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As democracy is now ideologically tied to the consumption patterns of late capital, the subject as personality becomes increasingly put forward at the expense of the republic’s citizens as agents of change. Lifestyle begins to be marketed as identification with the merely formal attributes of the dominant class proposed as substitutes for actual power in the world.

We have, then, merely a democracy of consumption, a universe of signs available to all who can afford to buy them. The public sphere is replaced by a shadow world that offers a fluttering persona in place of the person. Media, from advertising to films, thus create a utopia of consumption where personality is achieved as a “look” that can be marketed, a distinction not achieved but sold. We form partial identifications with a multitude of “characters” calculated to create an anxiety that can be assuaged only momentarily in a pose.

. . . With social relationships so alienated, we relate our personal problems vicariously through a shared life with a manufactured person.

—Maureen P. Sherlock

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