Connecting contexts: A Badiouian epistemology for consumer culture theory

This essay is a response to Askegaard and Linnet’s (2011, ‘Towards an Epistemology of Consumer Culture Theory: Phenomenology and the Context of Context’, Marketing Theory 11(4): 381–404) call for a greater epistemological plurality within consumer culture theory (CCT). The article begins with a brief review of what these authors refer to as the dominant existential–phenomenological perspective and their Morinian alternative and then presents contemporary political philosophy as another alternative. Political philosophy has experienced quite a renaissance in recent years, and the school of thought has inspired major epistemological and ontological interventions throughout the academy. Here, I provide a general introduction to this field of social inquiry and then focus specifically on the contributions of French philosopher Alain Badiou. Badiou’s work is particularly valuable for fields such as CCT, as it presents a unified epistemological framework for developing knowledge of social structures, cultural forms and subjectivities. The utility of political philosophy in general as well as the Badiouian framework is then demonstrated with recourse to the extant CCT literature. Ultimately, a Badiouian perspective has the potential to fulfil Askegaard and Linnet’s call for epistemologies that can attend to everyday experience while also considering the operation of cultural, political and sociological forces.