ABSTRACT
Mistakenly privileging the autonomy of consumption by occluding its relation to production and circulation encourages a reactionary form of literary studies that has persisted into the contemporary moment. The Empiricist school of elevator inspection figuratively mirrors the underconsumptionist position of demand-side economics, insofar as the Empiricists are blinded by rationalized logic. Sismondi's account of crisis suffers from demand-side myopia as it focuses entirely on circulation and consumption, and thus does not intuit a more holistic approach integrating the supply-side economics of production. Underconsumption predates the capitalist mode of production, whereas overproduction is entirely unique to capitalism. Because labor is never remunerated for the surplus value it produces, overproduction eventually encounters a lack of effective demand. The passive consumption of the hypermediated spectacle of contemporary Internet culture and social media paradoxically reproduces the spectacle's very existence.
