Freedom of choice?

In this week's reading, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues that we have become a fully-fledged society of consumers - our primary social role is to buy, use, eat, watch (that is to say, consume) the limitless products offered by late capitalism.

Consumer society appears to offer us an ever-expanding freedom of choice; Bauman alters this picture, arguing that choice is no longer best seen as a freedom, but as a duty.

The responses of our political leaders to two of the defining crises of recent times - the World Trade Center attacks, and the Global Financial Crisis - has been to urge us to get out and shop. Consumption, it seems, is the necessary positive response to troubled times.

Can this compulsory consumption still be regarded as 'freedom'? Is it possible to exercise the freedom not to choose?

Society of the Spectacle

We touched briefly on an important predecessor of Baudrillard - Guy DeBord - in this week's lecture.

As with a number of the theorists we've considered so far, DeBord has a talent for snappy phrases that take on a life of their own, and are often misconstrued. Like 'The Death of the Author,' or 'The Desert of the Real,' 'The Society of the Spectacle' is often deployed without proper respect to the theorist's whole argument.

If you want to know more about the intriguing notion of social life 'as an immense accumulation of spectacles,' there's a full translation here.

Need help with Jameson?

'Cultural Logic' isn't an easy read (particularly when Jameson launches abruptly from some general historical statement into a dizzying reading of this or that cultural artefact) but it is an indispensable plank in this course. This mini-site from Fu Jen University should help you come to grips with the basics.

To augment the picture we painted in week two, here's a reproduction of Simon Reynolds' review of the book-length version of Jameson's theory, originally from The Observer in 1991.

Reynolds gives a really good sense of the totalising ambitions of Jameson's work.

And while you're at it, if you're interested in post-punk music and culture, you can't do better than Reynolds' Rip It Up and Start Again.

enjoy!