ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the ways exchange relationships between consumers and marketers have been constructed in the language of marketing academe. A poststructuralist feminist lens is adopted to deconstruct the rhetoric of marketing relationships. The chapter deconstructs marketing academe's rhetoric of exchange using a feminist poststructuralist approach to unsettle our notions of marketer/consumer relationships and their evolution. It describes some aspects of a feminist poststructuralist approach, contrasting it with feminist viewpoints based on modernist assumptions. The chapter examines the link between the signifiers "feminine" and "consumer" and the signifiers "masculine" and "marketer" from a historical perspective to suggest that these dualisms inform our discourses concerning marketer/consumer exchange. Feminist thinkers share the goal of ending the societal subjugation of women. There are, however, many diverse feminist viewpoints, with widely varying assumptions which offer distinctive social critiques and contrasting implications.
