Post-postmodern consumer authenticity, shantay you stay or sashay away? A netnography of RuPaul’s Drag Race fans

Canavan, Brendan

doi:10.1177/1470593120985144

Cited by 16 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 90 publications

(120 reference statements)

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“…First, non-intrusive observational netnography was conducted by the first author who collected data from online conversations and interactions centred on digital detoxing over an approximately twelve-month period (Beckmann and Langer, 2005). This observational form of netnography has been advocated by prior researchers as an effective mode of allowing the researcher to access naturally occurring data while minimising any influence on consumers' disclosure of their experiences (Canavan, 2021;Cronin and Cocker, 2019). After obtaining ethical approval for the research, the first author collected data from public sites, that is, online spaces that are free to publicly access without any restrictions (i.e.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Futureless vicissitudes: Gestural anti-consumption and the reflexively impotent (anti-)consumer

2023

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In this paper, we challenge the prevalent idea that anti-consumption functions as an ideological act of antagonism. We enlist the work of the late cultural theorist Mark Fisher to account for the reflexively impotent (anti-)consumer, a politically hollowed-out and knowingly helpless subject endemic to the futureless vicissitudes of semiocapitalist consumer culture. Drawing on netnographic data and interviews with ‘digital detoxers’, we explore how gestural – rather than transformational – anti-consumption emerges through individuals’ reflexive awareness of their political inertia, the lack of collective spirit to bring about improved conditions, and their perpetual attachment to market-based comforts and conveniences. Our analyses reveal three features that underpin the reflexively impotent (anti-)consumer’s resigned acceptance of the reigning political-ideological status quo: magical voluntarism, pragmatism and self-indulgence. In the absence of any unifying and politically-centred solidarity projects, mere gestures of resistance are undertaken towards managing personal dissatisfactions with – instead of collectively transforming – their structural conditions.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Futureless vicissitudes: Gestural anti-consumption and the reflexively impotent (anti-)consumer

2023

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“…While there have been calls to find difference by following nonrepresentational frameworks (Bajde, 2013;Franco et al, 2022;Hill et al, 2014) and postpostmodern reconstructions to discover new meaning and community (e.g. Canavan, 2021;Cova et al, 2013), we suggest there is a need to go through marketing first before any imagination beyond it seems likely. We see how TM is at work doing this: delving deeper into the morass, plunging into the terminal mood to get a richer insight into how the excesses and intensities of consumer culture manifest today.…”

Section: Letting Out the Screammentioning

confidence: 79%

“…Arnould and Thompson, 2005; McCracken, 1986). Whether consumers are negotiating ideological norms (Thompson and Üstüner, 2015) or post-postmodern narratives of authenticity (Canavan, 2021), the underlying epistemological concern is how and why do consumers construct meaning in this context? As detailed above, TM questions the idea of the singular ego-interpreter, but also the meaning of meaning within marketing theory, which despite critiques (e.g.…”

Section: The Tendencies Of Terminal Marketingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bleak signs of our times: Descent into ‘Terminal Marketing’

2022

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Marketing theory has twisted and turned with the introduction of many theoretical innovations. Yet, despite being influenced by various critical perspectives, the general marketing discourse remains remarkably optimistic about contemporary consumer culture, its capability to produce meaning and individuality, and its potential to overcome the existential threats of the 21st century, or at least its capacity to be transformed for the better. This paper discerns a countervailing current within critical marketing thought; a smattering of scholars that resist the therapeutic urge to tell that all will be well, producing a proliferation of papers that are deeply pessimistic about conventional marketing concepts like meaningful experience, agency, and the sovereignty of the consumer ‘self’. Against the current of convention, this research seeks to address an increasing zeitgeist of bleak cultural aporia, an atmosphere of apolitical apathy where the future has increasingly been ‘cancelled’ and all that remains is a carnivalesque consumer culture that has resigned itself to extinction, even if on the semiotic surface it is increasingly ethical and ecological. The present paper catalogues this development and draws together some of its tendencies. Chief amongst these is the tendency to see the consumer as a desiring intensity immersed in vast networks of techno-capitalism and thus reduces the idea of the agentic and individualistically creative consumer into a myth at best. We propose the term Terminal Marketing to describe this pessimistic theoretical attitude, but we consider its mood as potentially producing more critical interventions than the generally critical-yet-optimistic tone of interpretive marketing.

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“…But "authenticity" has long been discredited for being problematic, contextual, and polemic (Trilling 1972). Today, it is increasingly implicated in marketing and consumption as a device to produce meaning and monetary value (Canavan 2021). The term "classicism" summarily rejects the pretense of "authenticity."…”

Section: On Classicismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A common critique of classicism is that it is derivative and “inauthentic.” But “authenticity” has long been discredited for being problematic, contextual, and polemic (Trilling 1972). Today, it is increasingly implicated in marketing and consumption as a device to produce meaning and monetary value (Canavan 2021). The term “classicism” summarily rejects the pretense of “authenticity.” Instead, by claiming to venerate and emulate the past, the classicists also reinvent and reimagine the past to project their ideals and create something new.…”

Section: Working Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sinophone Classicism: Chineseness as Temporal and Mnemonic Experience in the Digital Era

Yang

2022

J of Asian Stud

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In recent decades, highly heterogeneous literary and artistic articulations harking back to China's classical past have gained increasing currency in the global Sinophone space and cyberspace. Instead of dismissing them as “fetishisms” or authenticating them as “Chinese traditions,” I propose “Sinophone classicism” as a new critical expression for conceptualizing this diverse array of articulations. It refers to the appropriation, redeployment, and reconfiguration of cultural memories evoking Chinese aesthetic and intellectual traditions for local, contemporary, and vernacular uses, by agents identified or self-identified as Chinese. This essay proposes a subjective, intimate, and reflexive way to experience an individual's culturally acquired “Chineseness” that is temporal, mnemonic, and often mediated by digital media. It joins recent scholarly efforts to dismantle the view of “Chinese modernity” as a monocentric and homogenous experience by refocusing on classicism as a kind of “antimodern modernism.” It also joins the post-Eurocentric turn in global academia by hinting at a future of “global classicisms.”

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Post-postmodern consumer authenticity, shantay you stay or sashay away? A netnography of RuPaul’s Drag Race fans

Cited by 16 publications

References 90 publications

Futureless vicissitudes: Gestural anti-consumption and the reflexively impotent (anti-)consumer

Futureless vicissitudes: Gestural anti-consumption and the reflexively impotent (anti-)consumer

Bleak signs of our times: Descent into ‘Terminal Marketing’

Sinophone Classicism: Chineseness as Temporal and Mnemonic Experience in the Digital Era

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