Comments on: “Say Yes to the Dress” – Consumption and the Social Condition http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2013/05/%e2%80%9csay-yes-to-the-dress%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-consumption-and-the-social-condition/ Informed reflection on the events of the day Wed, 15 Jul 2015 17:00:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.23 By: stevenharmonious http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2013/05/%e2%80%9csay-yes-to-the-dress%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-consumption-and-the-social-condition/comment-page-1/#comment-26726 Wed, 01 Apr 2015 11:29:00 +0000 http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/?p=18937#comment-26726 Social condition or not, Say Yes to the Dress is still the best wedding show ranked, or at least most popular.

]]> By: Tim Rosenkranz http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2013/05/%e2%80%9csay-yes-to-the-dress%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-consumption-and-the-social-condition/comment-page-1/#comment-26512 Wed, 29 May 2013 21:22:00 +0000 http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/?p=18937#comment-26512 Aron, thanks for your comments. Unfortunately, I think that critical theory (we should actually define which authors we talk about, but that is my mistake, because I just labeled a very diverse scholarship under one term) would not even take the step you take between your second and first paragraph. Mostly the critical theory analysis of experience stops by relegating experience to meaninglessness, because of the superimposition of exchange value, the commodities as “dead labor” paradigm, and the mere representation idea.

And even if that step you suggest, to actually analyze not only the structure, but the practice of consumption, is taken, the importance of the consumer experience is relegated to critiquing it, framing the consumer as dope, or fetishizing counter-cultures over the mainstream.

I think the limits of critical theory become quite clear even in the way you try to formulate the question of how critical theory would address the dilemma of the dress. It kind of makes my point, because even with your careful consideration, the question basically subsumes the practices of consumption under the relations of production. What I tried to address in this post is that the analysis of consumption should not be predetermined through this lens, because something significant gets lost in it. What that is, is worth exploring further.

]]> By: Aron Hsiao http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2013/05/%e2%80%9csay-yes-to-the-dress%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-consumption-and-the-social-condition/comment-page-1/#comment-26511 Wed, 29 May 2013 17:29:00 +0000 http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/?p=18937#comment-26511 I think sometimes critical theory gets a bit battered in the sociological world today. It seems to me that the argument was never that consumption is “fake” or that mass society doesn’t take its consumption seriously, but rather precisely what you argue—that the world of material culture mediates very real social activity, conditions, and phenomena. The question—going all the way back to Marx’s commodity fetish—is what character this mediation ought to take and how prevailing ideologies conceive (or don’t) of it.

Critical theory suggests that it is better to be conscious of this mediation than unconscious of it, and that there is an unavoidable political dimension to the mediative properties of culture vis-a-vis social life and practice, meaning-making, production, etc. that has implications for the political and historical dimensions of a society or social group more broadly—one, again, that imperils those populations that ignore it in various ways.

My sense, in other words, is less that critical theory might yell, “Stop this nonsense with the dress! It’s so bogus!” and more that critical theory might ask, “What does this dress mean for you? Can we elaborate it and come to consciousness of it so that this choice and dress/dress-maker serve you and your well-being and ends, in all their complexity, rather than vice-versa?”

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