When More is Not More: Consumption and Consumerism within the Neoliberal Early Childhood Assemblage(s)

Abstract

In this article, Deleuzoguattarian perspectives are utilized to conceptualize how capitalism shifts and warps the desire to become into the desire to have. The author argues that a more advanced form of autonomic enslavement has replaced capitalism and uses new technologies to bypass subjectivities and attach itself directly to the body and the subconscious. This article aims to make some of these technologies visible within the context of the marketing practices and discourses that groom children and parents as consumers within the US neoliberal assemblage(s). Implications for research and activism are discussed with the aim to move us towards becoming-other in a post-consumer society.