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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Andrew Lindridge
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
In the popular imagination sex sells. Yet, marketing theory has relatively little to say about sexuality per se. Drawing on Žižek’s metaphor of critical theory as ‘short-circuiting’ the dominant discourse, we conceptualise marketing as a field that theorises sexuality only in a series of ‘closed circuits’. Knowledge becomes hierarchical when some topics, such as sexuality, are denied the theoretical freedom to roam in wider open circuity alongside other ‘mainstream’ marketing topics. We identify four ways in which certain topics are enclosed: theoretical, empirical, institutional, and neo-colonial. We then seek to short-circuit this state of affairs by bringing together a heterogeneous group of scholars interested in sexuality. By crossing their critical insights like unexpected connections in a circuit, we create sparks of inspiration that challenge the contents, contexts, and concepts that relate to marketing theories of sexuality. Our paper makes a specific theoretical contribution in arguing for sexuality to be treated as a phenomenon worth studying and theorising in its own right. However, it also makes a wider methodological and epistemological contribution in showing how various topics within marketing theory might be short-circuited to help flatten the hierarchies of knowledge created by closed and open circuits.
Author(s): Coffin J, Eichert CA, Bettany S, Lindridge AM, Oakenfull FG, Ostberg J, Penaloza L, Rinallo D, Rowe D, Santana J, Visconti LM, Walther L
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Marketing Theory
Year: 2022
Pages: Epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 23/02/2022
Acceptance date: 02/11/2021
Date deposited: 11/11/2021
ISSN (print): 1470-5931
ISSN (electronic): 1741-301X
Publisher: Sage Publications
URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/14705931221074722
DOI: 10.1177/14705931221074722
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