Trapped by consumption: Towards the liberation of the senses in an age of austerity

‘Desire’, said Deleuze and Guattari, ‘is shamed, stupefied… it is easily persuaded to deny “itself” in the name of more important interests of civilisation’. Today desire is being shamed for what it has apparently done to the economy and ecology.  With all roads leading to austerity, all fingers point at a generic subspecies called ‘the consumer’. After all, their crass individualism, selfishness and greed has corroded public life, contributed to the depletion of planetary resources, the rise of sweatshops in India and skyrocketing food prices in Africa. And now, by ‘binging on easy credit’, consumers are also to blame for the economic crisis.

Drawing on iCommunism, published in 2012 with Zer0 Books, the paper mounts a defence of the consumer. It argues against the logic of austerity whether justified for economic or ecological reasons and invokes Herbert Marcuse who saw Eros – the pleasure principle – as a liberating force.