[howlin]

It's very hard to take this essay seriously. Mostly because it so completely dances around the obvious purpose of a "superstore" that it is hard to connect this described experience much at all to what people actually do in such a store.

This essay kind of describes this sort of store as one would describe a walk through the woods. But the purpose of a walk in the woods is so distinct from the purpose of shopping that no comparison can be made.

[dbtc]

The essay is not about the purpose, it's about the effect.

I see where you're coming from, living in a big busy city and shopping regularly in such stores you get desensitized, but your comparison to a walk in the woods is perfect.

A walk in the forest can teach you a different way to see, and so can reading a book. A more systems-minded person might see an entirely different world of hidden machinations than Annie Ernaux if they walk their local megamart like they would in the woods, but it would be equally fascinating to read.

It has the same essence as the hacker's posture of curiosity and play.

[giraffe_lady]

I think they're giving us the benefit of the doubt that we know what a store is for and have already sufficiently considered what can be accomplished in one.

[tomcam]

Except it’s you know, transgressive. Says so right there in the article.

Next time I want some thing that masturbatory I’ll go straight to a porn site.

[yamtaddle]

Two different posts have called out that specific part, and I don't get why. It fits just fine, in context. The overall tone of the article, I get criticizing, but that part seems entirely fine to me.

(the context is that the author's parents seem to have disliked the store, and ran a press that published a book that was sharply critical of Wal Mart, with the result that the author went many years without visiting one—this context is presented right before that entirely reasonable and appropriate use of "transgressive")

[red-iron-pine]

It's a continental philosophy thing. The moment I saw Paris Review in the title I knew there would be "transgressive", a few shots at capitalism, and inevitable dog-whistles to race and gender.

And sure enough, coulda won bingo with those assumptions.

Usually some sort of tie back to "the Real", in either the Lacan / Zizek sense, or the Baudrillard sense. Didn't get any of those, though; kinda disappointed.