Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Marketing Theory, 21 (1), 2020, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2020 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Marketing Theory page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/mtq on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
Accepted author manuscript, 322 KB, PDF document
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Lunch of the last human
T2 - Nutritionally complete food and the fantasies of market-based progress
AU - Cronin, James
AU - Fitchett, James
N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Marketing Theory, 21 (1), 2020, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2020 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Marketing Theory page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/mtq on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
PY - 2021/3/1
Y1 - 2021/3/1
N2 - In this article, we integrate Nietzsche’s visions of self-overcoming with a Žižekian toolbox to explore how ‘market-based progress’ is upheld through a fabric of ideological fantasies. Through an analysis of Huel, a nutritionally complete British food brand aligned with progressive and techno-utopian discourses, we reveal a fantasmatic structure centred on pragmatism, the search for unassailable truth and continuance of a prehistoric legacy. These fantasies function as illusory support for acceptance that humanity’s great overcoming is singularly achieved through market logic and ethos. Here, a fetishistic inversion centres on subjects believing that the detached spectatorialism of consumption is closer to the act of the Nietzschean ‘Overhuman’ than it is to its inverse, the ‘last human’. This article provides the parameters for how ideological fantasy insulates the market from its material deadlocks and concludes with a conceptualization of the post-sovereign consumer’s subjectification along the fantastical contours of market-based progress.
AB - In this article, we integrate Nietzsche’s visions of self-overcoming with a Žižekian toolbox to explore how ‘market-based progress’ is upheld through a fabric of ideological fantasies. Through an analysis of Huel, a nutritionally complete British food brand aligned with progressive and techno-utopian discourses, we reveal a fantasmatic structure centred on pragmatism, the search for unassailable truth and continuance of a prehistoric legacy. These fantasies function as illusory support for acceptance that humanity’s great overcoming is singularly achieved through market logic and ethos. Here, a fetishistic inversion centres on subjects believing that the detached spectatorialism of consumption is closer to the act of the Nietzschean ‘Overhuman’ than it is to its inverse, the ‘last human’. This article provides the parameters for how ideological fantasy insulates the market from its material deadlocks and concludes with a conceptualization of the post-sovereign consumer’s subjectification along the fantastical contours of market-based progress.
KW - Fantasy
KW - food
KW - health
KW - ideology
KW - Nietzsche
KW - progress
KW - Žižek
U2 - 10.1177/1470593120914708
DO - 10.1177/1470593120914708
M3 - Journal article
VL - 21
SP - 3
EP - 24
JO - Marketing Theory
JF - Marketing Theory
SN - 1470-5931
IS - 1
ER -