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ALIENATION: CRITIQUE AND ALTERNATIVE FUTURES 23

negotiation that will enable people to learn to are likely to rule relationships in the micro,
valorize a self-identity that is freed of the Ahponen (2005) finds that everyday life can
bonds of consumption and is truly emancipa- offer moments of emancipation. In her
tory. This possibility is especially significant account of the media as a launch pad for
in the capitalist-generated culture of con- insights into the self, into family life as a
sumption. Ultimately, the pursuit of com- field of struggle and achievement, and into
modities, produced by the alienated labor of liberation through appreciation of the Other,
remote Others, generates alienated forms of she touches on themes explored in the work
selfhood that compulsively pursue privatized of Gibson and of Gimenez. As she shows,
hedonism through the accumulation of goods everyday life is strewn with demands for per-
or cultural experiences. But consumer-based forming alienating routines, but it is also a
selfhood cannot provide individuals with site of action where one can find opportuni-
meaningful intimate ties, nor give them a ties for experiencing the excitement and
sense of control or a meaningful existence. exhilaration of heroism. Ahponen (2005)
These consumer-based identities and lifestyles does not ignore the fact that the content of
have become an essential moment of ideo- everyday life is saturated with thankless
logical hegemony. Nowadays, however, tasks that are ineluctably imposed by the
rampant consumerism is not available for all; conditions of an alienating environment and
instead, people opt for more modest expres- entail deprivation consequent on disorienta-
sions of the culture industry, from escapist tion at the macro. From her data, however,
films to television programs that are an indi- she finds that the very same alienating envi-
cation of alienation and at once a critique of ronmental conditions are likely to evoke
society and illusory palliatives. For other agency and creativity. Ironically, moreover,
people, the alienation that stems from rapid when these events attract the attention of the
socio-economic change, assaults on traditional media, their subjective value is enhanced.
values, and the emptiness of consumerism are The very media that have developed modes
assuaged by shared resistance to modernity, of exploitation for purposes of capitalist
such as the embrace of fundamentalist reli- profit can also effect turning points in
gions that provide stable identities, redemp- people’s lives. For everyday heroes, media
tion through spiritual renewal and an attention has created moments of emancipa-
imaginary return to an earlier, golden age tion from the patterns of alienation that seem
that never was. The diverse guises of funda- to be inevitably embedded in the routines of
mentalism may well provide compensatory everyday life.
gratifications within their communities, but In a similar way Porpora (2005) evokes
then prompt further conflicts, quarrels, and spirituality as a means of transcendence and
often bitter animosities in the larger society. a way of overcoming alienation. He points
However, these very conflicts between abso- out that the trap of alienation that attends the-
lutist and authoritarian values and the nature orizing can be evaded (see discussions of
of modern life spur vast numbers of people Dahms and David earlier in this chapter).
throughout the world to forge ‘project’ identi- What is lacking in the efficient and productive,
ties from feminism to ecology that overcome but at the same time shallow, instrumental
alienation by taking up globally based causes rationality that characterizes modernity is
of social justice. morality – both of action and of being.
The dialectical promise of de-alienation is Arguing that the spiritual alienation of our
also evident in some of the banal incidents of age, an era devoid of ultimate concerns, is at
everyday life. While, as seen above, Kalekin- the same time alienation from one’s true self,
Fishman demonstrates how principles of alien- one’s own potential, as well as alienation
ation that are unavoidable in the macro-system from others, Porpora (2005: 244) points