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Ethics of Luxury: Materialism and Imagination
In Ethics of Luxury renowned Canadian thinker and artist Jeanne Randolph gives us a magnum opus focusing on one of the most pressing issues facing us today - how we act morally and ethically while participating in a culture of abundance, opulence and consumerism. Randolph argues that when we use our imagination, as we do when we create, appreciate and live with art, we are acting ethically, expressing our sense of morality in a practical, material way.
142 pages, Paperback
First published June 15, 2007
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About the author
Jeanne Randolph
16 books9 followersJeanne Randolph is one of Canada’s foremost cultural theorists. She is the author of the influential book Psychoanalysis & Synchronized Swimming (1991) as well as Symbolization and Its Discontents (1997), Why Stoics Box (2003), and Ethics of Luxury (2007). Dr. Randolph is also known as an engaging lecturer and performance artist. In universities and galleries across Canada, England, Australia, and Spain she has spoken on topics ranging from the aesthetics of Barbie dolls to the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
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August 22, 2013
Jeanne Randolph writes:
As much as I respect methodical intelligence, I am going to continue parading my cogitations about imagination without offering any method for disguising between “imaginative” and “unimaginative.” As much as we need intellectual assistance to frame ideas and beliefs, I am marshalling extreme caution to avoid judgments that grade imagination as if it could transpire in bad, worse, worst or good, better and best forms. This seems urgent. It seems imperative to me to prevent arousal, according to such gradations, of a sneer at someone(s) else. I am wary of people in enclaves of extreme monetary wealth staking a claim on everything of value while designating the citizens of less financially endowed enclaves to be inferior custodians of pricey objects and valuable ideas. The differences between life in enclaves of extreme monetary wealth and our enclaves of material luxury, not to mention enclaves of desperation, are too great already without someone exploiting so-called gradations of imaginative quality in order to justify their own greed.
As I reflect upon the experience of imagining, there is a way of speaking about it that is unfamiliar in everyday speech but necessary for me. That is to emphasize, as I have mentioned, that imagination is a valuable illusion. To speak of imagination as illusory, rather than as a mental process that creates illusions, may seem odd, but to do so introduces the theoretical bias of these reflections on luxury and ethics. This bias is complex and unfamiliar perhaps, which may make it too topsy-turvy to seem credible. This bias, however, makes my response to Dewey possible. Dewey, pining for intellectual assistance, would have received my conjecture of ethical imagining as nothing if not intellectual. And my bias (“to speak of imagination as illusory experience”) uncovers aspects of imagining that citizens of an enclave of luxury can well afford.
I am thinking of imagining not only as a phenomenon, but also as an experience. It is so easy to say in English “She’s got imagination” as if imagination were a pocketful of loose change. If I were to state, “The gospel singers and the congregation are making Jesus,” would I be making sense? What I would mean is that the devout congregation is sustaining its belief with joyous communal practice. They are creating as well as experiencing “consensus as to what is loved.” In this way I underscore imagining as socially sustained; “practice gives the words [‘Jesus’ or ‘imagining’] their sense. Imagining is not as transient as common sense might claim, not incongruous with everyday living.
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As much as I respect methodical intelligence, I am going to continue parading my cogitations about imagination without offering any method for disguising between “imaginative” and “unimaginative.” As much as we need intellectual assistance to frame ideas and beliefs, I am marshalling extreme caution to avoid judgments that grade imagination as if it could transpire in bad, worse, worst or good, better and best forms. This seems urgent. It seems imperative to me to prevent arousal, according to such gradations, of a sneer at someone(s) else. I am wary of people in enclaves of extreme monetary wealth staking a claim on everything of value while designating the citizens of less financially endowed enclaves to be inferior custodians of pricey objects and valuable ideas. The differences between life in enclaves of extreme monetary wealth and our enclaves of material luxury, not to mention enclaves of desperation, are too great already without someone exploiting so-called gradations of imaginative quality in order to justify their own greed.
As I reflect upon the experience of imagining, there is a way of speaking about it that is unfamiliar in everyday speech but necessary for me. That is to emphasize, as I have mentioned, that imagination is a valuable illusion. To speak of imagination as illusory, rather than as a mental process that creates illusions, may seem odd, but to do so introduces the theoretical bias of these reflections on luxury and ethics. This bias is complex and unfamiliar perhaps, which may make it too topsy-turvy to seem credible. This bias, however, makes my response to Dewey possible. Dewey, pining for intellectual assistance, would have received my conjecture of ethical imagining as nothing if not intellectual. And my bias (“to speak of imagination as illusory experience”) uncovers aspects of imagining that citizens of an enclave of luxury can well afford.
I am thinking of imagining not only as a phenomenon, but also as an experience. It is so easy to say in English “She’s got imagination” as if imagination were a pocketful of loose change. If I were to state, “The gospel singers and the congregation are making Jesus,” would I be making sense? What I would mean is that the devout congregation is sustaining its belief with joyous communal practice. They are creating as well as experiencing “consensus as to what is loved.” In this way I underscore imagining as socially sustained; “practice gives the words [‘Jesus’ or ‘imagining’] their sense. Imagining is not as transient as common sense might claim, not incongruous with everyday living.
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