The Social Logic of Late Capitalism: Guilt Fetishism and the Culture of Crisis Industry

Abstract

Culture is often described as a suture for the material real of capitalism, but often that reality is itself signified in such a way as to supply a hegemonic power with its own justification. Using the term social logic, this paper explores the way ideology increasingly emphasizes social-material rather than cultural-representational issues, particularly around concerns about the economy and ecology. The argument is developed in three parts using Marxist and psychoanalytic concepts. First, it is argued that mainstream sociology remains indebted to a description of a world found in postmodern theory. In this theory, social antagonisms are undifferentiated. This creates a frame for signifying multiple problems of capitalism, without necessarily making any connection to an underlying dialectic. Second, using the term ‘culture of crisis industry’, examples are provided from the cultural sphere of how such problems or traumas are fetishized for mass consumption. Third, using the term ‘guilt fetishism’, a relationship is theorized between anxiety on the one side and mass consumer markets for goods with ecological and ethical signifiers on the other.