Fetichismo de la subjetividad: individualización, malestar y consumo

Abstract

Capitalism, like the universe, expands; it is foreseen as without limit and historically presented as if from the outside while paradoxically, unlike the universe, capitalism is an historical and contingent emergence. Many have suggested that its naturalization now leave it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. In consumer capitalism, subjectivity has become a commodity. Thus it is possible to say that consumer society is characterized by a "fetish of subjectivity", in which individualization (as lifestyle) and malaise (as symptom) are combined. The fetish of subjectivity may be one of the most important historical achievements of the relationship between capitalism and subjectivity, promoting highly individualized and intensive rules and requiring a consciousness in terms of the consumer society, a success-oriented life, competition and almost total autonomy in achieving the only goals and objectives culturally defined as legitimate and valid, experienced as decisions taken by each individual. Today’s individualization is is individualistic by nature, and it tends to weaken traditional forms of social ties and to strain social cohesion. Sociology is constituted as a discipline which has studied the problematic relationship between modernity and capitalism, which in turn has also been problematic for sociology itself. Especially the associated processes of modernization have favored the emergence of society as a distinctive phenomenon, of the individual and social action, and of subjectivity, a recurring dimension although not always explicit in its problematic. The nation-state has been a historic, formal and spatial expression of dimensions that express the historical relationship between modernity and capitalism...