ABSTRACT
This chapter on competing models of Individualism in theories of Progress, Civilization, and Taste is motivated by a general concern with the term market democracy: the idea that we express our democratic “voice” not by way of our democratic vote but by way of our economic choice. The political system of “social democracy” and the economic system of the “market” have collapsed into one, so that, whether our choices are “free” or the product of multiple constraints, what we buy reveals all the preferences we are allowed to express. Although the essay primarily considers historical models, it will conclude with some discussion of biotechnology and the consumer-citizen that marks the dominant conception of the individual in market democracies today. Inevitably, this is a study of national stereotypes, the ways that Britain, the United States, and Europe have modelled ideal types with competing national inflections. If “recombinance” can be seen as postmodernity’s contribution to such models, the components of ideal models of individualism in art, literature, and philosophy provide an index of possibilities.1
