The city and the citizen in the consumer society. The political weakening of subjectivity and the disappearance of that what is social

Abstract

This research is the product of a critical analysis on the role played by mediaand consumption in the making of a very particular type of subjectivity. Thanksto new technologies one has a new experience of time and space, in whichthe subject, thanks to the instauration of an absolute speed, not only leavesthe other in a condition of mapping and exploitation, but also has an experienceof territoriality which delocalizes and transforms the relations betweenwhat is public and what is private, resulting in the emergence of the socallednon-civil public space. In the modern city this space is shaped, forone part, by some exclusion zones of a corporate type and, for another, byconsumer places. The aesthitization which pivots around consume retractsthat what is social to a second place and, given the weakening of Ethics infavor of the market’s commands, the sphere of what is political tends todecrease. In this manner a normally acritic citizen is obtained, ritually prostrated,who wrestles with imposed logics of social acceptance, mostly guidedby the new ontology of the market.