No-One Gets Left Behind: Consumer Neoliberalism and Lateral Violence

"ALEA IACTA EST
- Can Yucel

Attila crossed the Danube
Hannibal crossed the Alps
Caesar crossed the Rubicon

And I crossed
My self
Burning all the flowers behind me

Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat"


As the article from Mad in America “The Angry Consumer”: Embracing Difficult Conversations" sets out, the difficult conversations within the consumer movement glossed over. And the glossing over impacts industry policy. Without those voices policy becomes porous.

These conversation will continue to be vexing issues if any consumer voice gets excluded or lateralised. Intentionally or otherwise.

Including the emotional turn we're seeing in the humanities and social sciences  asks us to be vulnerable, expressive, compassionate, humble.


Inclusion is a capstone to much social justice and the emotional turn in research.

Lateral violence is a feature of the consumer demographic which in hushed tones are mooted to be too hard to talk about.

The exclusion of people within the demographic. Some is intentional for a a variety of reasons, some systemic. Systemically - the sprawl of consumer research internationally and in Australia, the normatively framed problem of the mentally ill being the most disadvantaged sector in disability employment. Consumer research and awareness raising research in general, without fair exchange, inclusive of in-kind support is a neoclassical exploitation in a time of consumer rigour.

The proliferation of surveys, in mental health generally is becoming higher in volume. Some call it consumer opportunism (thanks sharon : ) ). It seems the economics of group research is cannibalising from the community even if its for the sake of social capital and cultural mobility upward in an industry.

The push to self-advocacy individualises the problem. At some level of the consumer movement atomisation occurs but we're all aware of the progressive liberalism in slogans meant to unify in solidarity.

We're told that the fragmentation of the consumer movement is a polyphony. Without knowing the intricacies of that thesis I can only say that with lateralised voices, the polyphony is not in anyway a harmonised Bach work. And if people are excluded then give me jazz. As Thelonious Monk said

what you don't play can be more important than what you play. 
Bach was an assistant kappelmeister. Thelonious was mad.

No-one gets left behind. Though without scoping the demographic in an inclusive way, people get left behind. The slogan for some, at some time, is jaded.

To lift the lateralised voice, research or otherwise, up in a fairer way would be to implement a broader representational platform in a living experience where burning bridges is an everyday thing.

Burning Flowers with Amethyst - George Malyon