The coming to consciousness of capitalism as a global religion of mass consumption and conformity. Fashion itself as a site of the constant, increasingly efficient distribution of aesthetic values to the mass consumer. This disruption makes explicit the untapped potential of seeing the corporate career for what it is, the absorption into the corpus, the body.
Bringing the uniformity of the logic of profit maximization that governs social life to social life’s most dominant institution. Wearing the once hidden logic underneath the transvaluation of all values, of the profaning of all that is sacred, adorning one’s self in a symbol of constancy in the face of all that is solid melting into air.
Prospecting is a search for gold. Gold gaining its luster from its exchange value. The difference of all that is exchanged is reduced to a common denominator as it is turned into something that can be exchanged for something else. The thing is its prospect for accumulating that medium through which it is exchanged. It comes down to one single thing and its circulation.
The circulation of the same as the principle behind all difference in the enterprise. Worn at once as symbol and as functional uniform for work. Making explicit the values all are working for as uniquely tied to this one single, simple value. The value that brings the corporation into existence in the first place.
A uniform that expresses the uniformity of social life and labor. The commodification of the abstraction from the flux of fashion of trends and the creation of value as the repetition of the same. A revolution in feasibility itself. Feasibility being a term that holds humans back from recognizing the possibilities of disruptive innovation. Were the crusades feasible?
The most common driver of consumption is the human expression of a contradictory desire. The desire to differentiate one’s self and at the same time to gain admiration, acceptance. The arena of this desire being the visible display of one’s self in clothes made according someone else’s designs for someone else’s profit.
The corporation however, has superseded the state and church as the location of stability. It changes names but the structure remains. Schisms within religion, subservience to the corporation in the state, mean the surrounding social fabric is undependable as a source of meaning. Time spent, life spent, inside the rituals of corporate life are given symbolic expression. Stability and uniformity are given a uniform.
The isolation of the corporation and its single unitary purpose as symbolized in the workers’ wear serves paradoxically emancipatory values. Difference and identity become external to the circulation of commodities that the fashion world conceals. Creativity is loosed from this circulation to invent new values in self presentation outside the working day.