Market mutton dressed as ÜberLamb: Diagnosing the commodification of self-overcoming

Abstract

Nietzsche invites us to turn our focus to how subjects seek out what is average rather than what is authentically independent. For marketing theory, this means recognising that while the desire for autonomy and self-determination functions as a seductive and collective narrative for consumer culture generally, it inevitably becomes denatured and delimited to what each individual consumer finds to be most convenient, credible, and practical. Using a Nietzschean toolbox, this paper diagnoses a contemporary malaise in the process of ‘commodified self-overcoming’, whereby subjects are fed the mass-mediated fantasy that they can overcome the symbolic similitude of the majority while remaining comfortably part of the social ‘herd’. We discuss this process using three illustrative archetypes: the inhuman ‘BIG Zombie’, the transhuman ‘Cyborg’, and the all-too-human ‘Slacktivist’. These archetypes reveal how the prospect of overcoming the self and all of its human trappings functions as a core fantasy for consumers, albeit one that is paradoxically produced and supplied by market mechanisms that perpetuate a lasting humanism. We explore the notion of ante-humanism and conclude with implications for the nascent tradition of Terminal Marketing.