An Arendtian perspective on responsibilized heroes: Why marketing needs a new model of heroic action

Abstract

This paper explains how disadvantaged consumers challenge their subjugated positioning through self-discipline, recursive reflexivity and narration. Although it is possible to interpret their agency as complicit with their responsibilization, viewing responsibilized consumers’ entanglement in dynamic market formation as complicity in their disadvantage forecloses on their ability to resist. Instead, this paper argues resistance at the human level involves subjectivation processes according to different spatiotemporal logics. This means resistance paradoxically resembles conformity within a heroic path of resistance against their social disadvantage. Drawing on Arendt’s (1958) categorization of human activities helps surface the politics of resistance at the human level from self-interest to collective interest and social change. The findings suggest theoretical realignment is needed to (1) delineate the limits of responsibilization to adequately explain heterogeneous types of self-discipline within subjectivation processes; and (2) expose the spatiotemporal and political nature of compliance and resistance to market and non-market forces.