Alternative Hedonism, Cultural Theory and the Role of Aesthetic Revisioning

The potential of consumption to figure as a site of political agency is now recognized by both corporate capitalism and its No Logo opposition. Many now also accept that the pursuit of consumerist lifestyles is the major contributor to ecological crisis. This article argues the importance in this context of recognizing the impact and longer term implications of some emerging forms of self-interested disaffection with consumerism on the part of affluent consumers themselves. For a small, but arguably growing number of these, consumerism is now compromised by its specific displeasures (stress, congestion, pollution, ill-health…) and seen as actively pre-empting other more rewarding ways of living. The ‘alternative hedonism’ implicit in these forms of consumer ambivalence is analysed with a view to disentangling its perspective from either the more didactic (and often overly naturalistic) conceptions of need and satisfaction offered by some Marxist strands of cultural theory, and from the post-modernist celebrations of consumer culture as a resource for the pleasures of fantasy, fashion and self-styling. In pressing the case for the development of a new ‘hedonist imaginary’ with which to subvert current perceptions of the attractions of a consumerist material culture, the article also considers the possible contribution of cultural and artistic activities to the formation of an anti-consumerist aesthetic.