Consummative Mobilization

Definition

Consummative mobilization is Baudrillard's term (in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, quoted by Tang) for the coordinated mobilization of a population into consumption — the stage for which needs themselves are constructed as alibi: "needs are necessarily constructed to provide the alibi or self-evident rationale for any given stage of 'consummative mobilization,' which proves to be a central legitimizing process of the late capitalist mode of production" (p. 331). The Intimus editors' headnote renders the term in its British form — "consumptive mobilisation" (p. 328) — and attaches it to the spectacle: "contemporary China's rapid absorption of the spectacle of desire, a cosmetic revolution in which external and ostentatious signs of modernity indicate consumptive mobilisation." The concept names the legitimizing function of consumption: not that people consume, but that the demand for consumption is manufactured as if it arose from consumers' own nature — "consumption does not arise from an objective need of the consumer… rather, there is social production, in a system of exchange, of a material of differences, a code of significations and invidious (statuaire) values" (Baudrillard, quoted p. 334). Tang's application: 1990s China's decoration craze as the term's compressed demonstration — "the entire nation… consumed by a craze in 'real estate, construction, gas and water-heater installation'" (p. 329) — and his final question extends it to interiority itself: "Do the evocations of a transcendental longing at the end actually add to the legitimacy of massive consummative mobilization?" (p. 333).

Key Thinkers

• Jean Baudrillard — the concept's source: For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1981, esp. "The Ideological Genesis of Needs," quoted pp. 331, 334) — needs' ideological genesis and consumption's legitimizing function. Tang's note cites Douglas Kellner for "a lucid discussion of Baudrillard's development of Marx's analysis of the capitalist mode of production" (p. 334).
• Xiaobing Tang — the term's interior-design application: the 1992 Changsha decoration craze as mobilization at city scale; the alibi question extended to interiority itself.
• Henri Lefebvre — the colonization frame: the "bureaucratic society of controlled consumption" — the earlier theorization of consumption's administration that "mobilization" updates.
• Leslie Sklair — the wiki's parallel: the "culture-ideology of consumerism" as the belief-system doing the same legitimizing work.

Related Concepts

• Sign Value — what the mobilization produces and trades: the political economy of the sign.
• Colonization of Everyday Life — the process the term legitimizes: consumption's penetration of the everyday.
• Ideology — the term's genre: alibi, self-evident rationale — ideology as constructed need.
• Consumerism — the condition being mobilized toward.
• Injured Interiority — the critique-vector: whether interiority's evocations "add to the legitimacy of massive consummative mobilization" (p. 333).
• Capitalism — the mode of production whose central legitimizing process the term names.
• Spectacle — the mobilization's visible form: "the enticing spectacle generated by a pervasive consummative mobilization" (p. 331).

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Decorating Culture (Tang 1998/2006) — the concept's source: needs as alibi (p. 331); "consummative mobilization" as "a central legitimizing process of the late capitalist mode of production" (p. 331); the spectacle generated by it (pp. 331–332); the transcendental-longing question (p. 333).
• Everyday Life in the Modern World (Lefebvre 1971) — the colonization frame: controlled consumption as the administered everyday.
• Iconic Architecture and the Culture-ideology of Consumerism (Sklair 2010) — the parallel term: the culture-ideology that makes consumption the measure of worth.
• Streamlining (Lupton & Miller 1992/2006) — the formation document: the ideology written down as household doctrine and marketing prescription.

Open Questions

• The alibi's scope. If needs are "necessarily constructed to provide the alibi" (p. 331), does the alibi thesis admit exceptions — and how would consumption that exceeds the alibi (de Certeau's tactics, Zepf's ego project) be distinguished from it? See consumerism, colonization-of-everyday-life.
• The interiority-alibi. Tang's extension — interiority itself as potentially the alibi (p. 333) — makes the term reach the wiki's own interiority cluster: is innerness's discourse the transcendental longing that legitimizes mobilization, or the place from which the mobilization is questioned?
• Translation and spelling. "consummative mobilization" (essay body, p. 331) vs. "consumptive mobilisation" (headnote, p. 328): both render Baudrillard's Consommation — but do the variants mark different things (mobilization for consumption vs. mobilization by consumption)? The French original (Pour une critique de l'économie politique du signe) would settle it.
• Late capitalism's compressed chronology. Tang applies a "post-World War II Euro-America" theory (Baudrillard's frame, p. 331) to 1990s China — the "astonishing speed" question (p. 333). Does the compression confirm the theory's universality or expose its Euro-American parochialism? See modernity, interiorisation.