Abstract

SUSCA, Vincenzo. Unproductive expenditure and spectacular merchandise. Comunicação e Sociedade [online]. 2020, vol.38, pp.243-254. ISSN 1645-2089.  https://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.38(2020).2596.

In order to fully grasp the spirit of our times, we need to analyse fully the contemporary relationship between spectacle and consumption: spectacular consumption and the spectacle of consumption. The chain of sign merchandise (Baudrillard, 1968) is simultaneously a mean and a vehicle of adherence to the productive and political system. It takes on extraordinary value from the moment it welcomes all that is non-rational in a rationalised society, as well as it embodies the anti-utilitarian aspect of a social system based solely on the logic of utilitarianism. In this sense, the cycle of spectacular consumption coincides with the consumption of bourgeois individuality, while the mass that has become public becomes the matrix in which the subject loses itself and cushions the weight of change in a way to express the impulses marginalized by the social system.

Keywords : spectacle; imaginary; consumption.

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