Subjectivity, the Unconscious and Consumerism

Consuming Dreams

Marlon Xavier

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319968230
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319968247
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Personality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Subjectivity, the Unconscious and Consumerism is a unique and imaginative psycho-sociological exploration of how postmodern, contemporary consumerism invades and colonises human subjectivity. Investigating especially consumerism's unconscious aspects such as desires, imagination, and fantasy, it engages with an extensive analysis of dreams. The author frames these using a synthesis of Jungian psychology and the social imaginaries of Baudrillard and Bauman, in a dialogue with the theories of McDonaldization and Disneyization. The aim is to broaden our understanding of consumerism to include the perennial consumption of symbols and signs of identity - a process which is the basis for the fabrication of the commodified self. The book offers a profound, innovative critique of our consumption societies, challenging readers to rethink how we live, and how our identities are impacted by consumerism. As such it will be of interest to students and scholars of critical psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, but is also accessible to anyone interested in the complex psychology of contemporary subjectivity.

© The Author(s) 2018

Marlon XavierSubjectivity, the Unconscious and Consumerismhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96824-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Marlon Xavier¹

(1)

University of Caxias do Sul, Caxias do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Marlon Xavier

End Abstract

This study is basically an exploration of what (night) dreams can express about aspects of contemporary consumerism and its social imaginary, being a subject in it, and how it conditions and institutes such being—from the perspective of C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology, in terms of theoretical framework and hermeneutics. To introduce it, let me first tell the reader a bit about my trajectory, how the object of study, the problem, and the research focus were defined, their cultural context, and how and why I propose to investigate the problem through dreams.

1.1 Defining the Object of Study: A Trajectory

1.1.1 First Moment: Capitalism, Consumerism, and the Subject

One of the main reasons for my wanting to study such themes, or research subjects, was simply the initial context of my doctorate at the UAB: I was part of a research group called coLABORando, coordinated by my doctoral supervisor, that studied contemporary capitalism and its colonization of institutions, practices, and subjectivity, in an international research called Kofarips.¹ More specifically, the study centered on organizational capitalism² and sought to research how it conditions work and work-subjectivity (subjetividad laboral) (Blanch & Stecher, 2009). Although I struggled to collaborate and propose and do research in accordance with such focuses, my interest was at once much more general (the theme of subjectivity) and specific (the unconscious aspects of subjectivity). A broad perspective emphasized in Kofarips eventually became central for this work: its proposition that capitalism’s logic of commodification and market ethos not merely affect and shape subjectivity, but represent a mode of production of “psychological life” in general (Blanch & Cantera, 2007b, p. 12).

In lieu of organizational capitalism, I gradually became more interested in defining consumerism as the general cultural context of this work, focusing on what Allott (2002) broadly called its psychic ethos, that is, its (socio)psychological dimensions. Consumerism represents the fundamental doctrine of contemporary capitalism: a cultural ideology founded on the idea and the imperative of consumption (in its common significance, but also and crucially in the sense of “using up entirely, disposing of, wasting, destroying”: consumere³). As such, it seems to define more accurately the profound sociocultural changes effected by capitalism today. Indeed, consumption has arguably become the main definer of our culture, the chief basis of the social order (Baudrillard, 1968/1996; Poster, 2001); rather than being merely an aspect or part of our lives, of our milieu, we all become creatures defined by the “age of consumption” (Baudrillard, 1970/1998, p. 191 ). As a socioeconomic system, consumerism seeks to produce and shape its subjects according to its logic and needs. If industrialism was rooted in production (and its subject was thus defined by work or ownership of means of production), then such emphasis has been displaced and shifted toward consumption and disposal, and, presently and most importantly, to the production of consumers.⁴ The result is that, in our global culture , being a consumer is what ultimately defines the subject (Baudrillard , 1970/1998; Bauman, 2007a; Dufour, 2008; Gottdiener, 1996).

1.1.2 Logic of Colonization and Total Capitalism

What the Kofarips project studied as the capitalist logic of colonization interested me more under two of its facets: the tendency of capitalism (and consumerism) to total colonization, and its colonization of subjectivity. As regards the first, Marx (1858/1978), in the Grundrisse, had already pointed that a totalizing imperative is characteristic of capitalism: the “development to its totality consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself” (p. 278; e.a.). For Lukács (1923/1971) and Castoriadis (1997), capitalism’s orientation toward progressive conquest of the whole of society, effected through its logic of reification and commodification, is one of its most conspicuous specificities. Contemporarily, the actualization of such orientation appears as the relentless colonization of social and psychological forces, of life realms, or reality itself, by the capitalist ethos,⁵ and the totalizing (or even totalitarian) aspects of capitalism have been pointed out by many scholars (e.g., Clarke, 2005; Fairclough & Graham, 2002; Gare, 2008; Graham, 2006; Jha, 2006; Lacher, 2005; Lebowitz, 2003; Leys, 2007; Liodakis, 2010; Radice, 2005).

Although such processes of colonization by capital obviously occur in multiple and complex forms and ways, under consumerism its colonizing force might be summarized (for the purposes of this work) under one principle or common denominator : commodification.⁶ This new colonial order whose fundamental drive is consumption strives to establish and impose the commodity as the only referent: the imperative is that everything must become a commodity, be represented, signified, and function as a commodity, and hence follow commodity logic and market logic, be governed by commodity exchange, have a certain market value, be consumed and disposed of, and so on. Such imperative is perhaps what best defines consumerism: “a culture of commodification” (Giroux & Pollock, 2011).

Therefore, the theoretical and political perspective on contemporary consumer capitalism (and its imaginary) that informs this work is that its telos is one of total colonization through total commodification: it represents a totalizing system. Such perspective can be summarized through the concept of total capitalism (Dufour, 2003, 2005, 2008; Leys, 2007). Dufour (2001) underlines two main aspects of this “last stage of capitalism” that are central for this work: a transformation of minds by the ideologies of neoliberalism and consumerism through education, mass media, and culture, and the collapse of transcendental values and the symbolic world. The transformation of minds means a psychological colonization of subjectivity, which, according to Dufour (2008), represents an anthropological mutation. Under consumerism, commodification is not restricted to labor power, as in capitalism; it aims at the total commodification of the whole being.⁷ According to Bauman (2007a, p. 12), that has become “The most prominent feature of the society of consumers (…) the transformation of consumers into commodities”—the mass production of commodity -subjects.

1.1.3 Second Moment: Consumerist Colonization, Subject, and the Unconscious

It follows logically that, for such production of commodity-subjects, it is fundamental to command organization, configuration, and functioning of the subject’s psyche.⁸ At this point, my focuses of research became centered on such psychological dimensions: on the one hand, the subject’s mind or mentality, her/his psychic subjectivity (which is social by definition) assailed by commodification; on the other hand, the social world in its psychic dimension, its psychic ethos: consumerism as a totalizing ideology or regime of signification, what I would later call a totalizing imaginary. More specifically, I wanted to study the processes of psychic colonization by capitalism-cons...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. Theoretical Framework
• Part II. Empirical Study
• Back Matter