marientina

Even as a child of deconstructional thinking via my alma matter, I have never been able to verbalise what is so annoying about today's marketing. This article does a good job of encapsulating it.

It is what one American critic, Thomas Frank, has called “liberation marketing”: in the words of a cosmetic company’s appeal to potential customers, “because you’re worth it”.

Mr Frank sees it as a woeful bastardisation of the American counterculture and post-modernism; others might enjoy the irony.

More surprising, perhaps, than the pomos’ [Lyotard, Barthes, Foucault and Derrida] influence on the way business presents itself was the accuracy of their predictions and the perspicacity of their perceptions. Modern retailers are only just getting to grips with two of the consequences of the breakdown of authority and hierarchy that they hoped for half a century ago: the “fragmentation” of narratives and the individual’s ability to be “the artist of his own life”.

It isn't that I am not a slave to retail therapy and the use of my credit card. I just want to know deep down why and how I am being entertained. Last semester, I attended a lecture at USC by Helene Cixous, one of my favorite authors and long-time Derrida friend. I was suprised to listen for three hours to what amounted to a eulogy, not just for Derrida, but also for deconstruction itself. Perhaps this is why today's advertising feels to me like yesterday's news...