Nothing Personal: a psychoanalytic investigation into mass personalisation

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Nothing Personal:

a

psychoanalytic investigation into mass personalisation

Student number:12761834

Name: Sarah Lowry

University of Amsterdam

MSc Political Science (Political Economy)

Research group: Alternatives to Capitalism

Supervisor: Annette Freyberg-Inan

Second Reader: Rocco Bellanova

Word Count: 25,467

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Abstract

This thesis proposes ‘personalisation’ to constitute a paradoxical condition in the materiality of contemporary consumerism. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, and through incorporation of key Lacanian insights, such as ‘disavowal’, ‘fantasy’ and ‘jouissance,’ I demonstrate how personalisation sustains the phantasmatic concept of ‘the individual’ in the context of post-modern capitalism. Firstly, this thesis draws on Jodi Dean’s (2016) arguments to outline how subjects are ideologically interpellated as ‘individual’, in order to exclude the Lacanian ‘Real’ of ‘otherness.’ Secondly, it will elaborate on the paradox of post-modern consumerism whereby symptoms of the traumatic Real transpire in the subject’s social fantasy. Thirdly, it will suggest personalisation functions to disavow the impersonal nature of consumerism by re-embedding the concept of ‘the individual’ into consumer capitalism. Fourthly it will discuss how personalised products provide the subject with a sense of jouissance, guided by capitalist fantasy. Finally, it reviews how ideological cynicism functions to pacify subjects and maintain an ecosystem of digital invasion and exploitation. The fantasies of personalised consumerism are shown to be of a profoundly paradoxical nature; for they demonstrate how consumer capitalism produces what it claims already exists; the individual.

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Abstract ……….2

Table of Contents………..3

List of Figures………4

1. Introduction………...5

2. Fantasies of Individualism………11

2.1 Lacanian Rejection of Cartesianism………..13

2.1.1 Ego as other………13

2.1.2 Unconscious as Other……….14

2.2 Subject Interpellated as an Individual………...15

2.2.1 Doctrines………16

2.2.2 Material Practices………...17

2.2.3 Spontaneous Belief……….18

2.3 Individuality in Consumer Society………19

3: Return of the Repressed………...23

3.1 Pastiche……….24

3.2 Schizophrenia………....25

3.3 Pre-corporation……….28

4: Online Personalisation and Disavowal………31

4.1 Personalised Communication………32

4.2 Personalised Recommendation……….35

4.3 Individualising the Digital Commons………...38

5: Mass Personalisation and Jouissance………. ..42

5.1 Neoclassical and ‘Crude’ Marxist Consciousness……….42

5.2 Jouissance………...45

5.3 What is Mass Personalisation?...47

5.4 Functionality………...51

5.5 Control………52

5.6 Uniqueness………. .54

5.7 Enjoyment………...57

5.8 Impulse Buying: Lack and Excess……….59

6: The Personalisation- Privacy Paradox………62

6.1 Ideological Cynicism……….63

6.2 Personalisation Privacy Paradox………64

6.3 Disassociation………65

6.4‘Doing It Anyway’………..66

7. Conclusion………...69

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Consumer interest in personalised products or services by categories and age groups in England, Scotland and Wales………49

Figure 2: The premium consumers are prepared to pay for a customised product or service by category in England and Wales……….50

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Introduction

1. Introduction

I recently received an email from the online retailer Redbubble. It a was typical automated email which alerted me to some items I might be interested in based on my browser history. The subject of the email read: “Our algorithm thinks it knows what you like. Come see if it's right.”

In 2013, Edward Snowdon’s exposure of the US and UK secret surveillance programmes left the masses outraged and demanding transparency. Remembering how the governments’ surveillance projects were so scandalized at the time begs the question, why now is our privacy now so candidly flouted in front of us by commercial enterprises and yet they face so little resistance?

The rise of transformative commercial surveillance architectures has prompted a reorientation of surveillance studies, away from critical analysis of state discipline towards the study of commercial control (Deleuze 1997). A central focus has been the acceleration of surveillance capitalism, to a new logic of accumulation based on data extraction and the production of new knowledge commodifying and trading data on human behaviour for commercial gain. Digital technologies provide the mechanisms through which to gather personal information and generate huge profits from personalised advertising. Access to personal information allows companies to control and automate behaviour, producing historical concentrations in wealth, knowledge and power (Zubhoff 2019). In return users receive personalised online content. This emergence of mass personalisation has created a market for one at scale: “a marketing utopia” (Athley 2019: unpaginated).

While mass personalisation has traditionally been confined to online services, new technologies are enabling the production of mass personalised goods and services (Zubhoff 2019). Recent technological transformations such as “radio frequency identification, cyber-physical system, the Internet of things, Internet of service, and data mining” provide an opportunity to entirely alter how individuals experience consumption to enable ‘hyper personalisation’ (Lee 2018). As a result, companies have increasingly placed a focus on mass personalised production at the heart of business models, which has been made possible through ‘smart factories’ and ‘smart manufacturing.’ In a discussion on advanced manufacturing and

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Introduction

production, the World Economic Forum (2017) argued “hyper-personalization combines curation with personalization to create customized user experiences around individual customer wants and needs.” While traditionally personalised products were extremely costly to produce, disruptive technologies mean that these products will be increasingly made available in the mass market at a low cost to the producer and consumer. Mass bespoke personalisation brings the manufacturing process closer to the consumer and increases the scope of the “data exhaust” of consumer information. Thus, evolutionary changes in technology have huge implications for power relations and structural dynamics in the economy (Tsigkas 2012). Specifically, “a theory of value based on knowledge,” through the imposition of tracking measures in everyday life, is central to the accumulative logic of digital capitalism. (ibid 32).

This ecosystem of big data surveillance is no hidden secret. Rather, as my email from Redbubble highlights, data extraction is a socially accepted norm. The invasive and exploitative nature of this ecosystem prompts the question, how has this architecture come to be legitimised?

Many interpretations depict growing surveillance and personalisation as a top-down process, led fundamentally by producers and technology. On the other hand, producer led personalisation, and thus surveillance, is even failing to meet consumer demand (Segment 2017). 92 per cent of companies reported that their consumers expect personalisation, and this has increased 7 per cent in the last year alone (Evergage 2020: 4). Furthermore, only 31 per cent of consumers are happy with the level of personalisation they receive online. Interview data found participants asking for “relevant recommendations I wouldn’t have thought of myself” and demanding “know me where I interact with you” (Mckinsey 2018 23-25). In the case of product personalisation 48 per cent will wait longer for an individual good or service (Deloitte 2015). In their analysis of the evolution of customisation and personalisation Mourtzis & Doukas (2014: 3-4) describe how: “manufacturing experienced notable changes and transitions, attributed to the pressure from social and political situations.” While personalisation hugely benefits producers, empirical evidence thus indicates that consumer demand for personalisation in fact outstrips what suppliers are currently offering. Rather than simply a consequence of technological innovation, these consumer demands for personalisation appear inherently social by nature.

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Introduction

Some have made progress in understanding the need for a comprehensive outlook on what drives personalisation and thus surveillance. Lyon notes how the scholarly literature which critically examines the economic and political ramifications of contemporary surveillance architecture must also consider the emergence of surveillance culture (2019). Similarly, Marwick (2012) suggests how people are not passive with systems of surveillance but actively engage with them, calling for an improved understanding of “social surveillance.” Still these interpretations are modest given the extent of consumer demand and research into the “emotional” essence of personalisation (Bielozorov Bezbradica & Helfet 2019; Postma Brokke 2002; InMoment 2017; Segment 2017). Kotler (1989: 47) summarises idealised visions of personalisation:

The “mass market” is dead […] Today’s computer technologies and automation capabilities within factories now allow us to bring out affordable, individualized versions of products- every consumer’s dream”

To develop a deeper understanding of what drives personalisation thus requires us to assess the configuration of these consumer dreams of “individualised” consumption. Slavoj Žižek (2014a: 497) elaborates on how exactly we should analyse these visions, fantasies, dreams: “ideological dreams are not simply opposed to reality: they structure (what we experience as) reality... as an escape from encountering the Real.” This claim suggests that an assessment into the ideological underpinnings of dreams of personalisation can illuminate what drives consumer demand.

This thesis assesses how personalisation operates ideologically, in turn facilitating the expansion of digital capitalism. It uses psychoanalytical ideology critique to situate desires for personalisation in the culture of capitalism itself. Specifically, it assesses the extent to which the Lacanian theory of fantasy can be used to illuminate what structures desires for personalised consumption. But firstly, the concept of personalisation must be unpacked. When we speak of personalisation, we refer to “an approach to customer engagement— almost a philosophy— that focuses on delivering tailored, meaningful, and relevant customer communication” (Mckinsey 2018: 10). It indicates a social relationship between the consumer the producer (Mittal & Lassar, 1996). Instead of treating consumers as indistinguishable units, personalisation believes in each individual’s unique tastes and preferences. Mckinsey (2018: 16) provide an example of this:

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Introduction

An affluent, married mom and homeowner, Jane shops at a national clothing retailer online, in the store, and occasionally via the app. When visiting the retailer’s website in search of yoga pants, she finds style choices based on previous purchases, the purchases of customers with profiles similar to hers, and the styles of yoga pants most frequently purchased on weekends.

I should also mention a point of clarification for this research. Although many studies emphasise the distinction between customisation, a user personalising their own content or product, and personalisation, a service provider producing personalised recommendations or commodities, from the perspective of this study both features represent the same trend- the re-embedding of ‘the individual’ into consumer society.

The notion of personalisation is ‘intuitive but also slippery’ (Fan & Poole 2006:183). It is slippery because it is broad concept that refers to a range of marketing and production dynamics. For this reason, this thesis will use a variety of examples to analyse this trend including personalised marketing, personalised recommendations and personalised products. Describing personalisation as “intuitive” suggest that growing consumer demand for individualised consumption is a natural desire. This assumption makes personalisation an ideal subject for ideological analysis. Žižek (2010: 31) elaborates: “it is precisely the neutralisation of some features into a spontaneously accepted background that marks out ideology at its purest and its most effective.” This should beg the question why has personalisation has become so popular and what ideological forces have legitimised this aspiration for uniqueness.

It is essential to understand how the spontaneous belief in individualism came to exist.

Furthermore, if personalisation is “intuitive,” and individualism is considered to be the natural order of capitalism, why are companies continuously faced with the challenge of rearticulating and emphasising individualism in consumer culture? Thus, “the role of critical discourse is to deconstruct the phantasmatic background that structures the social and to find the symptomatic elements that signal the internal point of failure - the limit point of the abstract imaginary” (Mcmillian 2008: 3). We must therefore examine personalisation’s wider role in capitalism and individualism. This leads us to the following research question:

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Introduction

I will now outline my methodology. This thesis will use psychoanalytical ideology critique to approach the growing demand for both online personalisation, such as personalised communication, recommendations and production. Ideology critique is often considered dated in critical academia, following a series of rejections of the concept, beginning with Foucault (1995). These approaches reject ideology critique, the primary reason being that Orthodox Marxism traditionally conceptualised ideology in terms of ‘false consciousness.’ The ideological underpinnings of consumerism were articulated in terms of false consciousness most notably by Theodor Adorno (1944) and Herbert Marcuse (1964). Critics of false consciousness approaches have denounced this conceptualisation of ideology, as it positions ideology in direct opposition to something which is supposed to be considered objective truth (Foucault 1995). Using ideology critique in this way can be considered an informal fallacy, which creates problematic “binary juxtapositions” between ideas of appearance and reality, or true and false (Wilson 2014a: 302). For this reason, many critics, notably post-structuralist scholars, have abandoned the term.

Yet a theory of ideology is important for understanding how “socio-historical traditions and their systems of meaning” can provide an “account of how ideology grips its subjects” (Jason Glynos 2001a: 195- italics in original). Building on the work of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek, this thesis proposes to conceptualise ideology as fantasy-construction, structuring social reality against a traumatic Real (Žižek 1989). As Glynos notes, this analytic shift involves a re-conceptualisation of ideology towards an ontological understanding (Glynos 2001a).

The incorporation of Lacanian psychoanalysis into cultural studies, postmodern philosophy and political economy can be traced back to the early works of Slavoj Žižek (1989). For Žižek, social reality as we experience it is an ontological formation ‘constructed’ through ideology. In other words, Žižek proposes ideology to be a fantasy-construction, structuring social reality against a traumatic ‘Real’ (1989). This critical ontology, following Lacan, includes three registers: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real (ibid). Before explaining how each register functions, it is important to note that these three registers do not imply three autonomous realms of existence (Bailly 2012:89). Rather, Lacan envisages the relationship between the registers to replicate a Borromean Knot, a structure which is interlinked and cannot be disassembled (Žižek 1997:7).

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Introduction

The first register, the Imaginary, pertains to the process by which the ego is conceived and born (Myers 2003:21). This register is both Lacan’s first ‘breakthrough’ in psychoanalytic thought and the first stage a human goes through in their psychosexual development (Fink 2006). During the ‘mirror stage’, the child sees their own reflection and identifies with that image, providing the ego with an illusory sense of unity and identity concealing the incoherence of existence. As Myers notes, the Imaginary remains a “desperately capricious force,” as the human-subject maintains a conflict between the unity that they identify with and the experience of the self (2003:22). The second, the Symbolic register can broadly be understood as the social cultural and linguistic networks into which we are born (Leader 2014: 42). Thus, the Symbolic order refers to “the laws of the unconscious organisation of human society” (Bailly 2012:84). The Symbolic order is structured by ‘Master Signifiers’ (e.g. symbols of paternal/social authority, which organize language/ ‘reality’).

The Symbolic and Imaginary coordinates of existence coalesce to structure social reality against the Real. In Clinical psychoanalysis, the Real, as the third register, refers to traumatic experiences which have been repressed (such as childhood sexual abuse). The Real does not participate in the symbolically constituted social reality, but is necessarily always there, noticeable by its symptomatic effects. As Žižek notes, “What we experience as ‘reality’ constitutes itself through the foreclosure of some traumatic X […] the Real kernel around which symbolization turns […] which returns again and again, disrupting any symbolic identity” “The symptom is a modality in which we experience the Real insofar as it is the point at which the hegemonic order […] fails.” (Žižek 1997:120). In other words, the spectre of the Real continues to haunt social reality. Externalising the causation of symptoms is referred to, in Lacanian terms, as ‘disavowal.’ Through unconscious strategies of repression and disavowal, it is possible to maintain the order of ideological social fantasies.

We can now turn to the concept of fantasy. For Lacan, fantasy is a support ‘screen’ veiling the totalising nature of the Real (Žižek 1989: 132). Against common conceptualisations that fantasy is something which is opposed to Reality, instead fantasy constitutes the subject’s, sense of reality which displaces or pacifies the nature of the Real. For example, Dean argues that neoliberal fantasy displaces crises of capitalism onto the ‘interventionist state’, thereby providing the logical consistency for the continued prevalence of neoliberal hegemony (2009). Wilson notes on the nature of fantasy in relation to reality: “reality is held together by a specific fantasy, operating in the Imaginary register, which infuses reality with a sense of stability and

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Introduction

order, and which fills out the gaps and voids in the Symbolic order through which the Real would otherwise continue to make its presence felt” (2014a: 305).

However, the function of fantasy is not only to veil against the Real, but also to structure our relationship to jouissance. Jouissance directly translates as enjoyment; however, Dean notes that jouissance more often describes “excessive, intense pleasure-pain, as that ‘something extra’ for the sake of which we do what otherwise seems irrational, counterproductive, or even wrong” (2008:51). It is important here to elaborate on the role of fantasy in relation to jouissance. Our enjoyment (of food, sex etc.), according to the Lacanian viewpoint, is mediated by fantasy. Although our access to ‘first-order’ jouissance is lost through our entry into the Symbolic order, fantasy provides the means for a limited access. This loss of ‘first-order’ jouissance refers to the process which makes ‘Desire’ possible. In The subversion of the subject

and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious, Lacan argues that the speaking subject

is alienated through their use of the signifier, a product of the Other (1960). This alienation castrates the subject from their access to first-order jouissance. This castration, the lack of Jouissance, constitutes the subject. Subjects strive to ‘fill this gap’ through desire, which perpetually searches for this ‘lost object’ (Bailly 2012:113). However, the referent object of desire is never fixed; rather, it sporadically shifts and moves in search for first-order jouissance. As a result, fantasy sets the coordinates for this desire, literally teaching the subject what to desire. Thus, as Stavrakakis argues, “What we buy is what we fantasise about, and what we fantasise about is what we are lacking: the part of ourselves that is sacrificed […] when we enter the Symbolic system of language” (Stavrakakis 2007:239).

In psychoanalysis, the subject will never be external to the system. Instead of basing ideology on the Cartesianiam assumption of a rational subject which functions in an external objective reality, the subject constitutes reality through three dimensions: the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real.

To answer the research question: “how does personalisation function to realise fantasies of

hyper-individualism?” I will use two sub-research questions. I will operationalise fantasy using

the concepts of disavowal and jouissance. This is appropriate, as disavowal of symptoms of the Real acts to sustain social fantasies, while our relation to jouissance, maintains official discourse and is structured by socially constituted fantasies. This leads me to formulate two sub-research question:

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Introduction

1) How does personalisation disavow symptoms of postmodern consumerism? 2) How does jouissance operate in personalisation?

In Chapter 2 I will introduce the Lacanian rejection of Cartesianism. I discuss the evolution of individualism and its acceleration in the neoliberal period. It will be highlighted how consumerism facilitated the adoption of unique, diverse identities, as they are celebrated in contemporary capitalism. I do this to show how individualism operates at the level of the Imaginary as a fantasy which structures our social reality. Chapter 3 will discuss symptoms of the Real in the post-modern period which directly conflict with the celebrated individuality. In doing so I highlight how capitalist cultural production conflicts with the ideological imperative to ‘be yourself’ in late capitalism. Chapter 4 will show how personalisation functions to disavow of the demise of authenticity in post-modern consumer societies through sustaining a sense of ‘the individual.’ This will exemplify how personalisation acts to maintain the social fantasy of individualism. Chapter 5 will discuss how jouissance operates in personalised products. This will show how personalisation mobilises pre-Symbolic enjoyment, structured by fantasy. Thus, Chapter 4 and 5 together suggest how personalisation is structured by ideological fantasies of individualism. Chapter 6 will discuss how ideological cynicism is useful for understanding the growing salience of privacy concerns. I do this, as privacy concerns are a neglected subject in theoretical discussions of surveillance culture. In order to provide a comprehensive theory of the ideologies of personalisation and surveillance culture these concerns must be taken into account.

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Fantasies of Individualism

2. Fantasies of Individualism

If personalisation is an opportunity to realise the unique preferences of the self, then it is important to develop an understanding of what the ‘self’ is. The purpose of this chapter is to outline the composition of our individualised social order and identify the manner in which individualism infiltrates subjects. It will elaborate on the psychoanalytical critique of Cartesian philosophy, the internalisation of the concept of ‘the individual’ and how consumerism has become the primary means for subjects to express their individuality.

2.1 Lacan’s Rejection of Cartesianism

The ‘self’ is predominantly conceptualised in terms of Cartesian philosophy or ego psychology. For Descartes, the subject comes to conceive their own existence through conscious self-awareness. Thinking and being coincide in order to produce “I,” hence, “I think therefore I am,’ and thus conscious reasoning constitutes subjectivity. However, Cartesianism has been refuted and rejected by a multitude of critical schools of thought. One of these rejections comes from Lacanian psychoanalysis, which is antithetically described as “the study of failure, the specific failure of the individual form” (Dean 2013: unpaginated). Lacan found Descartes’ approach overly optimistic and rejected the coincidental overlap of thinking and being. Rather the subject is permanently split between consciousness and the unconscious which never converge, a total rejection of Descartes’s overlap.

2.1.1 Ego as other

For Lacan, the ego refers to a sense of one’s self. The ego is constituted through a variety of images, understood and structured linguistically to signify meaning. This begins with one’s own reflection, at a time in one’s life referred to as the “mirror stage” (Lacan 2007). It is through the collection and internalisation of images within the Symbolic order that one comes to conceive one’s own identity. When an infant begins to realise their own identity, they understand their characteristics through language. For example, “I have blonde hair,” “I have green eyes.” This use of language to express their thoughts requires internalising rules and meaning previously alien to them. Thus, a baby consciously develops an alienated sense of being, or in other words, the ego is ‘other.’ For Žižek, (1989: 202), at this point the child begins

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the process of “ideological interpellation.” This internalisation of otherness is far removed from the assumption of the subject as an individual.

An important feature in the composition of the ego is to develop a coherent sense of the self. Thus, in order to “make sense of the world” around the subject, the development of the ego “does not allow for the crystallisation of images in cases in which images are too contradictory to fuse in anyway.” Furthermore, the ego is exposed to “false images” and “miscommunication” (Fink 2006: 37). An example of one of these false images is the infant’s reflection. The image the baby sees of itself in the mirror and comes to understand as their ego is in fact not their true appearance but instead an inverse. As Lacan argued, statements such as “I believe that” or “Personally, I like to…,” are in fact associated with this conceptualisation of the self or ego. In fact, “I” means nothing more than “I who am speaking” (Lacan 1993: unpaginated). Motivated by a longing for unattainable wholeness, “ego thinking is mere conscious rationalization (the ego’s attempt to legitimate blunders and unintentional utterances by fabricating after-the-fact explanations which agree with the self-image), and the being thus engendered can only be categorised as false or fake” (Fink 2006: 44). Therefore, rather than some people sometimes developing false consciousness or false desires, all relations are in fact processed in an unnatural or false way. The conscious human psyche fails to truly represent an individual.

2.1.1 Unconscious as Other

Rejecting Descartes and following Freud, Lacan emphasises the role of the unconscious in constituting the subject. The unconscious is described by Lacan as ‘the Other’s discourse,’ or words and signs which operate outside consciousness or discourse of the self. When Lacan, repeats that “the unconscious is structured like language,” he highlights how images that are repressed or externalised from consciousness also develop as chains of signifiers to produce meaning (Lacan in Fink 2006: 312). For clarification, Lacan’s discussion of the unconscious does not refer to it as acting like languages like French or German, but instead refers to a structure of signs which operate within the same network (Fink 2006: 9). With very precise rules over which the ego has no control” (ibid 9). Understanding the unconscious as the discourse of the Other indicates the infiltration by other people’s ‘desires’, ‘goals’, conversations’ and ‘fantasies,’ which take an independent existence within ourselves (ibid 10).

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The unconscious consists of “indelible knowledge” that is “absolutely not subjectivised” (Lacan 1973 in Fink 2006 :7). Signifiers are “passively registered,” the unconscious does not contain “something one knows, but rather something that is known” (Fink 2006: 9). This conceptualisation of the unconscious is also not representative of the individual.

For Lacan, the Cartesian “I” lies “between two forms of otherness-the ego as other and the unconscious as the Other’s discourse” (Fink 1995:46). The subject comes to understand their place in the social order and relations with the world around them through alien structures of Otherness. This logic rejects the “individual” or “what we might call the consciously thinking subject which is referred to by traditional or analytical philosophy” (ibid 36). Lacan states this himself, arguing: “the subject in question has nothing to do with what we call subjective in the value sense […] nor does it have anything to do with the individual” (Lacan 1993: unpaginated). Conceptualising the “unconscious as the discourse of the Other (Lacan, 1955/2006)[…] and desire as the desire of the Other (Lacan, 1964/2004) […] [means] that they undermine the place which is usually keep intact and reserved for an autonomous subject or a substantial conception of a subject with fixed needs or drives” (Presskorn-Thygesen & Bjerg 2014: 201-202). Lacan’s psychoanalytical rejection of Cartesian individualism provides a basis for the following discussion.

To clarify, Lacan distinguishes in his work between two forms of otherness. The ego of the Imaginary realm is denoted as ‘other’, while the structures that govern the unconscious, the ‘Symbolic order,’ are noted as ‘Other.’ This distinction will be used throughout this thesis, as Lacan would have intended. However, it should be noted that the terms ‘other’ and ‘Other’ make the same point for my argument. Both oppose the concept of the individual Cartesian subject.

2.2 The Subject Is Interpellated as an Individual

Now that we have considered the Lacanian critique of ‘the individual,’ I will examine how ideological structures act to produce subjectivity. This section will develop on Jodi Dean’s argument that the “subject is interpellated as an individual,” a debate she raises to emphasise the central focus on the individual within existing ideology. Here, ideology refers to how the notion of the individual is a product of depoliticization, naturalisation and internalisation.

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Althusser reframed Marx’s concept of ideology, arguing that “ideology has the function [...]of constituting concrete individuals as subjects” (1971: 172). Individuals are interpellated as subjects, he argued, through material practices which constitute the social order. In a rejection of humanism, Althusser suggested that free agency, while in fact illusionary, leads individuals to produce their own subjectivities through interactions with institutions such as schools, churches and the media, which reinforce the dominant ideology. The theory of interpellation has received much criticism for equating the subject with the individual (Hirst 1976), failing to elaborate on the “doctrine of conscience” (Butler 1997) or neglecting class struggle (Ranciere 2011). Dean’s concern stems from the assumption of ‘the individual’ being prior to ideology. The concept of interpellation is more useful as a “theory of individuation than as a theory of subjection,” Dean argues (2016: 79). Thus, for Dean, “the subject is interpellated as an individual” (ibid 77). I argue that this interpellation has taken place through the manifestation of ideological doctrines, material practises and the internalisation of individualism into one’s spontaneous belief system. I will discuss each factor in turn.

2.2.1 Doctrines

Laissez-faire economics conceptualises the individual agent as the starting point for economic analysis. The majority of capital belongs to private individuals, who operate free from the intervention of the state. These ideas have origins in the 18th_{century as articulated by Adam}

Smith, but have been embraced more recently, advocated especially by the members of the Mont Perelin society from the mid-twentieth century onwards. In retrospect, there is more to individualism than doctrines of economic liberalism which demonise the state. Political individualism, accelerated especially after the French Revolution, identified individuality as a natural right intrinsic to democratic principles (De Tocqueville 1954). Speaking on the US context, Lukes argued that (1973:26) that individualism has immense ideological significance conceived in relation to natural rights, self-determination and empowerment. Additionally, in the aftermath of the Protestant reformation, whereby subjects became accountable to themselves for their own redemption, the notion of individual responsibility transcended a merely religious setting to produce social and economic norms to become the basis of modern individualism (Dean 2016). The concept of an individual as it is understood today has also been linked to evolutionary biology, notably Darwinism (Williams 2015 :163). The ideological

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effect here is twofold. On the one hand, as discussed, the subject is interpellated as an individual by emphasising the liberating effects of negative freedom. The second effect is the condemnation of collective configurations. Subjects are interpellated as individuals following the rapid decline in “groups, tribes, collectives, and crowds” in the modern era (Dean 2016: 80). Collectives became labelled “unavoidably primitive, barbaric and irrational and atavistic” (Dean 2016: 80). As a result of these doctrines, individuality grew to be regarded as the morally superior alternative to collectivism, which posed a threat to enshrined values of freedom (Gray 2015). Individual thought and action took precedence over any kind of communal affiliation, be it social, political, cosmological or religious.

2.2.2 Materiality

Individualism also manifested materially. The wide acceptance of Smithian principles of division of labour was noted by Engels in England in the mid 1800s: "the dissolution of mankind in monads, of which each has a separate principle of life and a separate goal, the world of atoms, is here carried to its utmost extremes” (Engels 1993). Various policy changes in the neoliberal period have rapidly increased individualisation of the economy and society. This can be seen in the privatisation of social housing, based on enshrined principles of private property in the UK, further embedding an individualist complex. Boltanski and Chiapello (2007) argue that on the back of growing discontent with hierarchical employment structures, management experts and neoliberals revised the spirit of capitalism in the workplace in France in 1980s and 90s. Networks of autonomous employees replaced managerial firms, in which diversity and individuality came to be continuously celebrated. Hierarchies dissolved into “enterprises of themselves”, the concept of human capital received growing attention (Lemke 2001:100). “Charisma, vision, gifts of communication, intuition, and mobility become the ideal traits of the new leaders – dressed-down, cool capitalists [...] who refuse to surround themselves with the formal trappings of bureaucratic authority” (Budgen 2000:153). In the case of education, personal achievements were praised irrespective of their contribution to the collective good. Thus, students have little choice of an alternative, as meritocracy compels individuals to strive to maximise individual achievement in order to be successful (Davies 2006). Furthermore, Foucault (1995) suggested that individualisation was intrinsically linked to strategies of bio-discipline. The rationale here is that discipline is much more difficult for a group than for an individual, so “disciplinary space tends to be divided into as many sections as there are bodies,” so as to eradicate "the crowd, a compact mass, a locus of multiple

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exchanges, individualities merging together, a collective effect " (Foucault 1995: 143). This logic also established itself in legal practises. The traditional sentencing model emphasised Christian penitentiary practice and only two variables, “circumstance” and “intention” impacted how one was punished (ibid 99). Now the “defendant” would be judged on an individual basis “to his nature, to his way of life and his attitude of mind, to his past, to the 'quality' and not to the intention of his will” (ibid 99). For Foucault, these examples emphasise the issue of assuming the pre-existence of the individual prior to interpellation.

2.2.3 Spontaneous Belief

As highlighted, it cannot be denied that individualism has a more far reaching history than simply referring to a component of capitalism. What, Foucault alludes to and what will be discussed here is how individualism is harnessed in order to produce a desired effect. As Montag elaborates: “individuals are picked out from an undifferentiated mass, singled out removed from it and endowed with a unique identity, as if such a singling out or separation of individuals were necessary to the functioning of the economy” (2002: 137). Montag makes a persuasive point linking the processes of individualisation to the continuous functioning of capitalism. There is an indefinite relationship between free markets and individuals: “markets, embed individualist reasoning as they emphasise individual responsibility, but also individual freedom in relation to freedom of contract and mobility intrinsic to capitalist employment” (Giddens 1995:197). While I agree with this argument, I would add, that the embedding of individualism is also performative in that it justifies the laissez faire principle as an extension of the natural order. Underlying these experimental projects of liberal enterprise was a narrative which suggested that change would restore a natural structure of free-thinking individuals. These changes further eroded collectivist tendencies, altering the ideological makeup of social interactions and restructuring the fundamental understanding of the makeup of society on an individualised basis. Lemke elaborates that the influence of the neoliberal period was so far-reaching because the policy plans were expressed, “not just as ideological rhetoric or as a political-economic reality, but above all as a political project that endeavours to create a social reality it suggests already exists” (Lemke 2001 in Samadder 2017: 225). Therefore, the rationality of neoliberalism suggests that any individual group or institution must “be ‘lean’, ‘fit’, ‘flexible’ and ‘autonomous’’(ibid). Thus, the subject is itself a product of systems of individualisation, which has come to internalise ideals of individuality as instinctive for human beings.

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The post-political nature of individualism is demonstrated in the Left’s embrace of the concept: "we know collective action is possible theoretically but we don't believe we exist” (Dean 2009: 10). Charles Leadbeater exemplifies this in a piece he wrote in Marxism Today in 1988: “if the Left stands for one thing it should be this: people taking more responsibility for all aspects of their lives” (1988:14). Depoliticization has generated a consensus surrounding individualism and drives the spontaneous belief that we are individual. Politics is centred around the idea that “disembodied individualization is a reality thus there are no collective concerns and instead government should aim to increase personalisation and choice of each individual’s life world” (Dawson 2013: 96). Silva’s (2013) research into young working-class adults living in Massachusetts and Virginia further illustrates the internalisation of individual responsibility. Silva’s ethnographic research suggests that young adults believed it was wrong to rely on other people or the state, rather they reported to strive for self-sufficiency. As Bauman notes, “being an individual de jure means having no one to blame for one's own misery, seeking causes of one's own defeats nowhere except in one's own indolence and sloth” (Bauman 2013: 106).

These examples highlight a culture of individualism which circulates through subjects. Eagleton-Pierce (2016) usefully summarises the evolution of individualist principles: “the ideology of individualism is theorised here as a practical set of relatively stable schemas [doctrines], grounded in lived experiences [material practices], and cultivated by many players including, but also beyond, a privileged elite population [spontaneous belief]” (my own brackets). This section has suggested how subjects are socially interpellated as individuals. However, in a culture of commanded individualism, a pressing issue is how individuality can be fully expressed and realised. I argue that consumerism has become a primary vehicle for expressing one’s individuality.

2.3 Individuality in Consumerism

Consumerism, or consumer society, refers to the growing dominance of consumption and materialism in social life, as Baudrillard argued: “consumption is laying hold of the whole of life” (Baudrillard 1970: 10). It is widely accepted that consumerism has become a fundamental part of existence under late capitalism; it is a “doctrine of contemporary capitalism: a cultural ideology founded on the idea and imperative of consumption” (Xaiver 2016). The rapid acceleration of consumerism in the mid-twentieth century also reconstitutes the subject. While the epoch of industrialism was centred around production, workers and ownership, what is

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significant in the ‘age of consumption’ is the production of the consuming subject (Baudrillard 1970; Bauman 1998).

Consumerism is not just a “market beneficiary that satisfies our needs; rather modern consumer capitalism also implies a Symbolic structuring of our needs and our capacity for enjoyment” (Presskorn-Thygesen & Bjerg 2014: 216). As a result, consumption has become another vehicle by which to express individuality, as Giddens (1995: 197) argues:

individualism becomes extended to the sphere of consumption, the designation of individual wants becoming the basis to the continuity of the system. Market governed freedom of individual choice becomes an enveloping framework of individual self-expression.

This change towards consumption as an instrument to express one’s self was supplemented by historical changes: “the individual […] removed from traditional commitments and support relationships […] exchanges them for the constraints of existence in the labour market and as a consumer” (Beck et al 1992: 131). Historic social relations of “class” and “nuclear family” were in decline, and the individual came to be “dependent upon fashions, social policy, economic cycles and markets, contrary to the image of individual control which establishes itself in consciousness.” (ibid 132). The growth of consumerism also paralleled growth in leisure time over the course of the twentieth century, which disbanded the idea that one’s identity was simply their occupation (Riesman 1950: 79).

Bauman argued: “’consumerism' is a type of social arrangement that results from recycling mundane, permanent and so to speak 'regime-neutral' human wants, desires and longings into the principal propelling and operating force of society" (Bauman 2013: 28) emphasis in original). The so-called “neutrality” of consumption is important for understanding the ideological underpinnings of consumption, as Žižek notes: “it is precisely the neutralisation of some features into a spontaneously accepted background that marks out ideology at its purest” (Žižek 2008: 31).

Internalising consumerism as post-political and beyond the realm of antagonistic politics exemplifies exactly its ideological nature. The political character of consumerism has received significant attention (Cohen 2004; Hirschman 2002; McGovern 2004). In a culture where commodification is hegemonic, for the “citizen consumer” “freedom of choice” becomes the

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synonymous with liberty (Wildt 2005:256 in Wirsching 2013:15). Following the First World War, many considered mass consumption significant for delivering economic prosperity in peace time (Cohen 2004). Consumption was not considered indulgent but a civic duty in which demand would ensure increased production, increase the quality of life of all Americans and bring about a more equitable society (ibid). In this sense, consumption became akin to a social responsibility. Furthermore, the individualization of politics into commodifiable "lifestyles and opinions subsumes politics into consumption” (Dean 2009:11). As early as the 1920s, Kyrk (1924: 41) argued, against Marxist criticism of mass standardised production, that consumption was as deceivably empowering, indicating a “regime of individualism in consumption, as it is in production, in government, in religion.” Even socially responsible or smart consumption, such as vegan food and clothing, has grown to become a sign of individual identity (Wilson 2014b; Wirsching 2011; Dean 2009). What emerges from this discussion is that consumption offers subjects an opportunity to differentiate themselves from other materially, and realise internalised striving for individuality. Davis (2003: 44) elaborates on how widened access to consumer goods is useful in constructing a culture of individuality and diversity:

We identify our real selves by the choices we make from the images, fashions, and lifestyles available in the market, and these in turn become the vehicles by which we perceive others and they us. In this way [ ...] self-formation is in fact exteriorized, since the locus is not on an inner self but on an outer world of objects and images valourized by commodity culture.

Consumerism is accepted as a defining factor of self, which allows for self-expression in a culture of individualism. Individual autonomy, authenticity and “personal perfection,” can be realised through the goods market (Bauman 1989:189). Thus, in an era where traditional collective identities were in decline, leisure time was increasing and new realms of sociality, such as identity, were becoming subject to commodification, consumer society upheld notions of individualism. Thus, the desire for individuality manifests in consumption habits: “today’s dreamers of psychological self-determination, want to buy something that has never been for sale—support in the invention and sustenance of a unique life” (Morozov 2019). One thing that is taken for granted in these arguments is that there exists a deep desire to express one’s individuality and differentiate oneself from others. Such an assumption re-enforces my previous argument that individualised culture is internalised within our belief system.

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To recap, in this chapter I have outlined the psychoanalytical critique of individualism. The ‘individual’ merely represents the subject’s ego; however, the subject is produced through a system of alien beliefs, norms and ideals. Thus, rather than being truly individual, the subject is constituted by ideology and is, therefore, a “false being” rather than a real individual. Yet the concept of an ‘individual’ is ideologically produced, internalised and accepted indicating how socially constituted reality functions as a fantasy, perceived as the natural order. This spontaneous belief constitutes the individuality of the subject. These arguments highlight the allure of consumerism in allowing subjects to realise socially constituted fantasies of individualism. However, in line with Žižek’s symptomatic reading of ideology, the ‘Real’ which is deliberately excluded from the subject’s Imaginary register will always re-emerge in social reality. Thus, the following chapter aims to highlight where ideological interpellation has failed under late capitalism.

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Return of the Repressed

3. Return of the Repressed

So far, this thesis has outlined how the subject’s reality is structured by a social fantasy of individuality. Furthermore, the capitalist social psyche insists “that individual liberty is identical with the subjective desires of consumers” (Cross 2001: 1). Diversity and creativity are cherished and embraced in culture industries. As Durham & Kellner (2012: xxxv) argue, “the current form of consumer capitalism is more fragmented, specialized, aestheticized and eroticized, and celebratory of difference, choice, and individual freedom than the previous stage.” Yet, writing on the post-modern period Eagleton-Pierce notes several ways in which capitalist individualistic culture is paradoxical, such as capitalism’s globalising tendencies, the impersonal nature of advertising, and anxiety surrounding “over choice” (Eagleton-Pierce 2016: 8-9).

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how symptoms of the Real of inauthentic consumerism re-emerge in the capitalist social fantasy. To clarify, “the Real is the shock of a traumatic encounter which ruins the balance of the symbolic universe of the subject” (Žižek 1989: 171). I have chosen to outline three characteristics of post-modernism all of which are frequently cited by post-modern critics. I find that each captures the limit placed on genuine self-expression in late capitalism. The features are: pastiche, schizophrenia, and pre-corporation. I will outline how each effect problematises the concepts of the autonomous bourgeois monad or ego or individual. I will then indicate how each is a product of capitalism and highlight its symptoms (Jameson 1991: 14). Jameson argues that the humanist subject with a personal identity, unique characteristics and their own distinct vision of the world, the subject central to modernist philosophical debates “no longer exists” (Jameson 1988: unpaginated). According to Jameson, individualism as we understand it today remains an ideological construction, created and perpetuated by theory, doctrines, practices and institutions (see chapter 1).

This chapter will discuss the deceptive subversion of individualism under late capitalism. Jameson’s argument refers to “post-modernism,” as a phenomenon which one may not immediately connect to capitalism. To make clear, he argues that post-modernism is inherently linked to consumer society and is indeed “the cultural logic of late capitalism.” He argues that post-modernism is merely a manifestation of the colonising essence of capitalism which attempts to infiltrate all spheres of social life (Harvey 1999; Chiapello & Boltanski 2007). Late

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capitalism is composed of a series images which lack traditional meaning or personal value, a series of fetishized commodities (Jameson 1991). I will highlight how each of these postmodern features is explicitly linked to capitalism. However, as Xavier (2018: 3) notes that the one principle “common denominator” relating to these changes is commodification as a feature of capitalism. In addition, unlike Featherstone, Jameson understands that post-modernism does not purely relate to culture but is rather a “mode of production” (Jameson 1991: 405). At the same time the “symptomatology” of “cultural production finds a specific functional place” (ibid). In other words, cultural production is useful for illustrating how symptoms of the Real have re-emerged in the social fantasy.

3.1 Pastiche

The first characteristic of late capitalism that will be illustrated, is described as ‘Pastiche;’ a concept unique to post-modernism marking a decline in authenticity and retreat from the personal or authentic (Jameson 1988: unpaginated). Jameson is one of many scholars who criticise the submersion of high and low culture into holistic mass culture. Although this argument has been dismissed as elitist, it is possible to understand how a homogenous approach to thinking has detrimental implications for generating alternative trains of thought. The cultural logic of capitalism, for Jameson, acts like a ‘parody’, a mask which depicts a copy of an original but lacks meaning itself. Invoking Plato’s concept of a simulacrum, he argues that post-modern culture is a replica which is less concerned with content and more with creating the illusion of meaning or value.

While “parody,” a modernist concept, always had “ulterior motives,” for example to mock, pastiche is a neutral impulse, or is “blank,” therefore lacking self-reflection (ibid). The consumer society of pastiche is significant for our discussion, as it leads us to experience history in a vacuum. Doing so limits our ability to develop a comprehensive understanding of ourselves, as pastiche signals the dissolution of the coherent and unified construct. Post-modern culture places humans in a “space in which people are unable to map either their own positions or the urban totality in which they find themselves” (Jameson 1991: 51). Nostalgic of the utopian horizons of the 1960s, Jameson (1991: 121) argues the that old autonomous sphere of culture has been “penetrated” and “degraded” This inauthenticity of aesthetic production, so Jameson’s argument, diverges from the phantasmatic narratives of consumer society which championed, freedom, diversity and individuality. These arguments indicate how authenticity

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has become a bewildering and complex task as long as inauthentic aesthetic production is a feature of post-modern consumer society.

Jameson argues that “nostalgic” films, clothing and architecture are an example of Pastiche as they lack originality, simply restructuring old storylines. Moreover, postmodern society, in its lack of a dominant culture, is nostalgic more generally, in a ‘desperate attempt to appropriate a missing past’ while in a state of social fragmentation (Jameson 1991: 18). The extent of pastiche in cultural production today cannot be emphasised enough. One only has to consider the some of the Oscar winners from 2020. ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood;’ a remake of a traditional Western; ‘1917’, a flash back to the First World War; the fourth ‘Toy Story’ movie; or ‘The Joker’, the tale of a character who made his debut into Marvel Comics in April 1940. A May 2020 Harper’s Bazaar issue proclaims: ‘The 80s Are Back: 60 Fashion moments to

Relive from the decade’ (Fisher & Algoo 2020). Another Nylon article reads: ‘Why the ‘60s is the Next Decade to Watch for Fashion’ (Becker 2020). These highlight how imitation has

colonised social life. Rather than genuine attempts to represent the past, pastiche exploits nostalgia for economic gain. The culture industry lacks original substance so it renews popular content. This return to what is ‘popular’ is the exact antithesis of authentic individualism.

3.2 Schizophrenia

I will now outline the schizophrenic nature of late capitalism, as described by Jameson (1988). The Lacanian pathology refers to when a child fails to accede into the realm of language, the realm of the Symbolic. As outlined in Chapter 1 for Lacan the role of speech and language is essential in constituting subjectivity. Thus “when that relationship breaks down (between words, signs and images) when the links of the signifying chain snap, then we have schizophrenia in the form of a rubble of distinct and unrelated signifiers” (Jameson 1991: 25 my own brackets). The break down in the chain of signifiers and thus the inability to construct meaning over time confines the schizophrenic’s temporal existence to the present: “if we are unable to unify the past, present, and future of the sentence, then we are similarly unable to unify the past, present, and future of our own biographical experience or psychic life.“ Words and signs become dissociated from their wider context, devoid of original meaning and are thus received in a purely literal sense. Jameson describes the intensification of the present as an

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intoxicated sense of “unreality.” As a consequence, the schizophrenic is unable comprehend and understand their own personal identity. Jameson (1988: unpaginated) argues:

The schizophrenic experience is an experience of isolated, disconnected, discontinuous material signifiers which fail to link up into a coherent sequence. The schizophrenic thus does not know personal identity in our sense, since our feeling of identity depends on our sense of the persistence of the "I" and the "me" over time.

In this sense the schizophrenic is “no one.” The schizophrenic is also “nothing,” as the schizophrenic cannot commit themselves to an interest or enterprise over time. When a signifier loses its meaning, in its disassociation from its historical context, it transforms into an image (Jameson 1988). Thus, for the schizophrenic reality is transformed into meaningless images.

Conceptualising post-modern capitalism as a series of meaningless images, resonates with capitalism’s culture of commodification. I will attempt to unpack this analogy, by contrasting post-modernism with earlier stages of capitalism. As Žižek argues: (1997: 13)

capitalism itself is no longer historical; it is rootless, with no tradition of its own, and therefore parasitical upon previous traditions, a universal order which (like modern science) can thrive anywhere from Japan to Argentina, uprooting and slowly corroding all particular life-worlds based on specific traditions. So, history is that which gets lost with the growth of capitalism…the properly 'historical' is only a moment, even if this moment is properly unending and goes on for centuries - the moment of passage from pre-capitalist societies to a capitalist universal order.

In this sense post-modern capitalism is ‘schizophrenic.’ The dis-embedding of historical tradition noted here disrupts the temporal unification of the subject. The correlation between post-modern schizophrenia and capitalism, is again a product of capitalism’s inherent process of commodification. Thus, the logic of accumulation fundamental to capitalism, knows no boundaries in terms of culture, religion etc. It thus unrelentingly threatens tradition. In this sense the commercialisation of culture attacks authenticity, reproducing traditions without the original integrity. This is because the purpose of production becomes commercial gain rather than symbolic meaning. One of the key factors in this transformation is the historical

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discontinuity of cultural production. We can identify three examples how capitalism has infiltrated tradition, depriving it of its historical nature.

An example is how many experience Christmas in advanced industrialised societies, devoid of religion altogether and refocused around material values. In a discussion on the rise of consumerism Cross (2000:2) notes: “Christmas became shopping season.” Thus, the cultural logic of capitalism has contaminated traditional meaning and has broken with history. Another cause of the post-modern schizophrenia that Jameson describes is the impact of globalisation. He describes a “complex new international space” in which punctual, political and local countercultural forms of cultural resistance are disarmed and reabsorbed (Jameson 1991: 412, 48).

Thus, a second example is noted in Ammara Maqsood’s (2014) study on the patterns of Islamic consumption in Pakistan. The study provides a clear example of the antagonism between particular localities and capitalism’s globalising tendencies. She outlines the subjectivities of many Muslims in urban Lahore whose desires are shaped by a vison of the idealised West highlighted through the popularity and consumption of DVDs of sermons, Islamic ringtones and headscarves. This fusion of cultural perspectives, as Muslims internalise once alien ideals highlights the break-down of traditional identity. In the world around the subject social life is faced with a process of constant adaptation, and all areas of social life are open to one another. Thus, “distant events may become as familiar, or more so, than proximate influences, and integrated into the frameworks of personal experiences” (Giddens 1991 189).

Thirdly, at some point every year I come into contact with yet another miniature Buddha figure in a Western household. The sale of religious symbols for the purpose of aesthetic points out the commodification of religion disassociated from genuine religious meaning. Even if the household does claim to broadly align themselves with similar values to those enshrined in Buddhism, the religion itself emphasises how all Buddha figures are sacred and must be kept honourably with religious connotations intact (Ryan 2014). The respectability and sacred nature of the symbol is largely compromised when the Buddha is placed next to a toilet. Žižek (2005) also notes how Western Buddhism and notions of mindfulness encourage acceptance of the psychological burdens of capitalist workplace, as subjects are told to “let oneself go” encouraging passivity and “universalised indifference” (Žižek 2001:13; Žižek 2008: 464). In

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this interpretation the religion is devoid of its original meaning. Instead Western Buddhism functions as the “perfect ideological supplement” (Žižek 2005: 12).

These examples highlight the expansionary tendencies of capitalism into social spheres. Thus, as Eagleton-pierce notes (2016:8) the globalising nature of capitalist accumulation “conflicts with other identities of the self...one cannot deny neoliberal consumerism pulls many levers at the same time.” Individuality and these expansionary instances of capitalism tend to contradict each other, as, “knowing one’s class (or nationality or religion) can no longer determine one’s personal outlook, relations, family position, social and political ideas or identity” (Beck 1992:128-131). Overall, “consumerism had no interest in linking the present to the past and future (at least beyond nostalgia and fantasy” (Cross 2000: 3). This schizophrenic order has important implications for the subject’s sense of individuality. As Jameson suggests the disappearance of temporality, has induced as loss of ego, in the Cartesian sense, of personal identity. Thus, this effect of the abandonment of history and fragmentation is another signal of the deterioration of a coherent ego or ‘the individual’ post-modern consumer society.

3.3. Pre-corporation

As well as consumerism’s ‘colonising’ tendencies post-modern capitalism limits the ability to conceptualise utopian horizons beyond capitalism. Pre-corporation, refers to the inability of ideas and narratives to resist commodification. Post-modern consumerism reabsorbs countercultural narratives and strips them of their meaning, in this sense, paralysing any alternative to the status quo. Jameson reiterates this, arguing that the use of the term “materialism”, traditionally associated with the US or consumerism, has lost its value. Nothing can be positioned in opposition to materialism in a “fully commodified world” (1991: 387). He elaborates that post-modernism is:

“a purer and more homogeneous expression of classical capitalism, from which many of the hitherto surviving enclaves of socioeconomic difference have been effaced (by way of their colonization and absorption by the commodity form)[…;] then it makes sense to suggest that the waning of our sense of history, and more particularly our resistance to globalizing or totalizing concepts like that of the mode of production itself, are a function of precisely that universalization of capitalism” (1991: 405).

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Symbols of defiance increasingly submit to the materialistic order. It is interesting to compare the state of affairs in the present to the modern era. Durham & Kellner discuss the cultural transgression highlighted by British cultural studies scholars, writing around in the 1950s:

Individuals who identify with subcultures, like punk or hip hop, look and act differently from those in the mainstream, and create oppositional identities, defining themselves against standard models (2012:12).

Unrestricted commodification has produced a “culture of consumption in which we ourselves are plunged to the point of being unable to imagine anything else,” Jameson argues (1991:206). Brands increasingly use social activism in their advertising to suggest that their products are similarly symbols of freedom. Complete commodification characterises consumer society as a, “totality […] precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself" (Marx: 1858/1978: 278). Pre-corporation is the effect of a totalising ideology of consumerism destabilising opposition. Thus, individuals are not free to act in a meaningful way.

Fisher (2009) notes the emergence of pre-corporation in the present day, which he describes as follows: “'Alternative' and 'independent' don't designate something outside mainstream culture; rather, they are styles, in fact the dominant styles, within the mainstream” (Fisher 2009). Thus, Fisher argues subjects are pre-corporated because their interests, desire and ambitions are structured by capitalist cultural production itself. Thus, they will always descend back to the mainstream, the status quo. Žižek elaborates: If we change reality only in order to realize our dreams, without changing these dreams themselves, then sooner or later we will regress to the former reality.” (Žižek 2010: 79). This reinforces the declining possibilities for authentic and individualised thinking.

What does this limit on utopia mean for the subject? Subjects are consistently told in music, advertising and film, ‘Express yourself,’ ‘Be yourself.’ However, the description of post-modern consumerism is incompatible with a truly individualised society. The inability of the subject to see beyond the status quo, to be truly individual disrupts to ideological Imaginary and thus the social fantasy of the subject.

To conclude this section, far from equating choice with freedom, it has been argued that the cultural logic of late capitalism has a disorientating and depersonalising effect. Remembering

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the passivity of consumers depicted by the Frankfurt school, Abbinnett (2006: 30) argues that “synthetic culture…has transformed the passive consumer into the schizophrenic ego.” Retreating from passivity, this rupturing of individualism is useful to understand the drive of the post-modern subject for greater autonomy and sense of identity. Post-modern consumer capitalism has disrupted the formation of individual identities by hindering how individuals conceive time and thus meaning. Subjects experience discontinuity and disassociation from the realities of the past. The idealised fantasy of individuality which functions as the subject’s social reality is plagued by symptoms of inauthenticity. Post-modernism signals the, “losing of self into a collective subject” (Maffesoli 1989:145). As a Marxist Jameson sees this change both “positively and negatively,” as it could also be harnessed as an opportunity to expose the inconsistencies across capitalism. However, the next chapter will highlight how in contrast to unmasking the impersonal nature of consumerism, symptoms are displaced through strategies of disavowal. The next chapter will suggest why capitalism, rather than being held to account for its contradictions, reshapes and adapts in order to conceal these symptoms of the Real.