The role of Archaisms in Post-Historical Consumer Culture

James, Sophie (2024) The role of Archaisms in Post-Historical Consumer Culture. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This doctoral thesis provides a critical account of the functions that archaisms (i.e. cultural objects, symbols, or ideas that originate from a pre-modern period of history), fulfil in consumption, markets, and consumer culture. Although nostalgic attachments to the past have previously been conceptualised by marketing scholars as a means for consumers to escape the overt commercialism of contemporary social life in favour of a return to a more authentic and communal existence, few have considered how past-centred escapism is itself a strategic accompaniment to political-economic stability in the present. In contrast to the ‘utopian optimism’ that perpetuates celebratory accounts of the nostalgic in the marketplace, this doctoral thesis explores the consumption of archaisms as tied to a kind of cruel optimism where the more consumers attach themselves to a distant pre-capitalist past, the less chance they have at securing a post-capitalist future. Following the argument that societies in the Global North are ‘post-historical’, in the sense that they are characterised by the unlikelihood of a political-systemic change that would radically challenge capitalism’s hegemony, I show how the magical imaginarium of a pre-patriarchal and earth-bound pagan past functions as fantasmatic support for consumers to tolerate – rather than overcome – their rationalised overdetermined present. The primeval figure of the ‘witch’ is used as the illustrative context for this thesis. Empirical portions of the thesis draw upon a historiography and digital history of witchcraft throughout modernity and a critical ethnography of witch interest undertaken over a two-year period in Lancashire, Northwest England. Using observational netnography alongside interviews with self-identifying witches and those interested in witch tourism, I explore the meanings that the witch holds for consumers and I integrate these with readings of the structuring influence of market systems. Drawing upon critical theories adapted from philosophers Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek, Mark Fisher, and Fredric Jameson, analyses show how market-mediated attachments to a magical past not only lack the nuanced futurity to ameliorate remorseless dissatisfactions with the post-historical present but work to perpetuate the conflation of capitalism with reality itself (i.e. capitalist realism). To explain this phenomenon, I introduce new concepts to marketing theory including marketplace revenant, retrocorporation, and thinking magically. Each of these concepts contributes to terminalist (Ahlberg et al., 2022) and de-romanticist (Fitchett and Cronin, 2022) research agendas. This thesis is presented in alternative format (by publication) and features two published papers (see Chapters 3 and 4), one work-in-progress manuscript (see Chapter 5) and supporting conference papers (see Appendices 5-10). Each paper presents specific sub-questions which contribute to the overarching question driving the research: how is the ‘witch’ made to function in ways that sustain the logic of capitalism?