ABSTRACT
The aim of this discussion is partly to dissolve the category of consumption into the broader strategies of self-definition and self maintenance. Very much of the discussion of consumption is couched in a language that is dependent on the axioms of modernity, the presupposition of an autonomous rational individual inhabiting an empty space in which meaning is constructed externally, via codes, cultural schemes and paradigms, that define the world as a particular kind of stage where a universal individual takes on different roles. Consumption can thus be generated by a system of social values, preferences, utility etc, categories that are imposed from the outside on an initially empty or random set of potential objects. Contemporary cultural models epitomize this recipe book conception of social reality, since they are based in all their essentials on abstractions from social products, whether dress fashions or forms of discourse. As such, they merely reflect the products from which they are abstracted, but they cannot generate those products. Strategies of consumption can only be grasped when we understand the specific way in which desire is constituted. And the latter of course is an essential aspect of the constitution of personhood.
