything at all is not obvious, and here an existing theory supplies a thread. In Lacan’s account, desire is not aroused by the object that would satisfy it. What arouses desire is lack, the void around which desire circulates, and the object that appears to be desire’s aim, the objet petit a, is less the cause of desire than a stand-in that marks the place of the void. Desire is sustained precisely because the void is not filled: the object is always the wrong object, and desire continues past it. On this account the generative power of emptiness is intelligible. A space organized around a void, the single case amid the open floor, the few pieces amid the clearing, does not present an object to be had so much as mark the place of something absent, and it is the marking of that place, not the object, that stirs the visitor. What the sparse display kindles is desire in Lacan’s precise sense: aroused by the void it circles, not by the thing it contains.

This thread is taken up here, but it must be qualified, and the qualification is where the present account parts from a simple application of Lacan. In its own terms, the Lacanian void is structurally open: the point of the analysis is that desire does not terminate, that the object is always missed, that the circuit does not close. Luxury retail borrows the first half of this structure, it uses the void to kindle desire, but appends to it an ending the structure does not have. The desire the empty space arouses is turned, in the end, toward a purchase: the open circuit is given a terminus it did not possess. It would overstate the matter, and misread Lacan, to say the desire is thereby satisfied or the void filled; the more exact description is that a structural openness is converted into a controlled trajectory, an arousal that in Lacan runs without end is here routed toward a determinate close. The qualification matters because it locates precisely what is at issue. It is not that luxury emptiness fails to be Lacanian; it is that it is Lacanian in its opening and non-Lacanian in its closing, and the whole question of the paper lives in that closing, in whether the openness an empty space creates is left open or is routed toward an end external to it.

This gives, in a first and still phenomenological form, the criterion the later sections will make analytical. Confronted with an empty space that has stirred something in a visitor, one may ask whether the emptiness lets the visitor go, whether the opening it created is left as an opening, onto whatever the visitor might make of it, or is quietly directed toward a determinate close. The question is not yet a method; it is stated here only to name, at the level of experience, the difference the account will later have to draw with more precision. What that precision requires is the positive notion deferred so far: emptiness not as void-around-an-object but as a field in which relation is generated. To that the next section turns.

§5 Emptiness as a Field of Relational Generation

The reviews leave a question standing that none of the accounts poses: granting that emptiness is generative, what does it generate, and what determines whether the generation can be built upon? This section develops the first two layers of the central claim. The first treats emptiness as a field of relational generation. The second treats the disposition of configurational control as what determines whether a given space can constitute a field of its own, and so accounts for the difference in density among the forms luxury retail takes.

5.1 The Field

The concept of emptiness recovered in §4 was an opening of possibility rather than a shortfall of resource. The positive content of that opening can now be stated. What an empty commercial space opens is a field in which a relation between visitor and brand may be generated: the sparse counter, the cleared floor, the few pieces amid the open interior do not present an object to be acquired so much as hold a space in which something between the two parties can take place. The visitor is not positioned before goods to be assessed and bought but placed within a configured openness that solicits a bearing, attention, deference, curiosity, a sense of being received rather than solicited. That bearing is the beginning of a relation, and the empty space is what makes room for it.

This function calls for a distinction, since the design literatures would describe the same interior as producing an affective state in the visitor, and the two descriptions are easily run together. An affective state is a condition of one party, lodged in the visitor and measured by the visitor’s disposition to buy. A relational field is a condition between two parties, and what it generates is a relation, which has its own subsequent history independent of whether a purchase follows. The empty space generates the second, and the first, the awe, the calm, the elevation, is one of its derivatives, standing to the relation as notice was shown in §2 to stand: downstream of it. The order runs from the configured emptiness, to the relational field it opens, to the relation generated within it, and only then to the affects and notices that follow.

Claim 2. Emptiness in commercial space functions as a field of relational generation: the configured openness opens a space in which a relation between visitor and brand may be generated, and the affective and attentional states the design and economic literatures describe stand downstream of that relation as its derivatives rather than its substance.

5.2 Configurational Control and Spatial Density

If emptiness generates a relational field, the difference in density among luxury forms becomes the next thing to explain, for emptiness is not uniform: the stand-alone flagship tends to the open, the airport counter to the sparse, the department-store concession to the dense. The variable that orders this difference is the disposition of configurational control, the extent to which a single actor governs the grammar of the space in which its field would form.

Consider the three forms in that light. The stand-alone flagship occupies a building whose configuration one brand controls entire. Emptiness there opens a relational field, and because the surrounding grammar is the brand’s own, the field can be furnished and governed: circulation, threshold, lighting, the conduct of staff, the terms on which a visitor is admitted and received. The brand both opens a field and shapes what happens within it. The airport counter occupies a pass-through space the brand does not control. Emptiness there opens a relational field as well, the sparse counter still holds a space in which a bearing toward the brand may form, but the surrounding grammar belongs to the airport, and the onward trajectory of the visitor is not the brand’s to govern; the traveler arrives, passes, and departs on a schedule set elsewhere. The field forms; what may be layered upon it is constrained. The concession in a department store occupies space whose grammar belongs to the host, and the host’s grammar is dense. A void opened at the concession tends to be absorbed into the surrounding density rather than to congeal into a field that is the brand’s own; the concession, lacking the control that would let an opening hold, inclines toward density, transacting point by point within a field that is not its to shape.

Two dimensions are at work here, and separating them clarifies the difference. The first is whether the space can constitute a relational field of its own, which the disposition of configurational control tends to govern. The second is the mechanism by which such a field, once formed, generates trust, a matter deferred to §6, since the stand-alone and the airport, both of which open fields, come to trust by routes that differ. Arraying the three forms along these dimensions gives the following.

	Prospect of an own relational field (with configurational control)	Tendency of trust mechanism (treated in §6)
Stand-alone flagship	High	Governance of a relation
Airport counter	Present, with governance constrained	Common experience
Concession	Difficult to form	(Reverts to point-wise transaction)

The cells are stated as tendencies, and the graded phrasing carries the weight of the claim. A stand-alone need not constitute a governed field; a concession might, on occasion, hold a small opening; the airport is subject to the confounds noted in §2. The claim concerns the direction in which configurational control inclines the outcome, and reaches no further.

Claim 3. Whether an empty space constitutes a relational field of its own that it is in a position to govern tends to be set by the disposition of configurational control. Where one actor controls the surrounding grammar, emptiness both opens a field and admits governance upon it; where control is apportioned or absent, the field may still open but governance upon it is constrained, or the field does not readily form and the space inclines toward density. The difference in density among luxury forms tracks this variable more closely than it tracks the contest for attention.

Two of the three forms, the stand-alone and the airport, open relational fields, and both come to generate trust; the routes by which they do so differ, and the difference is the concern of the next section. The concession, inclining toward density, illustrates by contrast what the other two achieve: where no field of one’s own can form, what remains is transaction, point by point, in a field belonging to another.

§6 Mechanisms of Trust in a Relational Field

The stand-alone and the airport both open relational fields, and both come to generate trust. The routes differ, and the difference is the second dimension of the table in §5. This section treats the two routes, the governance of a relation and common experience, and argues that the second is the more authentic of the two, in a sense that will be made precise. A preliminary word situates why trust is the quantity in question at all.

6.1 Trust as the Scarce Quantity

The economic reviews located scarcity first in space, then in attention. A relational field makes visible a scarcer quantity than either. Goods can be allocated; attention can be won; trust can be neither allocated nor won in the manner of a resource, since it is the settled expectation, on the part of one party, that another will act as its relation to it warrants. What a merely dense space reaches, at its most effective, is attention: the shelves address, the signs announce, the goods are seen. What an empty space can reach, where it generates a relational field, is trust. The difference is one of depth, and the ordering may be put as a graded ascent, goods, then the attention and recognition that a symbol can buy, then trust, in which each stage is scarcer and harder to secure than the last.

The reason trust sits at the top of that ascent bears on what follows. A symbol tends to struggle to generate trust, and the difficulty is structural: a symbol persuades, and persuasion, by declaring an interest in the outcome, gives the other party reason for reserve. The tendency admits exceptions, a signboard honored over many years may sediment into trust, and a symbol repeatedly borne out may come to be believed, and the general inclination holds through them: what is said in order to be believed is, for that reason, harder to believe. Trust inclines to arise where nothing is being urged, where the parties are not persuader and persuaded but co-present in some shared circumstance. An empty space that declines to urge is, in this respect, positioned toward trust in a way a dense and speaking one is not.

6.2 The Governance of a Relation

In the stand-alone flagship, the relational field is the brand’s to govern, and trust is generated by the conduct of that governance. The visitor is received on terms the brand sets and sustains: the manner of admission, the pacing of circulation, the bearing of staff, the restraint of the interior, the consistency between what the space intimates and what the encounter delivers. Where these are governed well and over time, the visitor comes to hold a settled expectation as to how the brand will conduct itself, and that expectation is trust. The mechanism is the reliable governance of a relation across repeated encounters, and it is available to the stand-alone precisely because the stand-alone controls the field within which the relation unfolds. Trust of this kind is real and it is not easily won; its condition is the configurational control that lets a field be not only opened but held.

6.3 Common Experience

The airport counter does not govern the visitor’s onward trajectory, and by the measure of governed relation it would seem to generate less. It generates trust by another route. The traveler and the brand are, for an interval, co-present in a shared circumstance: the passage through the airport, the waiting, the crossing of a border, the suspended time of transit. The sparse counter, declining to sell, places the brand within that circumstance as something encountered in the course of the journey rather than as something urged upon the traveler. What forms is the sense that the brand was present in a stretch of the traveler’s own experience, not that it addressed them, but that it was there, in the same passage. This is common experience, and it generates trust by a mechanism distinct from governance: not the reliability of a governed relation across encounters, but the co-presence of two parties in a lived circumstance, which persuasion cannot counterfeit because it consists in having been there rather than in anything said.

Common experience is a mechanism in its own right, distinct from a diminished form of governed relation. It rests on a different ground, co-presence rather than conduct, and reaches trust by a route the governed relation does not travel. In one specific respect it is the more authentic of the two, and that respect can be named precisely. The authenticity of common experience lies in its resistance to counterfeit: a governed relation can be simulated in its outward conduct, a reception staged, a manner rehearsed, but co-presence in a real circumstance either occurred or did not, and cannot be manufactured after the fact by anything the brand says. What rests on having been there is harder to fake than what rests on conduct that can be performed. In this specific respect, resistance to counterfeit, common experience is the more authentic mechanism.

Three bounds keep this authenticity claim to its proper size. Common experience is one trust-generating mechanism among several: trust arises also from repeated reliable dealing, from shared adversity, from the passage of time, from kinship, from institutional guarantee, and to name common experience the source of trust would overstate what the airport shows. Emptiness is one means by which a brand may reach common experience, alongside others, and the reaching of common experience is one path to trust among the several just named. And the authenticity here is the specific resistance to counterfeit described above, which a governed relation borne out over years does not lack in its own way: the governed relation generates a trust that common experience does not displace. Within these bounds the two mechanisms may be set down.

Claim 4. A relational field tends to generate trust by either of two mechanisms. In the first, available where configurational control permits, trust arises from the reliable governance of a relation across encounters. In the second, available even where governance is constrained, trust arises from common experience, the co-presence of the parties in a lived circumstance. Common experience is, in the specific respect of resistance to counterfeit, the more authentic of the two, since it consists in having been present rather than in conduct that can be performed; it remains one mechanism among several, and emptiness one means of reaching it.

Both mechanisms generate something real: a trust governed into being in the one, a trust co-lived into being in the other. What becomes of that trust, whether it is left to accrue to the relation that generated it, or is directed toward an end outside that relation, is a further question, and the answer to it is where the account of luxury emptiness reaches its point. To that the next section turns.

§7 The Direction of Generated Relation

Both mechanisms of §6 generate real trust. The question this section takes up concerns what becomes of that trust once generated: whether it accrues to the relation that produced it, or is turned toward an end lying outside that relation. Answering the question calls for a criterion, and the criterion is the one named in phenomenological form at the close of §4, whether the opening an empty space creates is left open or is routed toward a determinate close. Made analytical, the criterion asks after the direction in which a generated relation is subsequently sent. Two directions are available. A generated relation may be left to accrue to itself, feeding the capacity of the parties to continue in relation; or it may be folded toward a sale, made an entry that converges on a transaction. The direction, and not the fact of generation, is what distinguishes the cases.

7.1 The Criterion of Direction

The criterion earns its place by discriminating between two arrangements that generation alone cannot tell apart. A library and a flagship may each open an empty, unhurried space; each may generate in a visitor a relation to the institution; each may leave the visitor with something carried away. What separates them is where the generated relation is directed. The library’s opening accrues to the reader’s relation to reading, which continues on terms the reader sets; the flagship’s opening is laid out in advance as an entry that arrives, by a route prepared for it, at a purchase. The same generative gesture serves, in the one, the continuation of a relation, and in the other, its conversion into a sale. Naming this the direction of the generated relation gives the analytical form of the question asked phenomenologically before: whether the empty space lets the visitor go.

7.2 Folding as the Common Fate of Both Mechanisms

Applied to the two mechanisms of trust, the criterion yields a result that neither the design nor the economic accounts anticipate. Both directions of trust, in luxury retail, are turned toward the sale. The governed relation of the stand-alone is directed there by design: the reception, the atmosphere, the cultivated familiarity are laid out so that the trust they build arrives at a purchase, in the flagship, on terms the brand controls. And the common experience of the airport is directed there as well: the sense that the brand accompanied a stretch of one’s travels is prepared in advance as an entry, so that the trust co-lived into being in transit converges, later, on a transaction at the city store. The trust generated by co-presence, which §6 found the harder of the two to counterfeit, is folded toward a sale as surely as the trust built by governed conduct.

7.3 The Appropriation of Common Experience

This result reaches its sharpest form in what becomes of common experience. Common experience is, of the trust mechanisms treated here, the one that rests on the least counterfeit-able ground: it consists in two parties having been co-present in a lived circumstance, which cannot be fabricated after the fact. Luxury retail generates exactly this, the traveler’s sense of the brand’s presence in the passage is a real common experience, co-lived and not merely asserted, and then directs it toward the sale. What is turned toward a transaction is not a symbol, which persuades and is discounted accordingly, but a genuine co-presence, which persuades no one because it urges nothing. The most authentic of the trust mechanisms is put to the service of the least relational of ends.

The structure of this appropriation is one the framework has met before. Where a dominant symbol appropriates the poetic mechanism of generation, the site of generation is moved from the interpreter to the symbol; here, the mechanism appropriated is common experience, and what is moved is its destination, from the continuation of the relation, to the sale. The generative mechanism is left intact and running; what is altered is where its product is sent. Common experience is, in this precise sense, put to use: made to generate a trust that is then directed away from the relation that the co-presence would otherwise have served.

7.4 The Severity of the Appropriation

A reading offers itself at this point that would soften the finding, and following the argument to its end requires setting that reading aside. Since the airport generates real trust, one might conclude that the case is only partly capture, and that a relational account should temper its verdict accordingly. The observation underlying this reading is correct: the trust is real, the generation genuine, and the account does not deny it. The conclusion drawn from the observation runs the wrong way. The reality of the trust aggravates the appropriation rather than tempering it.

The measure of the severity is the authenticity of what is appropriated. To direct a mere symbol toward a sale is the ordinary condition of advertising, and it deceives no one, since a symbol is known to urge. To direct a status-signal or a distinction toward a sale is the more sophisticated commerce the consumption literature describes. To direct trust toward a sale, and specifically the trust generated by common experience, which arises in the one register of human relation that persuasion cannot reach, is the deepest of the three, because what it turns toward a transaction is the layer of relation least suited to being sold. The authenticity of common experience is precisely what makes its appropriation grave: the more real the co-presence, the more the relation it grounds is one that ought to have accrued to the parties, and the more its diversion toward a sale takes something that was not the sale’s to take. The finding is not lightened by the reality of the trust. It is made heavier.

This severity carries no implication that the trust generated is false, or that a visitor is deceived in the ordinary sense. The co-presence occurred; the trust it grounds is warranted by a real circumstance. The appropriation lies in the direction imposed on that warranted trust, ahead of time and without the visitor’s part in the decision, the routing of a relation, real in its generation, toward an end that the relation’s own continuation did not call for. Whether every instance of luxury emptiness so routes what it generates is a matter for the empirical caution already entered; the claim concerns the direction toward which the configuration inclines what it generates, and the gravity that direction carries when what is so directed is trust.

Central proposition. By its use of emptiness a luxury space may sell nothing, and in selling nothing reach the trust that a symbol struggles to build. This is not the redemption of luxury retail but the completion of its appropriation: the trust so reached, generated by common experience, the least counterfeit-able of relational goods, and owed by right to the relation that the co-presence would have served, is directed in advance toward a sale. What is appropriated is the more severely taken for being the more authentic; the emptiness that could have let the visitor go is configured, instead, to bring the visitor back.

7.5 Relational Residue and the Unfinished Encounter

Two features of what the airport generates give the direction of the generated relation its final specificity. The first is that a common experience, once past, leaves behind a trace, not an object retained but a residue of the relation, a having-been-alongside that can condition what follows. This relational residue is neutral in itself, and its direction decides its character: the residue of a genuine encounter opens onto the continuation of the relation it traces, while the relational residue the airport leaves is prepared as an entry that opens onto the flagship’s sale. The same kind of trace, according to the direction given it, either feeds a relation or funnels a transaction.

The second feature is that the encounter the airport generates is unfinished, suspended at the moment of transit and awaiting whatever will complete it. Unfinishedness carries no verdict of its own, the interval of ma is unfinished and left for the viewer to complete, and desire in Lacan is unfinished and never closed, and what an unfinished encounter opens onto is what decides it. The unfinished encounter of the airport is opened toward a written ending, the purchase that waits to complete it; a generative unfinishedness would be opened toward an ending not yet written, which the parties to the relation would supply. The criterion of direction applies to the unfinished as to the residue: what matters is the terminus toward which the opening is turned.

§8 Implications and Limits

The case of luxury emptiness bears on a question larger than luxury: what distinguishes the generation of relation from its appropriation, when the two are indistinguishable in their outward form. This section states that implication, marks the reach of the analysis beyond the single case, places the account within the larger programme it belongs to, and sets down the limits under which the whole should be read.

8.1 Openness and Generativity

The analysis carries a consequence for how generativity is to be told apart from its imitation. Luxury emptiness generates a relational field, opens desire around a void, and reaches trust through common experience; each of these is a genuine opening, and none is feigned. What the account has shown is that all three openings can be produced and then directed toward an end outside the relation they open. Openness, accordingly, is not sufficient to mark generation: an arrangement may exhibit every outward sign of opening a relation, the field, the kindled desire, the co-presence, while the relation so opened is configured to converge on a transaction. What separates generation from appropriation is not the presence of an opening but the direction the opening is given: whether what is generated accrues to the relation that generated it, or is turned toward an end the relation did not require. Generativity, on this account, includes a condition beyond openness, which is that the generated relation not be appropriated, that the opening be left open.

8.2 The Reach of the Analysis

The three-layer line of analysis assembled here, whether a space constitutes a relational field, by what mechanism the field generates trust, and where the generated relation is directed, was developed on luxury retail because luxury retail displays the structure with unusual clarity: the generation is real, the appropriation clean, the direction toward the sale legible. The line is not confined to that case. Any arrangement that presents as the generation of relation while serving an end outside the relation is open to the same three questions. A platform that generates community among its users and directs the trust so built toward the retention of attention for sale; an institution that cultivates a relation with those it serves and routes that relation toward its own perpetuation; a program of care that generates a genuine bond and turns it toward compliance, each may be examined by asking what field it constitutes, by what mechanism it generates trust, and toward what its generated relation is directed. The analysis of luxury emptiness is, in this respect, a worked instance of a form of inquiry that extends wherever generation and appropriation wear the same face.

8.3 Place Within the Programme

The line of analysis belongs to a broader effort to treat value as generated in and through relation, which may be called a generative relational economics. The parent framework, generative relational being, concerns how relation generates being; the economics named here concerns how relation generates value; and a companion concern, generative relational governance, treats how a generated relation is governed once it exists. The three questions of this paper distribute across these: the constitution of a relational field is a question of generation, the mechanism by which the field generates trust is a question of governance, and the direction of the generated relation is the question on which the value turns. Emptiness has served throughout as the site where all three meet, a mechanism that generates a relational field, that where control permits admits governance upon it, and that stands or falls, as generation or as appropriation, on the direction its generated relation is finally given.

8.4 Limits and Further Work

The account rests on claims that could be wrong, and stating them as such is part of setting it down. The empirical basis is a small set of configurations observed in a particular retail landscape, and the reading of the airport in particular carries confounds already entered: the sparseness of the airport counter admits explanations, of security, logistics, dwell, and the traveler’s condition, that the relational reading does not displace, and the claim entered was only that the appeal to attention predicts the wrong direction, not that the relational field is the sole cause of the observed emptiness. The mechanisms are offered as tendencies inclined by configurational control, and instances running against the tendency are to be expected; the account would be strengthened by their study, not embarrassed by it. The distinction on which the whole turns, between a relation left to accrue to itself and a relation directed toward an end outside it, awaits an operational form that would let a given case be assigned to one side or the other by something firmer than the reading offered here. Supplying that form, and testing the three-layer line against arrangements beyond retail, is the work this paper leaves open.

A note on method. No formal apparatus has been used to state what prose states plainly here, and the abstention is deliberate. A value written as a function of weighted variables would decorate the argument without deriving anything from it, and would borrow a rigor the argument has not earned. The mechanisms admit two honest presentations: clear prose, or a genuine connection to the language of dynamical systems, in which a relational field would answer to a space of configurations, a direction toward a sale to an attractor, and the produced customer to a fixed point of the arrangement’s own dynamics. The second is not attempted here. What is claimed is stated in the first.

References

[1] Baudrillard, Jean (1972). For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. Trans. Charles Levin. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1981.

[2] Bitner, Mary Jo (1992). Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees. Journal of Marketing, 56(2), 57–71.

[3] Bourdieu, Pierre (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [French orig. 1979.]

[4] Dion, Delphine, and Eric J. Arnould (2011). Retail Luxury Strategy: Assembling Charisma through Art and Magic. Journal of Retailing, 87(4), 502–520.

[5] Lacan, Jacques (1977). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press.

[6] Joy, Annamma, Jeff Jianfeng Wang, Tsang-Sing Chan, John F. Sherry Jr., and Geng Cui (2014). M(Art)Worlds: Consumer Perceptions of How Luxury Brand Stores Become Art Institutions. Journal of Retailing, 90(3), 347–364.

[7] Kotler, Philip (1973). Atmospherics as a Marketing Tool. Journal of Retailing, 49(4), 48–64.

[8] Pine, B. Joseph, II, and James H. Gilmore (1998). Welcome to the Experience Economy. Harvard Business Review, 76(4), 97–105.

[9] Veblen, Thorstein (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. New York: Macmillan.

中文

空与价值生成

一项关于奢侈品零售空间的生成性关系经济学研究

黄万宏 · huangwanhong@serendip.ngo

摘要

奢侈品零售呈现出一种偏离稀缺资源配置所会预测的格局：在以最高租金租下的空间中，刻意拒绝密集地使用那个空间，并且有时干脆拒绝出售。免费而稀疏悬挂的艺术展、只陈放寥寥数件的旗舰楼层、近乎空荡的机场专柜，都是它的实例。一种稀缺资源的读法把这样的空当作放弃了的收益；成熟的设计诸文献，即氛围学、服务场景、体验经济与奢侈品零售策略，则更丰富地读它，把它当作在购物者身上对光环、情感与体验的搬演。本文论证，这两种读法，尽管彼此差异，处理的都是空间对一位访客做了什么，而不是空间生成了什么关系。它提议，空更好地被理解为一个关系在其中被生成的场，而对那种关系的治理，只有在这样一个场之上才成为可能。区分出这样一个场借以生成信任的两种机制，即一种关系的治理，与共同经验，后者更难被伪造，因为它立足于共同在场而不是立足于所说的话。依此说明，一个商业空间的价值不必发自即时交换：一段未完成的共同经验，本身即可构成信任的关系性根据。于是值得审视的，不是一个给定空间是否生成关系，而是它所生成的关系此后被导向何处，即导回关系本身，还是导向一次销售。本文提供一条三层的分析线索，即一个空间是否构成一个关系场、该场借以生成信任的机制为何、以及被生成的关系被导向何处，作为对这一类现象的稀缺资源观的一项补充。

关键词： 空；关系性生成；关系性治理；共同经验；信任；空间格局；奢侈品零售。

关于本文分量的一则说明。这是一项个案研究。它取一个商业现象，即奢侈品零售空间的刻意的空，并追问关于那个现象的既有诸说明是否已穷尽它。论述的次序遵循论证的次序：既有的诸解释及其界限先被列出，而关系性的说明只作为它们所未处理之物被引入。倘若设计诸文献被表明已然回答此处所提出的问题，那么较后的诸节便失去其根据。反对、纠正与反证，欢迎寄至 huangwanhong@serendip.ngo。

§1 引论

关于商业空间的流行理解，把它当作一种稀缺资源，其格局以收益的最大化为目标。依此理解，一个销售空间的价值是它每单位面积所能促成的交易的函数；空间被组织为一个货物的容器与一列销售点，而每单位面积的收益是一个格局之优劣的自然量度。这一理解跨大多数商业形式都很好用，并为一套安顿了的实践套路作担保，从货架的布置到动线的设计。

奢侈品零售呈现出一类以系统的方式偏离这一理解的格局。在以最高租金租下的位置上，某些行动者拒绝密集地使用其空间，反而把它的大片区域刻意留空。东京的银座地区提供了一个集中的样本。一栋百货建筑把一整层黄金租金的空间用于一个免费的艺术展览，稀疏地悬挂，寥寥数件而不是墙面所能承载的那么多；一家独立的奢侈品旗舰店，可能以数个陈列柜与数件代表性作品填满一栋华丽的建筑，其余留空；机场里的奢侈品专柜更为极端，有时是近乎全然的空荡之中的一个单一展柜。这些所共有的、并且本文称之为空的，是刻意拒绝密集地使用最昂贵的空间，在极限处，是对即时销售的拒绝。

这一类空构成一个理论问题，是因为选择它的那些人的身份。倘若空只限于那些不善计算的行动者，它便是单纯的错误，无需理论。但它被选择，反复地、系统地，被那些最无力承受浪费、也最精于计算的行动者所选择。一个被稀缺资源假定塑造为收益最大化者的行动者，为何应当偏离那个最大值，并且是持续地、而不是偶然地如此？一个答案是该行动者并不理性；但这与此类行动者在别处所展现的高度计算格格不入。一个更可信的答案是：稀缺资源框架未能登记这些行动者事实上正在优化的某种东西。若是如此，空便不是对一个安顿了的框架的偶然偏离，而是一个信号，表明存在一个该框架并不量度的价值维度。指认出那个维度，是此处的出发点。

有待被解释的现象分解为三个相连的观察。第一是空本身：高端零售把昂贵的空间留开，并且是与行动者的计算能力成正比、而不是成反比地如此，即计算者越精于计算，越倾向于空。第二是密度上的差异：即便在高端之内，空也并不一致，因为独立旗舰店倾向于开阔，而百货商场的专柜倾向于密集，这一差异有待解释。第三是机场的反常：一个客流巨大、停留短暂、四周竞争、且旅客处于易受冲动影响之状态的场所，倘若密度是由对注意力的争夺所支配的，本应是最密集的；而事实上机场奢侈品专柜属于最空的之列，而它的空所生成的东西采取一种不同于即时销售的形式。三个观察合在一起表明，密度不是一个单靠收益或注意力就能解释的变量。

既有理论已提出对这种空的若干说明，各有其真理、各有其界限；它们在此被当作论证据以设立的背景，而不是当作对手，并在随后的三节中被评述。商业空间的经济学，即把稀缺空间朝向收益的配置、对注意力的竞争，以及把消费当作一个符号系统的分析，把空说明为在别处被收回的放弃收益、一次对注目的争取，或一个身份与区分的符号（§2）。零售空间的设计诸文献，即氛围学、服务场景、体验经济与奢侈品零售策略，说明被格局化的空间在访客身上所产生的情感、光环与体验（§3）。拉康关于缺失与欲望的说明，为”空何以竟能点燃任何东西”提供了一条线索，欲望是被一个对象所标记的虚空、而不是被那个对象所激起的（§4）。这三者所共有的、并且为本文打开空间的，是每一个都解释空意谓什么、或它对访客做了什么，却把空生成了什么关系、以及那种关系被导向何处，搁置未问。

本文对此所提出的说明可以陈述为一个单一的主张。

核心主张。 空不必是一种资源之使用上的欠缺；它更好地被理解为一个关系在其中被生成的场，而对关系的治理，往往只有在这样一个场之上才成为可能。这样一个场借以生成信任的机制可以分为两种，即一种关系的治理，与共同经验，其中共同经验是更本真、更难被伪造的。依此说明，一个商业空间的价值并不总是发自即时交换：一段未完成的共同经验，本身即可构成信任的关系性根据。因此值得审视的，不是一个给定空间是否生成关系，而是它所生成的关系此后被导向何处，即导回关系的延续，还是导向一次销售。

该主张分四步展开。第一步把缺席，即一种资源的短缺，与空，即关系性可能的敞开，区别开来，从而把空复原为一个生成的场，而不是一个等待被填的虚空。第二步主张，对关系的治理预设这样一个场，而一个空间能否构成一个它有条件加以治理的、属于它自己的场，取决于配置控制权的分布；这说明了独立店、机场与专柜之间密度上的差异。第三步区分信任生成的两种机制，即治理与共同经验，并论证第二种的更大本真性。第四步追问被生成的关系的去向，观察到即便像共同经验这样本真的一种信任，在高端零售中也往往被预先导向一次销售，而这一导向的严重性，被所导向之物的本真性所加剧、而不是所减轻。

因此，本文的贡献不是对奢侈品的一个裁决，而是一条分为三层的分析线索：一个空间是否构成一个关系场（生成的条件）、该场借以生成信任的机制为何（治理的条件），以及被生成的关系被导向何处（价值的方向）。这条线索把关于空的问题，从”它陈列什么、以何种收益”以及从”它意谓什么”，转向”它生成什么关系、而那种关系被治理朝向什么”。它并不预设商业空间没有生成性；恰恰相反，它承认真实的生成确实发生，并把分析的重量放在生成之后的那个去向上。它的旨趣超出奢侈品这个单一案例：同一条分析线索原则上可以被带向任何呈现为关系之生成、却服务于某个外部目的的安排。

其余部分如下推进。§2 评述关于商业空间的经济学诸说明，即稀缺资源配置、注意力经济学，以及作为符号的消费经济学，并论证一个空间所生成的东西先于它所吸引的东西。§3 评述零售空间的设计诸文献，它们解释被格局化的环境对访客的效果。§4 列出理论背景，取拉康关于缺失与欲望的说明作为”空如何点燃并生成关系”的一条线索，连同那条线索所要求的限定。§5 展开该主张的头两层：空作为一个生成的场，以及可治理性对配置控制权的依赖。§6 处理信任的诸机制，并论证共同经验的本真性。§7 追问被生成的关系的去向。一个结尾节陈述该说明的界限及其所留下的工作。

§2 商业空间的经济学

经济学文献提供了”商业空间为何被如此格局化”的最直接的解释，而有三条脉络关乎奢侈品的空：把稀缺空间朝向收益的配置、对注意力的竞争，以及把消费当作一个符号系统的经济学。每一条都解释了这个现象的某一部分；每一条都止步于本文所提出的问题之前。

2.1 稀缺资源配置

基准的说明把零售空间当作一种稀缺投入，其格局使收益最大化。租金既已付出，一片区域的回报最大化用途，就是那个促成最多交易的用途：货物被陈列，销售点被增多，而一个格局的优劣被读作每单位面积的销售额。依此说明，空是放弃了的收益，即本可承载货物而未承载的区域；而它在奢侈品零售中的持续存在，只能通过把那个空的空间当作一项在别处抬高回报的间接投资来加以调和，无论是通过保护品牌资产，还是通过为一个价格溢价作辩护。这一说明在它适用之处是有力的，并且是可计算的。它对于当前现象的界限，正是已经指出的那一个：它解释对空的容忍，只靠设定一个空所保障的外部回报，而它并不探究，在那个空的空间自身之内，什么产生了那个回报。价值被归给了空；机制被留在暗处。

2.2 注意力经济学

第二条脉络把稀缺资源定位在注目而不在空间之中。在注意力经济学中，对商业的约束性约束是消费者有限的注意力，竞争在很大程度上是对它的竞争，而空间的格局是它的工具之一。这条脉络提示了对奢侈品之空的一个现成解释，因为空是显眼的：一个稀疏的陈列，在一片密集的陈列之中，会被最先看到。奢侈品零售于是会清空其空间以博取注目，而空便会是稀缺资源逻辑从收益向注意力的移置，所最大化的不是每单位面积的销售额而是每单位面积的注目。这一读法有其吸引力，即它不引入新的价值维度，只引入一个新的、有待最大化的量。然而，它遭遇两个困难，而它们指向同一方向。

第一个关乎注意力对背景的依赖。注意力是被差异所吸引的，而差异是相对于一个周遭被界定的：一片空之所以显眼，是因为它的周遭是密集的，而在一切皆空之处，空不再被看到。倘若目的仅仅是博取注意力，那么在一个已然密集的环境中，有效的手段本身就会是空；该解释所援引的机制，即差异产生显著性，会以同等的轻易推荐空与密集，取决于一个行动者并不单独控制的背景。因此，注意力对密度是欠决定的：同样的注目可以由密集的陈列、也可以由空的陈列所赢得，而诉诸注意力并不固定是哪一个。

第二个关乎机场。倘若密度是由对注意力的争夺所支配的，那么注意力最稀缺、竞争最激烈的场所应当是最密集的。机场就是这样一个场所：客流巨大、停留短暂、四周环绕着竞争的店铺、旅客处于易受冲动影响的状态。注意力逻辑预言机场奢侈品专柜会把每一寸都用于注目的赢取。观察却是相反的；机场专柜属于所有之中最空的之列。该框架只能把机场当作一个例外来容纳，而一个被迫把它最典型的实例当作例外录入的解释，其力量是可疑的。此处欠一份经验上的审慎：机场的空牵涉若干因素，即安检与物流的约束、客流的结构、停留的短暂、跨境旅客的特殊状态，而这些之中没有一个被主张为无关。较窄的主张是：诉诸注意力不足以解释机场的空，因为它所预言的方向与所观察到的相反。

两个困难合在一起，重新安放了注意力。它至多是某种更先行之物的结果：凡一个空间首先生成了某种关系之处，注目、意义与认同可能随之而来，但注目本身并不构成一种关系，正如目光的停驻并不是信任的建立。这给出本文的第一个主张。

主张 1。 在商业空间中，注意力是关系性生成的一个后果，多过是它的一个原因。可观察的次序往往从空间，即它构成某种关系的一个场，行至在其中被生成的关系，然后才行至此后由之派生的注目、意义与认同，这与”注意力居先、而空间被设计来捕获它”的那种次序相反。依这一读法，空所生成的东西先于它所吸引的东西。

这一主张重新安放了注意力现象，而不否认它们的真实性。把注意力从原因降为后果，腾空了它曾占据的那个问题：什么使一个空间成为一个关系可在其中被生成的场。那个问题，注意力经济学，固着于注目，并不提出。

2.3 作为符号的消费经济学

第三条脉络越过被交易的货物，触及消费的社会意义，而它最接近这个现象。凡勃伦 [9] 指认出炫耀性消费，其中支出恰恰通过其可见的浪费来标示地位：不带明显用途地消费，就是展示浪费的能力，从而展示一个人的等级。奢侈品的空即刻以这些术语被读：那被留开的昂贵楼层是被弄得可见的浪费，而可见性正是要点。布迪厄 [3] 把机制从财富精炼到品味，表明消费是一个区分的标记与一个文化资本的承载者；那稀疏的、博物馆般的室内，标示出一种密集的陈列所不会标示的、被培养的鉴别力，并向那些能够读它的人陈说。鲍德里亚 [1] 把这条线索推得最远，论证商品已成为一个符号，它的价值在于它在一个意指系统中的位置、而不在于使用；空，在这一语汇中，是一个符号操作，一个以消费的语法作出的陈述。

这些说明在它们所指认的东西上是正确的，而它们相对于稀缺资源观的推进是真实的：它们认识到空产生某种不同于即时销售的东西，即身份、区分、符号价值，从而价值不必发自被交易的货物。它们的界限在于：它们所指认的那个某种东西是一个符号的使用：空意谓什么、它向谁示意、它授予何种地位。空生成了什么关系、以及那种关系此后被导向何处这一问题，落在它们的框架之外，那个框架把空的空间读作一个有待被解释的符号，多过读作一个生成并治理一种关系的机制。这一框架之中，在鲍德里亚那里，含有对当前关切的一个预示：他后来的批判指控消费社会通过流产”社会交换的具体的、关系性的辩证法”而废除了财富。因此，本文所追寻的关系性维度，在消费文献中有一个先例，该文献把它命名为该系统所封闭之物，却把它作为一个肯定性的说明留作未展开。展开它，是此处所着手工作的一部分。

§3 零售空间的设计诸文献

奢侈品零售的空不是一个未被解释的现象。一个成熟的理论体系恰恰处理这样的空间如何被设计以及它为何奏效，而任何会补充它的说明，都必须首先说出它解释什么、以及它在何处止步。有四种文献是切题的，此处依次处理它们。

对零售氛围学的研究，始于这一观察：一家店铺的建成环境本身就是一件销售的工具。科特勒 [7] 把氛围学定义为对购买环境的刻意设计，以在买家身上产生抬高购买概率的情感效果，并把手段定位于感官的层面：光、色、尺度、声音、物的形状。依此说明，空可作为一个氛围上的选择而被理解，即那稀疏的、高天花的、柔和照明的室内，诱导出一种密集环境所不能诱导的平静、恭敬或升华的情感状态。这一说明是有力的，并且就其所及而言大体正确。它的所及，就当前目的而言，是一个个体购物者的情感状态：它解释环境对买家心境所做的、以及通过心境对买家购买倾向所做的。

服务场景这一概念把这一点一般化了。比特纳 [2] 把一个服务环境的诸物理维度，即氛围条件、空间布局、标识与符号，组装为一个单一的构念，并追踪它对顾客与雇员双方行为的效果。空，以这些术语言之，是一个空间布局的决定，其整体效果被顾客领会为整体的一种性质。服务场景文献在把环境当作一个系统、而不是一堆线索之和这一点上推进到氛围学之外，但终点是相同的：解释的对象是环境对那些在其中活动的人的效果，而那种效果的通货是知觉、情感与行为。

体验经济重新框定了整个事业。派恩与吉尔摩 [8] 论证，企业越来越多地搬演体验、而不是供给货物或服务，把卖家定位为难忘事件的搬演者、把买家定位为它们的宾客。奢侈品的空在这一语汇中读来自然：那近乎空荡的旗舰店是一个舞台，那稀疏的摆放是一段戏剧编排，而访客所携走的与其说是一个对象，不如说是一段记忆。这是一次真正的深化，因为它认识到价值可能寓于某种不同于被交易货物的东西之中。然而它所命名的那个体验，仍然是一个由访客所拥有的体验，即一种情感、一段记忆、一份寓于个体之内的满足，而它的量度仍然是那个个体的投入与最终的惠顾。

关于奢侈品零售策略的文献在此是最具体、也最有教益的。迪翁与阿诺 [4]，基于在奢侈品店铺中的民族志工作，描述这样的零售如何通过艺术与魔法的诸原则组装起”魅力”，即把店铺搬演为一个围绕一位有魅力的创意总监的光环场所、把艺术品与商品混置、把品牌神圣化。乔伊及其同仁 [6] 在交错陈列艺术与对象的旗舰店中记录了同样的东西，而一条相关的线索把奢侈品店铺读作一座搬演仪式的庙宇或大教堂。这一文献最接近本文的现象：那昂贵楼层上的免费艺术展览，以它的术语言之，恰恰就是通过艺术组装魅力。而它对目的是精确的。迪翁与阿诺断定，奢侈品零售是生产者导向、而不是消费者导向的，而它所求的是生成敬畏而不是共同体。

那个断定以不同寻常的准确性标出了当前说明进入之处的接缝。设计诸文献，跨其差异，汇聚于一个单一形式的问题：被格局化的空间对访客做了什么，即对访客的情感、知觉、记忆、敬畏之感，以及那如何关乎访客的购买倾向。那个问题它们回答得很好，而它关乎一方。空在访客与品牌之间生成了什么关系、以及那种关系此后被导向何处，落在它之外。敬畏是购物者的一种状态；而共同体，迪翁与阿诺发现奢侈品零售明确地拒绝它，本会是一种关系。奢侈品零售被理论化为生产前者而放弃后者，这是该文献的一个发现，而它正是本文所接过的那个发现，办法是恰恰去追问那个据说被该策略放弃的关系性维度。

§4 一种关于空的精神分析进路

在肯定性的说明之前有两点澄清，一点是术语上的，一点是理论上的。术语上的那点，把日常用法在”空”这个词之下混作一谈的两样东西分开。理论上的那点，借用、然后限定一个关于”空何以竟应当具有任何生成性力量”的既有解释。

4.1 空这一概念

称一个空间为空，可能意指两样东西之一，而这一差异对以下所述是决定性的。它可能意指某种本应在场的东西缺失了，即本应盛放货物的货架未盛放任何货物，本应有人值守的岗位无人值守。称此为缺席：一种资源相对于一个规定了什么应当填充它的标准的短缺。或者它可能意指一个空间被留开了，不是相对于一个填充的标准，而是作为某种东西在其中发生的一个条件，即一个事物可以在其中显现的空地，一个让一个序列被听作节奏的间隔。称此为空：不是一个事物的缺乏，而是一种可能的敞开。

稀缺资源框架只承认第一种。在一个规定了每面积货物量的标准之下，每一片未被填充的区域都是一个缺席，一个有待被矫正的短缺，而把奢侈品之空读作放弃收益，必然地从只承认这一意义中推出。但所争的那种空是第二种。不是旗舰店的楼层缺了它本应有的陈列柜；而是那种开阔本身正在做某种事，即持守一个空间，在其中访客与品牌之间的某种东西可以发生。这一区分不是文字游戏。它标出一个相对于一个目标被量度的量，与一个由它所使成为可能之物被量度的条件，二者之间的差异，而只有后者能够是一个生成的场、而不是一个亏缺。

这第二种意义并不新颖。它接近日本美学中间的观念，即那个不是形式之缺席、而是形式之可读性之条件本身的间隔或负空间，那个使乐句成立的静默，那个使构图成立的间隙。间在艺术中所命名的，空在此在商业空间中命名：一种生成性而非亏缺性的开阔。这一区分对本文的要点，是许可一个第一种意义所封闭的问题。如果奢侈品空间的空是缺席，那么唯一的问题是那个短缺为何被容忍。如果它是第二种意义上的空，那么一个更先行的问题打开了：那种开阔生成什么？

4.2 缺失、欲望与对象小 a

空竟应当生成任何东西，这并不显然，而此处一个既有理论提供了一条线索。在拉康的说明中，欲望不是被那个会满足它的对象所激起的。激起欲望的是缺失，即欲望围绕其循环的那个虚空，而那个看上去是欲望之目标的对象，即对象小 a，与其说是欲望的原因，不如说是一个标记那个虚空之位置的替身。欲望恰恰因为那个虚空未被填充而被维系：那个对象总是错的对象，而欲望越过它继续下去。依此说明，空的生成性力量是可理解的。一个围绕一个虚空而组织起来的空间，即那开阔楼层之中的单一展柜、那空地之中的寥寥数件，与其说是呈现一个可被拥有的对象，不如说是标记某种缺席之物的位置，而正是对那个位置的标记、而不是那个对象，触动了访客。那稀疏的陈列所点燃的，是拉康精确意义上的欲望：被它所环绕的虚空、而不是被它所盛放的事物所激起。

这条线索在此被接过，但它必须被限定，而这一限定正是当前说明与对拉康的一个简单应用分道之处。以它自身的术语言之，拉康式的虚空在结构上是开放的：该分析的要点是欲望并不终止，是那个对象总是被错过，是那个回路并不闭合。奢侈品零售借用了这一结构的前半，即它用那个虚空来点燃欲望，却给它附加了一个该结构所没有的结尾。那空的空间所激起的欲望，最终被转向一次购买：那个开放的回路被给予了一个它本不具有的终点。说欲望因此被满足、或那个虚空被填充，会夸大其辞，并误读拉康；更精确的描述是：一种结构性的开放被转换为一条受控的轨迹，一种在拉康那里无止境地运行的激起，在此被导向一个确定的收束。这一限定要紧，因为它精确地定位了所争之物。不是奢侈品的空未能成为拉康式的；而是它在其开放上是拉康式的、在其收束上是非拉康式的，而本文的整个问题就活在那个收束之中，即活在”一个空的空间所创造的开阔，是被留作开放、还是被导向一个外在于它的目的”之中。

这以一种最初的、仍属现象学的形式，给出了较后诸节将使之成为分析性的那个判准。面对一个已在一位访客身上触动了某种东西的空的空间，人们可以追问那种空是否放访客走，即它所创造的那个开口是被留作一个开口、通向访客或可从中造就的任何东西，还是被悄然导向一个确定的收束。这个问题尚不是一个方法；它在此被陈述，只是为了在经验的层面上命名该说明日后将不得不以更大精确性去划出的那个差异。那种精确性所要求的，是迄今被推迟的那个肯定性概念：空不作为对象周围的虚空、而作为一个关系在其中被生成的场。下一节转向那个。

§5 空作为关系性生成的场

诸评述留下一个没有任何一个说明提出的问题：即便承认空是生成性的，它生成什么，以及什么决定那种生成能否被据以建构？本节展开核心主张的头两层。第一层把空当作关系性生成的一个场。第二层把配置控制权的分布当作决定一个给定空间能否构成一个属于它自己的场的东西，从而说明奢侈品零售所采取的诸形式之间密度上的差异。

5.1 那个场

§4 所复原的空这一概念，是一种可能的敞开、而不是一种资源的短缺。那个敞开的肯定性内容，现在可以被陈述。一个空的商业空间所敞开的，是一个访客与品牌之间的关系可在其中被生成的场：那稀疏的专柜、那被清空的楼层、那开阔室内之中的寥寥数件，与其说是呈现一个可被获取的对象，不如说是持守一个空间，在其中两方之间的某种东西可以发生。访客不是被安置在有待被评估与被购买的货物之前，而是被置于一种被格局化的开阔之中，那种开阔求取一种姿态，即注意、恭敬、好奇，一种被接待、而不是被兜售之感。那种姿态是一种关系的开端，而那空的空间正是为它腾出余地的东西。

这一功能召唤一个区分，因为设计诸文献会把同一个室内描述为在访客身上产生一种情感状态，而这两种描述容易被混作一谈。一种情感状态是一方的一个条件，寓于访客之内，并由访客的购买倾向所量度。一个关系场是两方之间的一个条件，而它所生成的是一种关系，那种关系有它自己的、独立于一次购买是否随之而来的后续历史。那空的空间生成第二种，而第一种，即那敬畏、那平静、那升华，是它的一个派生物，它相对于那关系所立的位置，正如注目在 §2 被表明所立的位置：在它的下游。次序从被格局化的空，行至它所敞开的关系场，行至在其中被生成的关系，然后才行至随之而来的诸情感与诸注目。

主张 2。 商业空间中的空充当一个关系性生成的场：被格局化的开阔敞开一个空间，在其中访客与品牌之间的一种关系可被生成，而设计与经济诸文献所描述的诸情感状态与诸注意力状态，作为那种关系的派生物、而不是它的实质，立于它的下游。

5.2 配置控制权与空间密度

如果空生成一个关系场，那么奢侈品诸形式之间密度上的差异便成为接下来要解释的东西，因为空并不一致：独立旗舰店倾向于开阔，机场专柜倾向于稀疏，百货商场的专柜倾向于密集。为这一差异排序的变量是配置控制权的分布，即一个单一行动者治理其场会在其中形成的那个空间的语法的程度。

在那一视角下考虑这三种形式。独立旗舰店占据一栋其格局由一个品牌整个控制的建筑。那里的空敞开一个关系场，而由于周遭的语法是品牌自己的，那个场可以被布置与被治理：动线、门槛、照明、员工的举止、一位访客被接纳与被接待所据的条款。品牌既敞开一个场，又塑造在其中发生的东西。机场专柜占据一个品牌并不控制的穿行空间。那里的空同样敞开一个关系场，即那稀疏的专柜仍然持守一个空间，在其中一种朝向品牌的姿态可以形成，但周遭的语法属于机场，而访客的向前轨迹不是品牌所能治理的；旅客依一个别处所定的日程抵达、经过、离开。场形成了；可被层叠于其上的东西受到约束。百货商场中的专柜占据一个其语法属于东道主的空间，而东道主的语法是密集的。一个在专柜处被敞开的虚空，往往被吸收进周遭的密集之中，而不是凝结为一个属于品牌自己的场；专柜，缺乏那个会让一个开口得以持守的控制，倾向于密集，在一个不是它所能塑造的场之内逐点地交易。

这里有两个维度在起作用，而把它们分开澄清了这一差异。第一个是空间能否构成一个属于它自己的关系场，这往往由配置控制权的分布所治理。第二个是这样一个场一旦形成、借以生成信任的机制，此事被推迟至 §6，因为独立店与机场，二者都敞开场，却经由彼此有别的路径抵达信任。把这三种形式沿这些维度排布，给出以下。

	一个属于自己的关系场的前景（凭配置控制权）	信任机制的倾向（在 §6 处理）
独立旗舰店	高	一种关系的治理
机场专柜	存在，而治理受约束	共同经验
专柜	难以形成	（退回到逐点交易）

诸格被陈述为倾向，而这一分级的措辞承载着该主张的重量。一个独立店不必构成一个被治理的场；一个专柜或许偶尔持守一个小的开口；机场受制于 §2 所指出的诸混淆因素。该主张关乎配置控制权使结果倾向的方向，而不再更进。

主张 3。 一个空的空间是否构成一个它有条件加以治理的、属于它自己的关系场，往往由配置控制权的分布所设定。凡一个行动者控制周遭的语法之处，空既敞开一个场，又容许对它的治理；凡控制被分摊或缺席之处，场或许仍然敞开，但对它的治理受约束，或者场并不轻易形成，而空间倾向于密集。奢侈品诸形式之间密度上的差异，追踪这个变量比追踪对注意力的争夺更为贴近。

三种形式中的两种，即独立店与机场，敞开关系场，而二者都行至生成信任；它们借以如此的路径有别，而这一差异是下一节的关切。专柜，倾向于密集，以对照的方式例示了另外两种所成就的东西：凡没有一个属于自己的场能够形成之处，所余下的是交易，逐点地，在一个属于他者的场之中。

§6 一个关系场中的信任机制

独立店与机场二者都敞开关系场，而二者都行至生成信任。路径有别，而这一差异是 §5 那个表格的第二个维度。本节处理这两条路径，即一种关系的治理与共同经验，并论证第二种在一种将被弄精确的意义上是二者中更本真的。一句预备的话安放”信任为何竟是所争的那个量”。

6.1 信任作为那个稀缺的量

经济学诸评述把稀缺性先定位在空间、然后在注意力之中。一个关系场使一个比二者都更稀缺的量成为可见。货物可以被配置；注意力可以被赢得；信任既不能被配置、也不能以一种资源的方式被赢得，因为它是一方的一种安顿了的期望，即另一方将依它对它的关系所担保的那样去行动。一个仅仅密集的空间在其最有效时所抵达的，是注意力：货架陈说，标识宣告，货物被看到。一个空的空间在它生成一个关系场之处所能抵达的，是信任。这一差异是深度上的，而这一排序可以被表述为一种分级的攀升，即货物，然后是一个符号所能买到的注意力与承认，然后是信任，其中每一级都比上一级更稀缺、更难保有。

信任坐落于那一攀升之顶的理由关乎以下所述。一个符号往往难以生成信任，而这一困难是结构性的：一个符号劝服，而劝服，通过宣告一种对结果的利害关切，给了另一方保留的理由。这一倾向容许例外，即一块被荣耀了许多年的招牌可能沉积为信任，而一个反复被证实的符号可能逐渐被相信，而那个总的倾向穿过它们仍然成立：为了被相信而说出的话，正因如此，更难被相信。信任倾向于生起在没有什么被力促之处，即在诸方不是劝服者与被劝服者、而是在某个共有的情境中共同在场之处。一个拒绝力促的空的空间，在这一点上，以一种密集而说话的空间所不能的方式，被朝向信任安放。

6.2 一种关系的治理

在独立旗舰店中，关系场是品牌所能治理的，而信任是由那种治理的举行所生成的。访客依品牌所设定并维系的条款被接待：接纳的方式、动线的节奏、员工的姿态、室内的克制、空间所暗示之物与遭遇所交付之物之间的一致。凡这些被良好地、并且历时地治理之处，访客逐渐持有一种关于品牌将如何自处的安顿了的期望，而那种期望就是信任。机制是一种关系跨反复遭遇的可靠治理，而它之所以对独立店可用，恰恰是因为独立店控制着关系于其中展开的那个场。这一类信任是真实的，而它并不易得；它的条件是那个让一个场不仅能被敞开、而且能被持守的配置控制权。

6.3 共同经验

机场专柜并不治理访客的向前轨迹，而以被治理关系的量度衡量，它似乎生成得更少。它经由另一条路径生成信任。旅客与品牌，在一个间隔里，在一个共有的情境中共同在场：穿过机场的经过、等待、一道边界的跨越、过境的悬置时间。那稀疏的专柜，拒绝出售，把品牌置于那个情境之内，作为在旅程的过程中被遇到的某种东西，而不是作为被力促给旅客的某种东西。所形成的，是这样一种感觉：品牌曾在场于旅客自己经验的一段之中，不是它向他们陈说，而是它在那里，在同一段经过之中。这就是共同经验，而它经由一个不同于治理的机制生成信任：不是一种被治理关系跨遭遇的可靠性，而是两方在一个被经历情境中的共同在场，而劝服无法伪造它，因为它在于曾在那里、而不在于任何所说的话。

共同经验是一个自成一格的机制，有别于一种被削弱的被治理关系形式。它立足于一个不同的根据，即共同在场而不是举止，并经由一条被治理关系所不行经的路径抵达信任。在一个特定的方面，它是二者中更本真的，而那个方面可以被精确地命名。共同经验的本真性在于它对伪造的抵抗：一种被治理关系可以在其外在举止上被模拟，一场接待被搬演，一种风度被排练，但在一个真实情境中的共同在场，要么发生过、要么没有，而无法在事后由品牌所说的任何话来制造。立足于曾在那里的东西，比立足于可被表演的举止的东西，更难作假。在这一特定方面，即对伪造的抵抗，共同经验是更本真的机制。

三条界限把这一本真性主张保持在它恰当的尺寸之内。共同经验是若干信任生成机制之中的一个：信任也从反复的可靠往来、从共患难、从时间的流逝、从亲缘、从制度保证中生起，而把共同经验命名为信任的源头，会夸大机场所显示的东西。空是一个品牌可借以抵达共同经验的一个手段，与别的手段并列，而对共同经验的抵达是通向信任的、刚命名的若干路径之中的一条。而此处的本真性是上文所描述的那种对伪造的特定抵抗，而一种历经多年被证实的被治理关系，以它自己的方式并不缺乏这种抵抗：被治理关系生成一种共同经验并不取代的信任。在这些界限之内，这两种机制可以被写下。

主张 4。 一个关系场往往经由两种机制之一生成信任。在第一种中，即在配置控制权允许之处可用，信任从一种关系跨遭遇的可靠治理中生起。在第二种中，即便在治理受约束之处也可用，信任从共同经验，即诸方在一个被经历情境中的共同在场中生起。共同经验，在对伪造的抵抗这一特定方面，是二者中更本真的，因为它在于曾经在场、而不在于可被表演的举止；它仍然是若干机制之中的一个，而空是抵达它的一个手段。

两种机制都生成某种真实的东西：在其一是一种被治理而成的信任，在其二是一种被共同经历而成的信任。那种信任变成什么，即它是被留作累积给生成它的那个关系、还是被导向一个外在于那个关系的目的，是一个进一步的问题，而对它的回答正是关于奢侈品之空的说明抵达其要点之处。下一节转向那个。

§7 被生成的关系的方向

§6 的两种机制都生成真实的信任。本节所接过的问题关乎那种信任一旦被生成之后变成什么：它是累积给产生它的那个关系，还是被转向一个躺在那个关系之外的目的。回答这个问题召唤一个判准，而那个判准就是在 §4 结尾以现象学形式被命名的那一个，即一个空的空间所创造的开口是被留作开放、还是被导向一个确定的收束。被弄成分析性的，那个判准追问一个被生成的关系此后被送往的方向。有两个方向可用。一个被生成的关系可以被留作累积给它自己，喂养诸方在关系中继续下去的能力；或者它可以被折向一次销售，被弄成一个收敛于一次交易的入口。方向、而不是生成这一事实，才是区分这些案例的东西。

7.1 方向的判准

那个判准通过在两个单靠生成无法分辨的安排之间进行区分，赢得它的位置。一个图书馆与一个旗舰店，可能各自敞开一个空的、不慌不忙的空间；各自可能在一位访客身上生成一种对该机构的关系；各自可能让访客带走某种东西。把它们分开的，是被生成的关系被导向何处。图书馆的敞开累积给读者对阅读的关系，那种关系依读者所设定的条款继续下去；旗舰店的敞开则被预先布置为一个入口，它经由一条为它准备好的路径，抵达一次购买。同一个生成性的姿态，在其一服务于一种关系的延续，而在其二服务于它向一次销售的转换。把这个命名为被生成关系的方向，给出了此前以现象学方式所提问题的分析性形式：那空的空间是否放访客走。

7.2 折向作为两种机制的共同命运

应用于信任的两种机制，那个判准产出一个设计诸说明与经济诸说明都未预料到的结果。在奢侈品零售中，信任的两个方向都被转向销售。独立店的被治理关系被有意地导向那里：接待、氛围、被培养的熟稔被布置得使它们所建立的信任抵达一次购买，在旗舰店中，依品牌所控制的条款。而机场的共同经验也同样被导向那里：品牌曾陪伴一个人旅途一段的那种感觉，被预先准备为一个入口，使得在过境中被共同经历而成的信任，此后，收敛于城市店铺中的一次交易。由共同在场所生成的信任，即 §6 所发现的二者中更难伪造的那种，被折向一次销售，与由被治理举止所建立的信任一样确凿无疑。

7.3 共同经验的挪用

这一结果在共同经验变成什么之中抵达它最尖锐的形式。共同经验，在此处所处理的诸信任机制之中，是立足于最难被伪造的根据的那一个：它在于两方曾在一个被经历情境中共同在场，而那无法在事后被捏造。奢侈品零售恰恰生成这个，即旅客对品牌在那段经过中之在场的感觉是一段真实的共同经验，被共同经历而不仅仅被断言，然后把它导向销售。被转向一次交易的，不是一个符号，符号劝服并相应地被打折扣，而是一种真正的共同在场，它不劝服任何人，因为它不力促任何东西。诸信任机制中最本真的那一个，被用于诸目的中最不具关系性的那一个之效劳。

这一挪用的结构是该框架此前遭遇过的一个。凡一个支配性的符号挪用生成的诗性机制之处，生成的场址便从解释者被移到符号；此处，被挪用的机制是共同经验，而被移动的是它的去向，从关系的延续，到销售。生成性机制被留作完好且运行着；被改变的是它的产物被送往何处。共同经验，在这一精确的意义上，被投入使用：被弄得去生成一种信任，那种信任随后被从那个共同在场本会服务的关系导开。

7.4 挪用的严重性

一种读法在此处自荐，它会软化这一发现，而把论证跟到底要求把那种读法搁置一旁。既然机场生成真实的信任，人们或许会断定这个案例只是部分的捕获，而一个关系性的说明应当相应地缓和它的裁决。这一读法底下的观察是正确的：信任是真实的，生成是真正的，而该说明并不否认它。从那个观察所得出的结论走错了方向。信任的真实性加剧这一挪用、而不是缓和它。

严重性的量度是被挪用之物的本真性。把一个单纯的符号导向一次销售，是广告的寻常状况，而它不欺骗任何人，因为一个符号被知道在力促。把一个身份信号或一个区分导向一次销售，是消费文献所描述的那种更精致的商业。把信任导向一次销售，特别是由共同经验所生成的信任，那种信任生起在劝服无法抵达的那一个人类关系的层域，是这三者中最深的一个，因为它转向一次交易的，是那个最不适于被出售的关系层。共同经验的本真性恰恰是使它的挪用严重的东西：共同在场越真实，它所奠基的那种关系就越是一种本应累积给诸方的关系，而它向一次销售的转移就越是拿走某种本不是销售所应拿走的东西。这一发现并不因信任的真实性而被减轻。它被弄得更重。

这一严重性不带有”被生成的信任是虚假的、或一位访客在寻常意义上被欺骗”的任何蕴涵。共同在场发生过；它所奠基的信任由一个真实的情境所担保。挪用在于被强加于那种有担保信任的方向，即预先地、并且没有访客对那个决定的参与，即把一种关系，其生成是真实的，导向一个那种关系自身的延续并未召唤的目的。奢侈品之空的每一个实例是否都如此导向它所生成之物，是一个交给已经录入的经验审慎的事项；该主张关乎那个格局使它所生成之物倾向的方向，以及当所导向之物是信任时那个方向所承载的严重性。

核心命题。 凭借它对空的使用，一个奢侈品空间可能什么也不卖，并且在什么也不卖之中抵达一个符号所难以建立的那种信任。这不是奢侈品零售的救赎，而是它的挪用的完成：如此抵达的信任，即由共同经验所生成、关系性诸善物中最难被伪造的、并按理应归于那个共同在场本会服务的关系的信任，被预先导向一次销售。被挪用之物，因其更本真而被更严重地拿走；那个本可放访客走的空，反被格局化为把访客带回来。

7.5 关系性残余与未完成的遭遇

机场所生成之物的两项特征，给了被生成关系的方向以它最终的具体性。第一项是：一段共同经验，一旦过去，留下一道痕迹，不是一个被保留的对象，而是那关系的一个残余，一种曾在旁、能够条件化随后之物的曾在。这一关系性残余本身是中性的，而它的方向决定它的品性：一段真正遭遇的残余通向它所留痕的那关系的延续，而机场所留下的关系性残余被准备为一个通向旗舰店销售的入口。同一种痕迹，依它被给予的方向，或者喂养一种关系，或者漏斗式地导入一次交易。

第二项特征是：机场所生成的那个遭遇是未完成的，悬置于过境的那一刻，等待着将要完成它的任何东西。未完成性本身不带有任何裁决，即间的间隔是未完成的、被留给观者去完成，而拉康那里的欲望是未完成的、从不闭合，而一个未完成的遭遇通向什么才是决定它的东西。机场那个未完成的遭遇被朝一个已被写就的结尾敞开，即那等待着完成它的购买；而一种生成性的未完成性会被朝一个尚未被写就的、由那关系的诸方来供给的结尾敞开。方向的判准适用于未完成之物，正如适用于那残余：要紧的是那开口被转向的终点。

§8 蕴涵与界限

奢侈品之空这个案例关乎一个比奢侈品更大的问题：当关系之生成与它的挪用在其外在形式上无从分辨时，是什么把二者区别开来。本节陈述那个蕴涵，标出该分析超出这个单一案例的所及，把该说明置于它所属的那个更大的纲领之内，并写下整个说明应据以被读的诸界限。

8.1 开放性与生成性

该分析为”生成性如何与它的仿冒被区别开来”带来一个后果。奢侈品之空生成一个关系场，围绕一个虚空敞开欲望，并通过共同经验抵达信任；这些之中的每一个都是一次真正的敞开，而没有一个是佯装的。该说明所表明的是：这三次敞开都能被产生、然后被导向一个外在于它们所敞开之关系的目的。因此，开放性不足以标示生成：一个安排可能展现敞开一种关系的每一个外在标志，即那场、那被点燃的欲望、那共同在场，而如此被敞开的那种关系却被格局化为收敛于一次交易。把生成与挪用分开的，不是一个开口的在场，而是那个开口被给予的方向：所生成之物是累积给生成它的那关系，还是被转向一个那关系并不要求的目的。生成性，依此说明，包含一个开放性之外的条件，即被生成的关系不被挪用，即那个开口被留作开放。

8.2 该分析的所及

此处所组装的三层分析线索，即一个空间是否构成一个关系场、该场借以生成信任的机制为何、以及被生成的关系被导向何处，之所以在奢侈品零售上被发展，是因为奢侈品零售以不同寻常的清晰性展现了这一结构：生成是真实的，挪用是干净的，朝向销售的方向是可辨读的。这条线索不限于那个案例。任何呈现为关系之生成、却服务于一个外在于该关系之目的的安排，都对同样的三个问题开放。一个在其用户之间生成共同体、并把如此建立的信任导向为出售而对注意力之保有的平台；一个培养一种与它所服务者之关系、并把那种关系导向它自身之延续的机构；一个生成一种真正纽带、并把它转向顺从的照护项目，每一个都可以通过追问它构成什么场、它借以生成信任的机制为何、以及它所生成的关系被导向什么，来加以考察。奢侈品之空的分析，在这一点上，是一种探究形式的一个做过的实例，那种探究延伸到凡生成与挪用戴着同一副面孔之处。

8.3 在纲领中的位置

这条分析线索属于一项更广的努力，即把价值当作在关系之中并通过关系被生成，这可以被称为一种生成性关系经济学。母框架，即生成性关系存在，关切关系如何生成存在；此处所命名的经济学，关切关系如何生成价值；而一个相伴的关切，即生成性关系治理，处理一种被生成的关系一旦存在之后如何被治理。本文的三个问题分布于这些之上：一个关系场的构成是一个生成的问题，该场借以生成信任的机制是一个治理的问题，而被生成关系的方向是价值系于其上的那个问题。空自始至终充当三者相会之处，即一个生成一个关系场、在控制允许之处容许对它的治理、并且作为生成或作为挪用而系于它所生成的关系最终被给予的方向而成败的机制。

8.4 界限与进一步的工作

该说明立足于可能是错的诸主张，而把它们作为如此陈述，是把它写下的一部分。经验基础是在一个特定零售景观中所观察到的一小组格局，而尤其对机场的读法带有已经录入的诸混淆因素：机场专柜的稀疏容许诸种解释，即安检的、物流的、停留的、以及旅客状态的，而关系性的读法并不取代它们，而所录入的主张仅仅是诉诸注意力预言了错误的方向，而不是关系场是所观察到的空的唯一原因。诸机制是作为被配置控制权所倾向的诸倾向而被提出的，而逆着倾向而行的诸实例是意料之中的；该说明会因对它们的研究而被加强，而不是被它们弄得难堪。整个说明所系于其上的那个区分，即一种被留作累积给它自己的关系与一种被导向一个外在于它之目的的关系之间的区分，尚待一个可运作的形式，那个形式会让一个给定的案例由某种比此处所提供的读法更牢固的东西被归到一侧或另一侧。供给那个形式，并在零售之外的诸安排上检验这条三层线索，是本文所留下的工作。

关于方法的一则说明。此处没有任何形式装置被用来陈述散文所平白陈述的东西，而这一克制是刻意的。一个被写作诸加权变量之函数的价值，会装饰该论证而不从它推导出任何东西，并会借用一种该论证尚未挣得的严格。诸机制容许两种诚实的呈现：清晰的散文，或者一种与动力系统语言的真正联系，其中一个关系场会对应于一个格局的空间，一个朝向销售的方向对应于一个吸引子，而那个被生产出来的顾客对应于那个安排自身动力学的一个不动点。第二种在此不被尝试。所主张的东西，在第一种中被陈述。

参考文献