De la ética del trabajo a la estética del consumo

Abstract

Although one should not take too seriously the tone of the proposal that gives a title to the present article, it is possible that the transitional image suggested describes appropriately a state of things that has changed. Therefore, the categorical mood of the phrase should not be taken so literally, since an automatic subscription to the “discourse of the ends” (of history, of ideologies, of work…) does not seem reasonable, nor the spontaneous celebration of the practices of consumption. Our purpose is instead to propose keys of interpretation in order to understand how certain collective values are being displaced from the moment when an ethics of work, perhaps a very demanding one, yields to the aesthetics of contemporary consumption.