Posted inBusinessGeneralLifestyleMedia

The shopping mall as consumer architecture

Referring to the moment, in Plato’s Symposium, where the lover supposedly beholds a completely disembodied, atemporal “beauty”, in the process conforming to the character of this abstraction, Kaja Silverman says (World Spectators, 2000: 10): “This deindividuation of the look represents a crucial feature of the process through which Socrates negates phenomenal forms. This is because […]

Posted inGeneralLifestyle

Diagnosing Santa Clause

“What if Santa came to hospital?” read my online update. “What diagnosis would you give him?” A team of friends gathered around to deliberate. The options were plenty; but the prognosis looked poor. Friend One went deep. “Terribly low self-esteem, of course,” she quipped, “he does feel the need to buy his friends”. Could the […]

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Homo and Gyna Consumens

One of the most perspicacious social theorists of our time, Zygmunt Bauman, has given us a compelling, if not wholly original sketch of the contemporary consumer, or what he calls “Homo consumens”. I prefer to add “Gyna” (woman) to “Homo” (man), not only for feminist reasons of representing all the members of the human race, […]

Posted inBusinessEnvironmentGeneralLifestyleNews/Politics

Things aren’t alright

I’ve been writing for Thought Leader for roughly two years, and consistently on the same types of issues. I write about consumerism, “affluenza”, climate change, environmental degradation, oil and coal addiction, and the politics of eating meat — and after each piece, when I go through the comments, I’m left with the same overwhelming feeling: […]