SCHOOL OF ACCOUNTING, FINANCE AND MANAGEMENT Lacking Capitalism: Desiring marketing in times of capitalist crisis

In this paper we analyze the social and historical construction process of marketing, and how it is inherently linked to the reproduction of capitalism in times of crisis. Based on Foucauldian discourse theory, we critically interrogate marketing’s discursive change from a productionand sales-led to a consumption-led paradigm in the 1960s and 1970s. We use Lacan’s (1977, 1998) theory of individual desire as lack, and Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) logic of antagonism to discuss how the modern individual is constituted as desiring subject. Marketing acts both to produce and fulfil this lack aimed at the satisfaction of customers’ needs and desires. Based on Boltanski and Chiapello’s (2005) analysis, we argue that marketing plays an important role in the way capitalism is able to regenerate and legitimize itself through its capacity to incorporate critique and resistance.