Author Description

Discourse analysis of Bertram Brooker's texts on marketing and advertising discloses a discursive construction of consumer subjectivity that is consistent with the vitalist paradigms of Bergson, Spengler, Murry and Haeckel. Comparison of Brooker's statements on the organization of the subject with typical marketing texts from the 1910s and 1920s reveals that his model diverges from the dominant paradigm of the period, championed by early marketing theorists including Adams, Hollingworth, Lucas and Benson, and Scott. This hegemonic articulation of subjectivity coincides with the conclusions of experimental psychologists such as Fechner and Munsterberg. Whereas these authors employ mechanistic analogies to represent the operations of consciousness, and treat the subject as an information object, Brooker's statements are consistent with Bergson's formulation of a subject that endures. Similarly, Brooker's abstract paintings implicate the viewer in an empathic mode of spectatorship that is consistent with the vitalist aesthetics of Bergson and Hulme.