Research Profile
Mr Christopher Higgins
Address:1-3 Museum Place
Research Interests
- Subjectivity;
- Lacanian psychoanalytic theory;
- Žižekian Ideology critique;
- Critical theory;
- Ethical consumption.
PhD Topic / Area
My research aims to augment, and problematise, extant research and consumer-oriented activism, education and policy initiatives related to ethical consumption through a critical engagement with the iconoclastic work of Slavoj Žižek — in particular his notion that subjects “know very well what they’re doing but they’re doing it anyway” — who, it is argued, presents a new way of thinking our social world and our being in that world. Specifically, I aim to: explore why information about the exploitative social relations underpinning commodity production and exchange, and the unsustainability of current patterns of consumption, does not disrupt the affective-constructive dimensions of consumption. Moreover, I aim to provide a complex understanding of the mechanisms underpinning consumers’ libidinal investments in certain consumption practices, in addition to empirically classifying the ideologico-political construction of ethical consumption and sustainability within policy initiatives.