ESTUDIOS DE DOCTORADO EN PSICOLOGÍA SOCIAL DEPARTAMENTO DE PSICOLOGÍA SOCIAL UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE BARCELONA TESIS DOCTORAL Consumption dreams: How night dreams reveal the colonization of subjectivity by the Imaginary of consumerism Sueños de consumo: Cómo los sueños revelan la colonización de la subjetividad por el Imaginario de consumo Marlon Xavier Director Dr. Josep M. Blanch 2012 2 For Tecky, André, Miriam, and Edgar. 3 Según Fernando Pessoa, era importante descifrar las leyes secretas que rigen la sociedad. Leyes que permiten reconocer la relación que existe entre el sueño y lo que se llama la realidad. La de una vida social en que las ideas, las ilusiones, los fantasmas y, en una palabra, lo imaginario, ocupan un lugar central. Michel Maffesoli Tudo é ilusão. Sonhar é sabê-lo. Fernando Pessoa1 1 Maffesoli (2008, p. 156); Pessoa (1924/1995, p. 100). 4 Acknowledgments I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude and indebtedness to some people for their help, support, and encouragement, without which this work would not have come to fruition. My sincere agradecimientos must go first to Dr Josep M. Blanch i Ribas, my dissertation director, for his patience and wisdom, for welcoming, teaching, criticizing and motivating me, and for being the humane person that he is. My heartfelt thanks also to Dr Patrícia Martins Goulart, for her friendship, joie de vivre, and incentive - and for making this Barcelona journey possible. I must also express my deep gratefulness to all professors, workers, and colleagues at the Departamento de Psicología Social at UAB. Among them, I would like to thank particularly my colleagues and friends Adriano Beiras and David Castillo, Roberta Rodrigues, Domenico Hur, Rafael Diehl, Vanessa Maurente, Nagore García, Maristela Moraes, Pablo Hoyos Ruiz, Maria Laura Silvestri, and Xavi Xarbau, and express my sincere gratitude to Isabela de Melo Mussi, Katherina Kuschel, Paola Gonzalez, Milton Morales, Antonio Stecher, Javier López Crespo, and all from the coLABORando research group, for their friendship and manifold contributions; Diana Hermoso Lloret and Genís Cervantes deserve a special moltes gràcies! for their unswerving support and help. Further acknowledgment and muchísimas gracias must also go to Dr Miguel Sahagún, Dr Enrique Santamaría, Dr Luz María Martinez, Dr Félix Vázquez Sisto, Dr Lupicinio Íñiguez, and Dr Leonor Cantera, for their advice, guidance, and support. I would also like to thank everybody at the Secretariat of the Department of Social Psychology; I am especially indebted to Cristina Prats, for all her kind help. Many thanks to Dr Mark Davis, at the University of Leeds and the Bauman Institute, for his friendly welcome and stimulating thought. In Brazil, my deep gratitude to Prof Dr Maria Lucia Tiellet Nunes, who has been helping me ever since my graduation course, for her unbound generosity. My appreciation also to some friends who helped me in so many ways along the way: Fernandito Martín Yagüe, Silvia de Juan Castilla, Giulia Pastori, Tito, Rodrigo Troitiño, Divo and Musa, Francisco Netto da Costa, Aura Rosauro, Sergio Chwal, Maria Fernanda de Menezes and Eduardo Benites, Mariana Moojen, Ines Chacón, and Leticia F. Cestari, who deserves a special cheers for reviewing my manuscript and for her many insightful comments. Special gratitude is due to CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, Brazil), which sponsored me in a previous doctorate program in São Paulo, and before that also conceded a scholarship for my Master's course; and to UNESC (Universidade do Extremo Sul Catarinense, Brazil), in which I worked as a lecturer, and to all the colleagues there who welcomed me - especially Nerilza Beltrame Alberton, Sergio Gobbi, and Jeverson Reichow. As this dissertation incorporates reflexions and suggestions received within the work environment of the coLABORando group and the KOFARIPS and WONPUM research projects, I would like to express my gratefulness to the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science for funding the latter. 5 Finally, I would like to express my most profound gratitude to some people who are very special to me: first, my father Edgar, for his support and love, his ethics and courage, for being who he is, for everything; my mother Beatriz, who gave me life; and my aunts Ana and Mercedes, for the example and all the help. Miriam Gomes de Freitas, André Guirland Vieira and Maria Cristina Giacomazzi, and Luiz Felipe Bastos Duarte - I am grateful to you for so, so many things. And my love and thanks to Tecky Abegg Leyva, for her bright light, life, and hope, for being there and here for me since the beginning of this new journey - subindo, de mãos dadas, cantando, simples e verdadeiros. Thank you. Barcelona, September 2012. 6 Contents Acknowledgments 5 Tables and figures 11 List of abbreviations 12 Note on translations 12 Abstract 13 Resumen 15 Resumo 17 Preface 19 0. Introduction 23 0.1. Defining the object of study: a trajectory 23 0.1.1. First moment: capitalism, consumerism, and the subject 23 0.1.2. Logic of colonization and total capitalism 24 0.1.3. Second moment: consumerist colonization, subject, and the unconscious 25 0.1.4. Third and final moment: consumption dreams, or sueños de consumo 26 0.1.5. Consumption as imaginary: consumption dreams 26 0.1.6. Imaginary of Consumerism: ImCon 27 0.1.7. The prototype dream 27 0.2. Justification 29 0.2.1. Why dreams? Justification and outlook 29 0.2.2. Why night dreams with McDonald's, Disney, and shopping malls? 31 0.3. Research question and Aims 32 0.4. Risks, brief literature review, and relevance 32 0.4.1. Risks 33 0.4.2. Brief literature review 34 0.4.3. Relevance 37 0.5. Dissertation overview 40 PART I. Theoretical framework 43 1. Symbolic imaginaries and the subject 45 1.1. The concept of Imaginary 45 1.2. The symbolic imaginary and the collective psyche 46 1.2.1. The unconscious psyche: The collective unconscious 46 1.2.2. Instinct and archetype 46 1.2.3. The archetype as image and idea 47 1.2.4. The archetype as image: the primordial image 48 1.2.5. The archetype as (pre-condition for) idea 49 1.2.6. Archetypal image as symbolic rite 50 1.2.7. Symbol, imaginary, and culture 52 1.2.8. Symbol: definition and difference 53 7 1.2.9. Distinction from allegory and sign 54 1.2.10. Imaginary function in the subject: symbol and fantasy 55 1.2.11. Imagination as symbolic fantasy: symbolic thinking, dream- thinking 56 1.2.12. The transition from natural symbols to cultural symbols 58 1.2.13. The collective consciousness: Représentations collectives 58 1.2.14. Collective consciousness as a social imaginary 60 1.3. Subjectivity and the Imaginary: The personal psyche 62 1.3.1. Ego consciousness 62 1.3.2. Participation mystique and unconscious identity 63 1.3.3. Personal unconscious and the complexes 65 1.3.4. Two typical complexes: shadow and persona 66 1.3.5. Complexes and projection: participation mystique 66 1.3.6. Complexes and archetypes: an unconscious system of projections 67 1.3.7. Individuation and subjectivity: the desires of social and individual 68 2. Symbolic imaginaries: The world of dreams 71 2.1. Dream, culture and symbolic imaginaries: Historical import 71 2.1.2. Dream as origin of symbolic imaginaries 72 2.2. A concept of dream: Jungian theory 73 2.2.1. Dream and its imagistic symbolic language 74 2.2.2. Dream as nature: a symbolic expression 75 2.2.3. Dream as drama or narrative: the oneiric structure 76 2.3. Subjectivity and interpretation: Subjective and social dimensions in the dream 77 2.3.1. Two levels of interpretation 77 2.3.2. Interpretation: causal and final viewpoints and functions of the 79 dream 2.3.3. Dreams, projection, and ethical trial: subjectivity as individuation 80 2.3.4. Self and the dream as ethical trial 81 2.4. Final remarks 82 3. The ImCon as a semiotic imaginary: Consumption dreams and the subject as consumer 83 3.1. The ImCon as a social system of images and signs 83 3.1.1. The social logic of consumption and the sign 85 3.1.2. Commodity-sign and commodification 86 3.1.3. The code as a system of social signification 86 3.2. The ImCon and consumption dreams 87 3.2.1. The fabrication of the ImCon: advertising logic 87 3.2.2. Consumption dreams 89 3.2.3. Consumption dreams and desire 90 3.2.4. The ImCon as a system of cultural consumption dreams 91 3.2.5. The mass production of consumers 92 3.2.6. Subjective identities: Identikits 93 3.2.7. The ImCon as an artificial semiotic imaginary: Final remarks 94 3.3. The ImCon and the production of subjectivity 96 3.3.1. The subject as consumer: identity 96 8 3.3.2. Logic and effects of consumer-subject production 97 3.3.3. Commodification of self: the homo commoditas 98 4. The ImCon as simulacrum of symbolic imaginary: Dream-worlds of consumption and the subject as commodity 101 4.1. The ImCon as a totalizing regime of signification 101 4.1.1. Total capitalism logic and a totalizing imaginary 101 4.1.2. Order of signs: its logics of colonization and fabrication 103 4.2.3. Order of simulacra: simulation, simulacrum, and hyperreality 104 4.2.4. Hyperreality of consumerism and total colonization 105 4.2.5. The industry of unreality and the fabrication of imagination 106 4.2.6. Hyperreal imaginary as cultural discourse 109 4.2. The ImCon as a dream-world of consumption dreams 110 4.3.