The Politics of Plenitude

The marketplace multiplies cultural identities and creates true diversity. No wonder the right and the left are upset.

Grant McCracken from the August/September 1998 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

But there is an other use for difference. In this case, we use difference as a definitional opportunity. We say of otherness, "Wonder what that's like?" We venture out and try otherness on. This has always been the spirit of Mardi Gras and other liminal moments. But I think there is good evidence that our entire culture is shifting in a transformational direction. More and more, we are prepared to try on difference, to test it out.

This is a radically new approach to difference, one that completely shifts the field of assumptions. In the old sharpening model, we use difference to push off against. We are not what the other is. In this new transformational model, we use difference as a definitional opportunity. We use it as a shape to try on and act out. Our most fundamental reflexes are rewired. When we see a new species of social life (Dennis Rodman, say) we no longer say, "Weirdo! Get 'em!" We say, "Um, that's pretty strange. What's it like to be like that?"

We move from difference as contradistinction to difference as definition. We move from difference as sharpening to difference as shaping. Difference is less and less for "pushing off," and more and more for "trying on." Almost certainly, we will pursue both. And this too will prove, as everything seems to, yet another engine for our plenitude.

There is a second reason to be frightened. Plenitude challenges our most fundamental ideas of social and political association. What becomes of the "common good" in a body politic that has precious little in common? What happens to the "community" when it fills up with differences? How can we hope to act in concert when we are speciating so intensively and so extensively?

I wish I had a clever answer. I have what is merely a sneaking suspicion. There is a common culture that unites the world of plenitude. It is, I think, the marketplace. This is the great lingua franca of the contemporary world. As long as we can meet somewhere in the exchange of something for the benefit of someone, we have a foundation that can sustain plenitude. After all, say what you will about the marketplace, capitalism, and the consumer culture, they have got us this far.

Of course, some will say that some plenitude has happened in spite of capitalism and consumerism. Others will argue that there may be a place where the consumer culture "runs out" and that the next stage of plenitude demands its collapse. But the striking thing from an anthropological point of view is that capitalism is a little like plenitude. For a great many purposes, it doesn't care (or specify) what must happen, just that something does.

There was a period of confusion in the history of capitalism when this was not clear. In the 1950s in particular it appeared that the marketplace could only work if producers and consumers participated in monstrous acts of conformity and containment. But the 1960s demonstrated the falsity of this assumption. Capitalism doesn't appear to need certain kinds of conformity. Indeed, as the 1990s draw to a close, capitalism appears happiest and most productive when certain conformity rules do not apply. Things that seemed essential in 1955 (e.g., what the neighbors thought) turn out to be "things indifferent."

But the economistic mentality contains a toxin that puts plenitude at risk. As long as the entire enterprise depends on a "means-end" rationality and an instrumental logic, there are certain acts of imagination and invention that may not be allowed to happen. Just as clearly, the true creative powers of the species are held in check. The expressive potentials and the instrumental imperatives of capitalism are daily at odds with one another. They collide every time creative teams in Hollywood, Madison Avenue, Broadway, or Burbank sit down with "suits" who demand deference to the monarch ROI (as "return on investment" is called--usually without a trace of irony). To this extent, the marketplace is the enemy of plenitude. As the phrase has it, it all comes down to money.

I accept this, but I cannot ignore the fecundity I see around me. Capitalism has endured, enabled, perhaps provoked the speciation we see around us. It is, as we have noted, particularly unparticular. It doesn't care what it does. It doesn't care what we do. The strangleholds of hierarchies and elites count for less and less. And capitalism is nothing if not transformational. It is restless, inventive, and novelty seeking. It throws off innovations ceaselessly. The consumer culture is a cause and a consequence of plenitude. Certainly, there are some cultural and social arrangements it will not allow. Just as certainly, there is a truly breathtaking array it will. As the phrase might have had it: It all comes up from money.

I do not solve this issue. But I do wish to show, in a way that social scientists normally do not, that capitalism is not always the villain of the piece. I wish to show that it is as often as much the agent of plenitude as its enemy. This is especially important to grasp when we are wrestling with our options in a society fully captivated by plenitude. For it is clear that as our speciation goes forward we are going to need something--imperfections, warts and all. Capitalism may be a baby we cannot afford to lose with the bathwater.

We have reason to be frightened of the world that plenitude is constructing for us. But it is also true that there may be a net to catch us when we fall. Plenitude will continue to spin off more, and more different, species of social life, but that does not mean that commonality cannot be fashioned. It doesn't mean that these very different species cannot work out some system of mutual recognition that leaves their differences uncompromised. The marketplace is not a perfect solution. It is never a pretty solution. It is rarely a just solution. But it is rather better than the alternative--a tyranny or tower of babel we can none of us survive.

Finally, I think the thing we most have to fear is amnesia--our well-practiced ability to forget what we know about ourselves. We come to terms with one part of the culture of commotion (what is happening to gender, say), but we forget this when we take up another part (what is happening to spiritual belief). And we forget both of these when we sit down to contemplate the tremendous innovations taking place in the worlds of scholarship, business, or art. By systematically forgetting what we know about the disparate pieces of our society, we never have to come to terms with the revolution that is taking place throughout it.

The real danger is that by insisting on the partial view, by selectively forgetting what we know, we need never come fully to grips with the new realities of our world. Plenitude is upon us. It will not go away. It will continue to transform everything about us. It is time to see it whole.

Grant McCracken is a cultural anthropologist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. This article is adapted from Plenitude (Periph. Fluide), which is available at www.cultureby.com.