Creativity Takes Time, Critique Needs Space. Re-working the Political Investment of the Consumer through Pleasure

This paper starts by a reappraisal of the work of heterodox economist Tibor Scitovsky. Scitovsky considers that the economy has been organized as to boost a tradeoff between comfort (i.e. goods that save time, effort and skill) and pleasure (i.e. goods that promote creativity, require time and enrich one’s own faculties). He also envisages a possible conflict between standardized goods which provide novelty by obsolescence and individualized pleasure which may grow slowly as consumption competences develop in a free, non-commercialized fashion. Finally he posits an insidious gap between generalized knowledge which is needed for everyday consumption and specialized skills which are required in the work environment. This paper critically draws on Scitovsky’s discussion and explores the dualities of comfort versus pleasure, standardization versus individualization, generalized versus specialized knowledge in relation to the current debates about critical and alternative ways of consuming which place emphasis on slowness and embeddedness.