Consuming Life

With the housing market on my brain lately, Bauman's discussion of the urge and haste to discard and replace in a consumerist society instead of protecting for durability and longevity struck me as relevant to my own situation. Upon first meeting with potential realtors to help sell my house, the need to update my stove and refrigerator was made clear -- despite never having had a problem in all of the time I owned them. Now prettier and less solid items sit in their place, but it takes a little longer to boil water. The producers of my old Sears Kenmore stove from 1960 would be proud to know that their product made it through several tides of change over the years, while the sales person for my new model hardly tried to sell me a warranty. What's the point, right? I'll just get a new one when this one breaks down. Perhaps this example is a little mundane, but I think Bauman gets at something important when he writes:

So when those objects of yesterday's desires and those past investments of hope break their promises and fail to deliver the instant and complete satisfaction hoped for, they should be abandoned...

Consumerism is tied to our hopes and our desires -- who we imagine ourselves to be. My stove and fridge represent more than working appliances. They represent the illusion of a better life, a new beginning. The entire "staging" of my house for potential buyers relates to this illusion of a better way of being available through the purchase of my house.

Is this illusion, founded on a lie, what Bauman refers to as "subjectivity fetishism"? That in a consumerist society out selves become what we fetishize? The Cartesian "I shop, therefore I am"? Here's a spot where I need some class discussion.

I have more I want to think through in this post, but in the sake of time I think I'll just move toward an ending with this: I'm intrigued as well by what Bauman's Consuming Life means for education. I'm worried, as he is, about the "causalities of consumerism" -- those who are marooned by the shift from a producer to consumer society. As students imagine and design their futures, for example, can their illusions ever become reality? Does our society push them ever toward NOT reaching their goals and meeting their desires (so they'll abandon them and move onto to new hip, interest free ones)? How does the uncertainty of time and the impossibility of 'telos' inform our teaching and students' learning?

Questions to ponder. In a later post, perhaps. Until then.