I feel so dirty.

[Peter Kilander]

I think Doug's on to something; it's an issue I've wrestled with and
continue to. Another way to look at it is through the lens of feminist
theory, which I'm not well-versed in. Often it's women who are out buying
things for the family, being heroic consumers while men like myself can't
get out of the shopping mall fast enough.  Also, when Martha Stewart came on
the scene, I felt she was pure evil - I wonder how much of that was the
inner male in me.

I recently came across some health care industry propaganda where it's
stressed that there is a new "consumerism" amongst patients and their
families. They are searching for the best deals and asserting their consumer
sovereignty, thereby "regulating" the industry. I always find it interesting
when words and phrase become contested sites of ideological battle.

Peter


>Barbara Ehrenreich used to have a very convincing rap that the usual left
>line about the desire to consume was horribly moralizing and austere and
>missed the pleasurable aspects of buying stuff. I'm not sure how far I'd go
>with this - there's certainly an aspect of consumerism that involves an
>inevitably dissatisfying displacement of the desire for social contact onto
>the acquisition of things, but on the other hand, there's something
>inevitably dissatisfying about the fulfilment of any desire. There's no
>satistfaction in satisfaction, as Freud said. But I can't imagine left
>politics ever being popular if it remains so drenched in the hair-shirt
>ethic of the Adbuster/voluntary simplicity crowd.
>
>Doug