Romantic ethic and Consumption

In his 1987 book, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, C. Campbell attempts to explain the origins of contemporary obsession with novelty, pleasure in the new, self-expression through consumption of goods. He traces it to romanticism's focus on "imagination, fantasy, mysticism, creativity and emotional exploration" (Featherstone's summary). Campbell himself says, "The essential activity of consumption is . . . not actual selection, purchase or use of products, but teh imaginative pleasure-seeking to which the product image lends itself, 'real' consumption being largely a result of this 'mentalistic' hedonism." We are not manipulated by advertizers to consume, nor do we consume simply because we want to maintain status. We consume to work out our daydreams in life.

Not Adam Smith, but Rousseau is the father of the current economy.

Featherstone interestingly qualifies this by pointing to Norbert Elias's account of the sociogenesis of romanticism. Eighteenth-century courts were highly controlled, rationalized social settings, where each gesture, button, movement, word, expression of taste had to be highly ordered. Any deviation from the norm was a potential loss of prestige, and courtiers were adept at divining the signs of other courtiers' behavior and calculating their significance.

In reaction, the middle classes developed a love for spontaneity and nature and freedom: "the German middle class venerated Kultur with romantic ideals of love of nature, solitude, and surrender to the excitement of one's own heart. Here the middle-class outsiders, spatially dispersed and isolated, can be contrasted to the established court with its ideals drawn from French civilisation. Further contrasts emerge from this: inwardness and feeling v. superficiality and ceremony; books and real education v. formalized conversation; virtue v. honor.

Featherstone suggests that the social pressures on the middle classes may have "nourished a romantic longing for the unconstrained, expressive and spontaneous life that was projected on to commodities and manifest in fashion, novel reading, and other popular entertainments," but "the practicalities of everyday life, the social demands of sustaining one's acceptability, were also important forces."

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 07:30 PM

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