The “hyperconsumer”:
The individual in Gilles Lipovetscky’s “artistic capitalism”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4013/con.2026.221.03%20Keywords:
Capitalism. Consumerism. Hypermodernity. Individualism. Lipovetsky.Abstract
Gilles Lipovetsky diagnoses individualism as the predominant and fundamental ethical and cultural value of contemporary Western societies. This article aims to analyze the trajectory and the unfolding of this individualism within Lipovetsky’s thought in books such as L'Ère du vide: essais sur l'individualisme contemporain, from 1983, and La bonheur paradoxal: essai sur la société d’hyperconsommation, from 2006, particularly how this value consolidated in our liberal world, as well as explain the decisive role of consumption throughout this process, which culminated, in the French thinker's view, in the emergence of the "hyperconsumer", and a specific form of capitalist organization marked by a growing "aestheticization" of life, a phenomenon Lipovetsky termed “artistic capitalismo” and developed more recently in L’esthétisation du monde: vivre à l’âge du capitalisme artiste, from 2013.
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