[...] -->) secret belief that this civilization will last forever

(what could be opportunities for) **creative foreclosure** of the old world --> space for optimism ♥
--> ****preparing for an end without apocalypse**** [= foreclosure, @Goda and Sina dictionaryofapocalypse.com] ([curatorial?] organizing for the end of the world that is an escalated absolutizing commitment to divest justly) --> ****organizing without hope*** [=/=? death drive]

(we need دورویی) two-faced {<-- I think artists from Iran and former Soviet Union countries with *double consciousness* تجربه چندگانگی تجربه دوگانگی are good at *hopeless optimism* خوش بین ناامید}
1. acknowledge the unbounded unthinkabile incalculable nature of this new reality
2. a chance to experiment with organizational forms of justice, ethics, politics, reason (that are without precedent)


{(examining growing boundaries of) climate change ==> increasing category expansion ==> epistemologies cannot encompass climage change reality}--Campbell--> (we are) afforded a chance to ontologize it

speculative realism: a mode of commitment to a non-correlated reality --Campbell--> an organizational strategy ==> a mood --> bleak optimism


unthinkability: refusal to let framing occur

...................................

how mythology is being used in consumer research
[...]
[Tillotson and Martin offering various myth typologies to support theorists in evaluation of myth theories and appropriate integration of theoretical advancements in the field of consumer culture theory:] --> how consumer researchers have sailed though every discipline--from psychology, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, to literary criticism, history and political economy...
myth has been understood in consumer research from five perspective:
•symbolic
•functionalist
•semiotic
•structuralist
•critical theory
•monomythic


Weber{ modern bureaucratization and intellectualization ==> disenchantment of the world }--> modern experience = rationalization and mythological mysticism ==> marketplace, *no institution has been more willing and able to respond to this (Weberian) desire for enchantment than the modern marketplace* ~=> ***normative preference for enchantment = consumption***
--problem--> *the market remains firmly in charge of myth of consumption, its rewards and its consequences* : marketplace mythology has increasingly become an all-encompassing construct of assorted descriptions and theoretical advancements including the sacred, extraordinary, symbolic and transcendental

myth: a way of organizing perceptions of realities


consumer culture theory

{[Mead & Blumer's] symbolic perspective of myth: how symbols are adorned with meaning and that affect social interaction --> symbolic myth research: verbal/nonverbal forms of communication, with an emphasis on how people behave in day-to-day circumstances in the context of socio-historical structure and ideological of their environment ==> “mythology = narrative” }=/= Joseph Campbell: “interaction with the symbolic ==> mythology”

•Freud's use of mythic stories as metaphors in psychoanalysis ==> (early) symbolic perspective
•Jung's archetype: embodiment beliefs/images ==collectively==> myth and religion }==> “mythology = extension of the collective unconscious into society”
•Blumer's social life: construction built up by the actor (=/= relationship of structures directing human life); ability to act toward oneself, ability to internally define themselves as objects [self with goal] as the symbols of their own actions
--McAdams--> personal myth: narrative storyline as a means to organize meaning in their lives --in--> context <==forms== historical, religious and state-influenced belief systems, culturally specific themes and ideology
}--> identity and society --responsible-for--> life story --negotiated--> personal myth as interpretive strategy
}==> concepts of ‘consumption’ and ‘identity’ in consumer culture theory

identity work =/= personal myth
[Velliquette + Murray + Creyer:] example of tattoo culture: private and public burrs physically with the attachment of personal meaning to physical marking of the skin and symbolically through the personal stories attached to public brands --> *individuals attach meaning to consumption* <== negotiating the cultural tensions <==throu== perception of self contrasted with the influence of institutional structures (race, class, gender, age) and ideological pressure }==> “meaning = dialectic of object and consumer”

•(Jung's archetype ==>) Joseph Campbell's monomyth: universally applicable narrative of mythology (like in Hollywood films about the hero's rites of passage --> experience of life in accordance with the phenomena of time)
myths/dreams find expression in symbolic form --> “participating in ritual == engaging myth”
}--> **consumer research as hero's journey** : Consumer Behavior Odyssey's travelling across America in a motorhome to learn about self, the world, and other people [@Jassme and Mia] --> transcendental knowledge of the American consumer ==> academic literature
(consumer Odyssey found that) ‘the journey’ holds a sacred status that transforms knowledge generation into new mythological epistemologies and opens up new doors to understanding (of consumption)
&
‘extraordinary experiences as rites of passage’ [--example: white water river rafting --> (emergent themes of) personal growth, communitas harmony with nature translated to other consumer experiences]

‘rites of passage’ [~= ‘monomyth']:
•separation [~= departure]
•transition [~= initiation]
•reintegration [~= return]

(river rafting ~=) ritual ~= enactment of myth

}--(Arnould & Price)--> narrative of service embodies the initiation of the journey
‘extraordinary experience' = event & *enchanted temporal period*

liminality: the threshold of a ritual where ambiguity and disorientation occurs before the ritual has been completed [Van Gennep, Turner]

[Dobscha and Foxman:] how a joyous activity is actually stressful and invokes *transcendent experiences of a mythic journey* --> ‘call to adventure’ in a chaotic retail setting rife with conflict [~= buying (the quintessential perfect) wedding dress at Filene]

consumers engage and overcome conflicts (by enacting power, achievement, and mastery ~ mythic agency) and cross the mythic threshold ==> transform consumption process into extraordinary event


Saussure's “words considered as signifiers to signs where meaning is held” & meaning is dependent on difference (and not on concepts outside language) --structuralism--> “myth = a form of speech that exists before ideas”
==> Strauss: [speech and remembrance ==>] pre-literary societies produce images and narratives that resembled nature and the meaning of the mind --> mythic narrative = embodied resolution of contradiction [=/= archives of achievements]
--Doja--> mythic structures: generalizable forms (common in all types of societies and universal categories of the human mind) ~ “collective structures ==> superstructures = myth”
Strauss: “myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact”
[for example Mauss's gift: obligation of reciprocation = power-relationship creating a binary of giver and receiver ==reciprocity==> synthesis of the gift]

•Geertz's ‘thick description’ (--> an antidote, symbolic anthropology =/= technocratic, mechanistic means of understanding cultures and settings, exercise of bridging perceived binary oppositions and creating triadic arrays of meaning)
•Derrida's random movement of signifiers (=/= origin as a transcendental anchor to build signification, Strauss's concept of the exemplar model)

Saussure ==>
•Barthes: “myth = manifestation of ideological tendencies of cultures” --> distorts history, depoliticizes speech ==> “language of the bourgeoisie becomes the myth of universal truths, obscuring the power relations and blocking the perspective of power between class, race, gender and other marginalized people” --> perpetuate existing social conditions
=/= Peirce: systems of signification create discourses (~ practices create the meaning behind an individual's interaction with a sign)
}--> ‘advertisers and marketers use signs and symbols to create meaning surrounding their brands. consumers interpret these signs and symbols in different ways’

[...]