ABSTRACT
Humans are quite peculiar animals, as we have repeatedly heard from philosophers and social thinkers alike. Indeed, certain bodily characteristics (from adaptability to the capacity to articulate complex sounds; from opposable thumbs to a highly developed brain) have been associates to the human species which is also characterized as remarkably sociable. Human nature, in its turn, has been characterized by aggression as much as compassion, empathy, and altruism. Still, precisely because of humans’ adaptability and relationality, what humanity is, must largely be seen as related to their conditions of living, which are, partly, of their own making. Certainly, fundamental to the human condition is the way bodies, selves, and material culture are socially arranged. And indeed, the relation between the body, self, and material culture in contemporary, postindustrial or late-modern societies has come to be largely defined through consumption. The zoon politikòn of Aristotelian memory has, in many ways, given way to the portrayal of the human being as “the only creature that consumes without producing” carved out by George Orwell in his dystopian novel Animal Farm just after the Second World War. In contemporary Western societies, we are increasingly attuned to a view of humanity which is defined by images, ways, and manners of consumption as much as other practices and thoughts. This occurs at least at three levels: the level of representation, of subjectivity, and of institutions. Firstly, at the representational level, the imagery associated with consumption is central to visual representation in promotional culture which simultaneously revolves around the display of the body as an object of desire and indicator of self. Secondly, at the level of subjectivity, how individuals realize themselves as embodied subjects-that is, how they manage corporeal identity participating in social interaction and how they experience and realize embodiment-happens largely via the use of commodities and against the backdrop of promotional imagery. Finally, at the institutional level, a variety of consumer spaces, contexts, and institutions increasingly address the individual as a sensuous, embodied subject in search of personal gratification and improvement.
