Generation Bubble

The Order of Things: Consumerism’s Grammar of Desire

Consumption is not a process of using something up but instead is an act of communication, a kind of immaterial production enhancing the meaning of goods, provided we are confident that our gestures are being received by an audience that recognizes and comprehends them. This immaterial production, and not the consumption of the goods themselves, provides us with satisfaction, such as it is, particularly when the code of signs is richly elaborated, as it is in consumer societies. That is, the various sensual satisfactions that goods might supply have all been supplanted by the overarching satisfaction of having our identity, as expressed through a particular consumption act, recognized and validated. Then we know it mattered, that it meant something. Without that recognition, it becomes harder to consume at all.