Authenticity Guaranteed: Masculinity and the Rhetoric of Anti-Consumerism in American Culture

258 Pages·2018·3.43 MB·English

by  Sally Robinson

AMERICANS LOVE TO HATE CONSUMERISM.
Scholars, intellectuals, musicians, and writers
of all kinds take pleasure in complaining that consumer culture endangers the “real” things in life,
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including self-determination and individualism. In Authenticity Guaranteed, Sally Robinson brings O
AUTHENTICITY GUARANTEED
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to light the unacknowledged gender and class assumptions of anti-consumerist critique in the second
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half of the twentieth century. American anti-consumerism, despite its apparent complexity, takes a
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remarkably consistent and predictable narrative form. From the mid-century Organization Man to the O
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millennial No Logo, anti-consumerist critique reinforces the gender order by insisting that authentici-
ty is threatened, and masculine agency curtailed, by the feminizing forces of consumer culture. Masculinity and the Rhetoric
Robinson identifies a tradition of masculine protest and rebellion against feminization in
of Anti-Consumerism in American Culture
iconic texts such as The Catcher in the Rye and Fight Club as well as in critiques of postmodernism, A
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academic denunciations of shopping, and a variety of other discourses that aim to diagnose what ails
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American consumer culture. This fresh and timely argument enters into conversation with a wide H
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range of existing scholarship and opens up new questions for scholarly and political discussion.
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T SALLY ROBINSON
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“The strength in this tightly argued book is how the author threads the needle through not only texts
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that clearly articulate the author’s feminization thesis but those texts that profess not to.” I
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—Casey Ryan Kelly, author of Abstinence Cinema: Virginity and the Rhetoric of Sexual Purity in Y

Contemporary Film G
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“I’m excited about the ‘big picture’ the book presents and the way it reframes how we think about
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anti-consumerism—in literature, in film, but also in contemporary cultural and political debates. This A
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is an important book; it’s accessibly written; and it engages compelling issues that are important to
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scholars of literature and film but also to feminists and cultural critics more broadly.” E
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—Erin A. Smith, author of What Would Jesus Read?: Popular Religious Books and Everyday Life in
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Twentieth-Century America
SALLY ROBINSON is associate professor of English at Texas A&M University and author of
Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis.
Cover design by:
umnivearsisty sofachusetts Patricia Duque Campos
press AMHERST AND BOSTON Cover photo: Repetition,
courtesy of Yui Sotozaki.
www.umass.edu/umpress
MASSACHUSETTS
ROBINSON-Cover_mechanical_FIN.indd 1 6/5/18 3:45 PM
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AUTHENTICITY GUARANTEED
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AUTHENTICITY
GUARANTEED
Masculinity and the Rhetoric of
Anti- Consumerism in American Culture
SALLY ROBINSON
University of Massachusetts Press
Amherst and Boston
Copyright © 2018 by University of Massachusetts Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978- 1- 62534- 353- 6 (paper); 352- 9 (hardcover)
Designed by Sally Nichols
Set in Monotype Dante and Josefin Sans
Printed and bound by Maple Press, Inc.
Cover design by Patricia Duque Campos
Cover photo: Repetition, courtesy of Yui Sotzaki.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Robinson, Sally, 1959– author.
Title: Authenticity guaranteed : masculinity and the rhetoric of
   anti- consumerism in American culture / Sally Robinson.
Description: Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2018] | Includes
   bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017050260 (print) | LCCN 2017054511 (ebook) | ISBN
   9781613765944 (e- book) | ISBN 9781613765951 (e- book) | ISBN 9781625343529
   (hardcover) | ISBN 9781625343536 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Consumption (Economics)— Social aspects— United States. |
   Masculinity— United States.
Classification: LCC HC110.C6 (ebook) | LCC HC110.C6 R628 2018 (print) | DDC
   306.30973— dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017050260
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
A portion of chapter 2 was previously published in Salinger’s “The Catcher in the
Rye,” edited by Sarah Graham, for Routledge Study Guides (2007), 69– 76; a portion
of chapter 3 was published in Genders, no. 53 (2011); and a portion of chapter 4 was
published in Postmodern Culture 23, no. 2 (2014).
CONTENTS
Preface ix
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1
FANTASIES OF AUTHENTICITY
Masculinity, Feminization, and Anti- Consumerist Critique 23
CHAPTER 2
AUTHENTIC INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATION MEN
Masculine Protest in the 1950s 59
CHAPTER 3
SHOPPING FOR THE REAL
Anti- Consumerism and the Gender Politics of Postmodern Critique 97
CHAPTER 4
THE REAL DEAL
Fighting the Feminizations of Consumer Culture 133
CHAPTER 5
TO SHOP OR NOT TO SHOP
Consumerist Anti- Consumerism and the Production
of Guilty Pleasure 165
CODA 199
Notes 205
Works Cited 219
Index 233
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For Stan Raleigh
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