"Everything Must Go!" Consumerism and Reader Positioning in M. T. Anderson's Feed (Critical Essay‪)‬

In preparation for the ARCYP round table "Participatory Ontologies and Youth Cultures," Stuart Poyntz issued an outline of its conceptual framework: "Beginning in infancy, young people now grow up learning the language of consumer media culture through a constant diet of screen images, audio messages, and text-based communication that compete with schools and families as primary storytellers and teachers in youths' lives." As Poyntz notes, young people's engagement with media culture is scarcely a new phenomenon. Nevertheless, the rise of social networking and the ready availability of new technologies have significantly enhanced young people's capacity to produce and to circulate texts and products. This paper focuses on a novel whose narrative is structured by exactly the processes of production and circulation to which Poyntz refers: M. T. Anderson's 2002 novel Feed. I analyze the novel's treatment of human agency in a dystopian future America, where young people are implanted with "the feed," a computer chip which connects them with a global network of "images, audio messages, and text-based communication" that Poyntz referred to. Secondly, I consider how the novel itself positions readers to engage with Anderson as an author whose public identity has been carefully shaped through his media appearances and especially his website. Consumerism and Its Discontents