|
|
Article: "Tailors of malt, hot, all round": homosocial consumption in "Dubliners."(Special "Dubliners" Number)
- Article from:
- Studies in Short Fiction
- Article date:
- June 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Studies in Short Fiction. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Consumption has become an obsessive interest for cultural studies in the 1990s. Instead of the Marxist narrative, of history driven by the "forces of production," historians, anthropologists, sociologists and literary critics are now more likely to invoke a "Consumer Revolution" that leads to a regime called "modern consumption" (McKendrick; Fox and Lears; Brewer and Porter). Here, consumer goods are used "to express cultural categories and principles, cultivate ideals, create and sustain life-styles, construct notions of the self, and create (and survive) social change" (McCracken xi). Consumption becomes the most important means of building a personal identity; at the ...