Lunch of the last human : Nutritionally complete food and the fantasies of market-based progress

Cronin, James and Fitchett, James (2021) Lunch of the last human : Nutritionally complete food and the fantasies of market-based progress. Marketing Theory, 21 (1). pp. 3-24. ISSN 1470-5931

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Marketing Theory
Additional Information:
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/
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1400/1406
Subjects:
?? fantasyfoodhealthideologynietzscheprogressŽižekmarketing ??
ID Code:
143169
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
15 Apr 2020 09:35
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
16 Jan 2024 00:18