Consumerism and enjoyment: An ideology understanding between T.W. Adorno and J. Lacan

Abstract

This study questions the possibility of investigating relations between the cultural industry and the dynamics of the satisfaction with consumption in the contemporaneous world, based on the conception of individual taken as the particular reach of the consciousness subject affected by the unconsciousness dimension. The study proposes to redirect to the unconsciousness subject conception, which can be assigned a universality of structure and the subjection of social links to the historical objectivity. This change of focus allows to consider the imperative of enjoyment as the consumption societys ideology: the ideology power, when losing pretension to autonomy and adapting to the material reality (Horhkeimer and Adorno), shifts from characteristic persuation and self-deceiving to a concrete and corporal dimension of compulsivity and drive. For being supported by alienating fixations of the subject, the ideology states and supports the neurotic and compulsive condition of the consumerism and the search of particular satisfaction as a norm.