Comoditty fetishism and subjectivity fetishism: a comparative analysis on Zigmunt Bauman’s work

Abstract

Zigmunt Bauman’s work presents a diversity of themes and approaches that does not relate to disciplinary frontiers in the search of understanding human complexity. In this context, the concepts in the most recent books seek analysis of post-modernity, which Bauman prefers to call “liquid modernity”. In contrast with the previous one, “solid modernity”, this new modernity’s main characteristic is the liquidity in human relations. Permeated by consumption, this society seeks to build identities based on relations of purchase that have subjectivity as background. In this way, emerges the “subjectivity fetishism’, which Bauman compares to the “commodity fetishism”, term previously used by Marx in the analysis of the rising capitalism society. The appropriation of this Marxist concept in the latest works of Zigmunt Bauman will be taken up by this article in order to understand its contribution to the comprehension of the “liquid modernity” in which we operate.