No abstract

Traditional biographies, resembling the nineteenth century realistic novel, provide a unifying effect that postmodernists call a "metanarrative." This essay introduces French theoretician Francis Vanoye's observations about postmodern biography, analyzes Simon Schama's Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) as an example of this genre, and weighs the advantages and disadvantages of this innovative approach.

This chapter proposes that some consumers risk becoming dehumanized by the current onslaught of marketing approaches. As these buyers are bombarded by advertisements from numerous media, they become shaped in ways that make them more vulnerable to the powers behind the marketing. This ultimately creates a vicious dynamic circle which must be exited if an authentic self is to emerge and survive in this dehumanizing, violent environment. This essay explores not only the reality of this “vicious dynamic circle,” which often begins in childhood, but also some means of escaping from it: (1) recognition of the dehumanizing process occurring, (2) recollection of Western culture's two foundational metanarratives—Greco-Roman rationality and Judeo-Christian spirituality, (3) understanding what is needed to experience an authentic self, not one shaped by marketers' strategies, and (4) willingness to live according to self-chosen values culled from deep thinking about what is most authentic and precious in life.

No abstract

No abstract