Kierkegaard on Consumerism. Review by Eric Ziolkowski (2017)
“Kierkegaard on Consumerism by Jasna Koteska”, review by Eric Ziolkowski, Helen H. P. Manson Professor of Bible and Co-Chair of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Studies Program, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania.
Published in Toronto
Journal of Theology, 33(1), 2017, pp. 149–150 here as "Kierkegaard on
Consumerism by Jasna Koteska."
Jasna
Koteska. Kierkegaard on Consumerism. Toronto and Ljubljana: Kierkegaard
Circle and kud, Apokalipsa, 2016. Pp. 130. Paper,
$15.00.
isbn 978-1-988129-02-0.
A professor of
literature, theoretical psychoanalysis, and gender studies at the University of
Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, Jasna Koteska is a prolific Macedonian
philosopher and writer with a special interest in nineteenth-century literature
and philosophy. This latest of her monographs is an inaugural volume in the new
series, Collection Aut, published by Apokalipsa (Ljubljana) and Kierkegaard
Circle (Toronto).
In her Introduction,
Koteska asserts that this volume is meant to fill the gap resulting from the
scarcity of books on Kierkegaard and economics, particularly his views
regarding consumerism. She does not mention Eliseo Pérez-Álvarez's A
Vexing Gadfly. However, aside from the [End Page 149] fact that
Pérez-Álvarez's work is almost twice the length of Koteska's, the two books
differ significantly in their approach.
Arguing that Kierkegaard
not only attended to economic matters, but did so in a way that can shed light
on our current socioeconomic and political situation, Pérez-Álvarez limits his
study to the ''second authorship'' of Kierkegaard, namely, his published writings
from after Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) to his
death (1855), and also his unpublished writings (most notably the journals and
papers) from the same period. In contrast, Koteska
concentrates mainly upon Repetition, though she also makes lesser
use of a number of other writings from all periods of Kierkegaard's
authorship: Either/Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Concluding
Unscientific Postscript, Works of Love (1847), Christian
Discourses (1848), as well as some of the late, signed polemics
against ''Christendom'' (1854–1855).
Koteska's engaging book
divides into three essays (''parts''), focusing respectively on the three
existential stages whose psychological, emotional, and other dynamics and
contours Kierkegaard's entire oeuvre charts: the aesthetic, the ethical, and
the religious. Drawing upon thinkers such as Hegel, Marx, Freud (above all),
Agamben, and Žižek, as well as certain contemporary pop-culture figures (e.g.,
Marilyn Manson, on the power of television and religion [49]), Koteska
approaches Kierkegaard as a witness to the dawn of modernity, who strongly
''oppose[d] the modern view that humans crave only agitation and desiring'' and
contended with the question, ''How to resolve the paradox of accepting the
world as changeable, yet avoiding the wrong choices which may amount to [the]
piling up of the desire-based consumption, and vice versa, how to avoid the
traps of automatization without freezing the world flux?'' (17).
This book thus adds to
what Koteska points out is a growing scholarship on Kierkegaard and capitalism,
an area in which the Danish thinker's insights into the human psyche, religion,
and individual choice are brought provocatively to bear.
In challenging the old
assumption that Kierkegaard's work has little to contribute to the discussion
of capitalism, Koteska's work is comparable to a volume like Connell and
Evan's Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of Community, which
several decades ago countered the stereotyping of Kierkegaard as the epitomic
proponent of irrationalism and individualism. My only quibble is with Koteska's
tendency sometimes to take the perspective of Kierkegaard's pseudonym
Constantin Constantius for that of Kierkegaard himself (e.g., 20, 51–52).
With Kierkegaard
on Consumerism, the series Collection Aut is off to an auspicious start.
However, for the series to realize its full potential and to do full justice to
the contents, its future volumes should be more carefully copyedited and
proofread. There are some unfortunate substantive errors: e.g., the
mis-locating of Kierkegaard ''among the first thinkers, prior to … Hegel''
(25) or ''even before … Hegel'' (24; emphases mine); the allusions to
Kierkegaard's polemical pamphlets of 1854–1855 against Christendom as a
''book'' (96, 97); and the puzzling rendering of the Latin term homo
sacer as ''bare life'' (98), the phrase being presumably pulled from the
subtitle of Agamben's Homo Sacer. There are also numerous misspellings and
typos throughout Koteska's volume: e.g., ''hemegonyzation'' (54), ''an
interesting phenomena'' and ''it's name'' (64); ''theologican'' (98);
''invisioned (99, twice); ''conlcude'' (112), to mention just a few.
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