Alienation & Consumption

“Have advances in technology, because they are meant to make the lives of the consumers easier, lent themselves to improving community, or have they further alienated individuals of a society?”

I find the first part of the question odd because improving the lives of consumers is not necessarily going to improve a sense of community. Consumption is highly fragmenting and alienating because it is done on an individual basis and the structure of capitalism requires a certain level of self-interest. So, if we’re talking about a sense of community, something that will make consumption easier will further destroy any sense of community. On the other hand, something that would make the lives of consumers easier will “improve” a community in the sense that it will probably make most people happier because we live in a consumer society where happiness is often dictated by desires for commodities. Seeing as though the first part of the question is supposed to be the antithesis to the second part, I will go with the second interpretation, in which technology will improve a community because it will make consumption easier, and thus, consumers happier.

But, again, the dichotomy of this question is blurred. Advances in technology have certainly alienated individuals of a society, but this has probably made consumers happier, too! In a culture where consumerism and capitalism reign supreme, the advancement of technology is almost inevitable. Average desires have been so excited to witness and consume the latest technological innovation because consumer society might die out without it. If a corporation can’t continually make a newer, better version of Commodity A, at a cheaper, more efficient rate of production, the corporation can’t stimulate ever-greater desire and thus receive an ever-greater profit. Thus, technology feeds the spectacle of consumption, alienating one from one another and alienating one from oneself because we are driven by external agendas and expectations. I’m going to have to take a Marxist approach and agree that alienation is centrally rooted in economic conditions, and that technology and consumption estrange one from one’s essential nature because of the artificial nature of consumer desires.

I remember reading some article in which the author traced the evolution of American culture as a social, public culture to its current state as a privatized, consumerist, individualistic, anti-social society. The author said something to the effect of, “Family activity went from the town square, to the inside of an entertainment center, to the porch of a house [in the suburbs], to the backyard, to the living room, to each person’s individual room.” This point really hit a nerve with me because I had just returned from studying abroad in Athens, Greece and one of the major newfound perspectives I had on the United States was that everything is so anti-social and privatized. People don’t go out just to go out, or strike up conversations with others- essentially the public sphere in America is dead. I agree with L. Cohen that public space has turned into a commodity, been bought out by corporations, and is regurgitated into the system as a semi-public space to consume more.

To wrap things up, the alienation of America’s consumer society is inevitable due to the nature of consumption and capitalism. Advances in technology certainly contribute to this alienated because of technology’s inherent role in the advancement of consumer society, or the ever-growing profit. Advances in society continue to make consumers’ lives easier, which I would not consider as “improving” community. The opposite occurs- as consumers’ lives are “improved” by endless convenience, the rage of mass-consumption lives on, further deconstructing community by promoting individuality, self-interest, and an anti-social mentality.

Death of a Wal-Mart Employee

After Black Friday death, shoppers back at Wal-Mart

BY ALFONSO A. CASTILLO AND MATTHEW CHAYES | alfonso.castillo@newsday.com and matthew.chayes@newsday.com

12:31 PM EST, November 29, 2008

Other than glaziers out front fixing the doors damaged by a throng of impatient shoppers, there were no outward signs Saturday at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart of the chaos that turned this year's Black Friday into a day of death and mayhem.



Shoppers at the store, located near the Green Acres Mall, wheeled carts stuffed with big holiday gifts beginning shortly after the store opened at 7 a.m. A Salvation Army bell ringer solicited Christmastime donations.

But the specter of the stampede that killed Wal-Mart seasonal worker Jdimytai Damour, 34, Friday morning hung over the morning.


Shoppers echoed the sentiments of the Nassau County police detective supervising the investigation, who told reporters in the aftermath of Damour's death that the store could have and should have better prepared for the large crowds that camped out as early as 9 p.m. the night before for the post-Thanksgiving bargains.

Bibi Raffik of Jamaica, Queens, a frequent Wal-Mart shopper, said she always feels safe at the store.



The 41-year-old said, "I'm very shocked by what happened." She added: "There should have been more security here."



Wal-Mart has defended its security, noting that it hired additional personnel -- of whom Damour was one -- and put up barriers in anticipation of the Black Friday rush.

Out front on Saturday, the two glaziers from Solar Glass of Island Park worked to replace one of the doors unhinged by the shoppers just before 5 a.m. Friday.


In the melee, shoppers had pushed glass sliding doors to the ground, bending their aluminum frames like an accordion. The stampede resulted in the death of Damour, who was in the front vestibule helping to open the store for the morning. A cause of death is still pending an autopsy, police said.



Meanwhile, Damour's mother was en route to Jamaica, Queens, from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to help prepare her son's funeral arrangements, the family has said.

I’m sure everyone has heard of the latest holiday media sensation- the death of a New York Wal-Mart employee on Black Friday. Jdimytai Damour was trampled in an early morning stampede of overly-anxious shoppers on the busiest shopping day of the year- Black Friday. I think the media frenzy that this story has inspired is some sort of signal as to an increasing awareness of the dangers of commodity culture “going a little too far.”

I had never really analyzed the language of the term “Black Friday” before this. The day after Thanksgiving draws huge shopping crowds for sales across the country in department stores, local boutiques, and even grocery stores. Virtually every store in the country has some sort of sale on this notorious Friday. “Black” Friday as a consumer holiday has a very negative connotation of chaos and sin. It’s as if the sales are so enticing, no one can resist. Thus, the actual act of madly shopping and taking advantage of every special discount is severely stigmatized. The term implies that this type of mass-spending and uncontrollable desires to consume all types of objects is harmful and shameful.

Nonetheless, everyone gives in to this consumer holiday. Everyone wants to rush to the mall, or even Main Street, USA to purchase all kinds of things, whether they need them or not. Maybe the name is only ironic for humor’s sake, or to mock the notion of mass-consumption as harmful and immoral. Whatever it is, the term “Black Friday” is subversive to some extent.

I had heard about the death of Jdimytai Damour by 5:00pm on Friday, November 28, 2008. I saw it on a television while eating Mexican food with two friends. We were all totally shocked, horrified, and somewhat saddened to hear the news. How could a mass of 2,000 people gather around the doors of Wal-Mart at 5am, flatten the glass doors to the floor, and proceed to trample a living being- a temporary employee at that? Something, most likely a mixture of things, had so intensely stimulated desire, energy, and relentlessness within the mob that they ran over a human being- no one, or no group of people, was strong enough to calm the shopping frenzy. And that is where the absurdity lies- this was all the result of a shopping frenzy! Ever since reading Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, I feel as though I can find the spectacle anywhere. But this sad case is so clearly demonstrative of Debord’s fears that it makes me want to adopt a more radical critique of capitalism.

Ultimately, I think this incident has, and will continue to raise awareness about the serious mind control that commodities have over us. This incident makes it very easy to side with the many critics of mass-consumption and the capitalist mindset. Whether the term “Black Friday” was meant to mock or signal danger, it will forever be infused with a memory of death when a shopping frenzy eradicated all moral concern for others. The power of shopping over the mind of the 2,000 people stationed outside of that New York Wal-Mart literally erased all sense in those 2,000 minds except for the dangerously narrow goal of getting that special item they’ve been wanting- on sale.

My boyfriend went in to a local mall to see about seasonal hiring for some extra money. I brought up this incident and he said, “Natalie, I could die if I get a job at Macy’s.” It was funny for a minute, but then extremely chilling due to its likelihood.

Claire Fontaine

I have been looking around a lot for art that engages critiques of consumption, and have found a lot. But nothing like this.

Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based art collective, founded in 2004. Her name was taken from a popular brand of school notebooks, and allows her declare herself a “readymade artist.” Thinking of Duchamp’s Fountain, which was a readymade urinal, one can begin to understand the concept of a “readymade” artist. The artist herself is displaced, deprived of its use value, and undisguised but probably modified. Claire Fontaine works in neon lights, video, sculpture, painting, and text usually appropriating objects and images and experimenting with detournements.

Here’s the catch: Claire Fontaine is not a person- she only exists as a concept. Her “assistants,” Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill, physically create her artistic output and speak for her in interviews. Anthony Huberman from Bomb Magazine says:

“By exemplifying readymade and stereotypical identities imposed by social or cultural superstructures, she becomes an empty vessel…She understands that making art can’t oppose or rebel or subvert the political condition of late capitalism, so she presents herself as an artist on strike, a readymade subjectivity, a hole in the landscape through which a revolution might creep, arriving from elsewhere."

The latter half of this quote is clearly in line with the logic of culture-jamming in its admission of the lack of power to single-handedly subvert capitalism. Both Claire Fontaine and culture-jammers rely on individual tactics in the hope that some revolutionary thought will be sparked, or even just a critical approach to capitalism and consumption. Claire Fontaine’s work is also very much in line with Roland Barthe’s declaration of the death of the author.

Claire Fontaine’s work is even more in line with Guy Debord’s notion of The Spectacle as it relates to authenticity and inauthenticity. These two elements function as material in her work. Much of her work appropriates, or expropriates, objects and images. For instance, a Debord film, Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952) is downloaded to play on a customized iPod or PlayStation. La Societe du Spectacle is turned into a brick by covering the brick with the book cover via rubberband and is then placed on a commercial gallery floor:
Christopher Mooney from Art Review says:

“At some level, then, Claire Fontaine sees herself as a Robin Hood of the contemporary art scene. A culture-jamming trickster and radicalizing figure of aesthetic stealth and conscientious objection. A biopolitical activist engaged in a war of liberation against the disciplinary institutions that subjugate our bodies and control our minds. True to her self, true to art, true to her ethics. But not true.”

Claire Fontaine’s existence as a concept, not as a person, is a total spectacle. Categories of human identity are irrelevant because if used, Claire Fontaine would be fiction. She has completed Debord’s process of value moving from being to having, and finally appearing to have. Her name tricks people in thinking that she is a person, a single artist. One relates to Claire Fontaine as Debord claims one would relate to advertisements: an inability to have real relationships with her, but the ability to have relationships with the representations of her, or her art objects.

Mooney poignantly finishes: “That she has named herself after a French stationary brand is appropriate. Claire Fontaine is a blank page: empty, yet full of promise.”