SUBJECTIVITY UNDER CONSUMERISM: THE TOTALIZATION OF THE SUBJECT AS A COMMODITY

• Autor(a) principal: Xavier,Marlon
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Psicologia & Sociedade (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-71822016000200207
• topic: subjectivity; consumption; consumerism; social imaginary; commodification

Abstract This theoretical work discusses consumerism's processes of subjectivation and their psychological consequences. Its regime is studied through its social imaginary and its totalitarian character: the discourse of advertising, as a global hegemon, absorbs all forms of discourse and signification, thereby actualizing capitalism's telos - the colonization of the Lebenswelt under a great imperative: everything must become a commodity, especially the subject. A process of totalization of subjectivity occurs under a commodification logic centered on the representation: every image must be transformed into commodity-signs. Thus the consumption imaginary appears as a totalizing ideology, functioning as archaic représentations collectives (Durkheim) and simulating a religious imaginary. It mass-produces subjectivity through participation mystique (Lévy-Bruhl) with its commodity-signs (and their fetish) and the whole imaginary. Its subject is defined as a bricolage of consumable commodity-signs, being therefore eternally fluid, performative, and ethereal. Thus it produces an anthropological mutation, the commodity-subject: a disposable, empty, thoroughly commodified self.