Corporate capitalism similarly embodies the triumph of postmodernism. Wink and guerrilla marketing, targeting specific groups, and identifying potential "tipping points;' not to mention more basic advertising strategies around branding, apply to consumers insights into the generation of afect and desire celebr<sub>�</sub>ted by scholars in critical theol)j philosoph)lj and cultural studies. Amplifying this point, Zizek calls Gilles Deleuze the "ideologist oflate capitalism:'15 Is not the intense circulation of afects in ways that bypass persons in a multiplication of intensities that Deleuze celebrates a key feature of communicative capitalism? What about toys like Transformers that can be reshaped as dinosaurs or machines and the prominence of morphed images throughout the media sphere? These morphings exemplify the continual transmutation of divides· between rna.; chine and organism, human and animal, animal and computer. They are virtual enactments of Deleuzian becoming. <sup>16</sup>
In a simlar vein, Thomas Frank describes the underlying consensus between cultural studies and corporations that consolidated during the 1990s. He notes the challenges confronting marketers when consumers are fickle and styles change rapidly� Because consumers are already skeptical, he explains{
The intellectual task at hand is not just legitimation, it is infiltration, and suddenly questions like the oppositional or subversive potential of The Simpsons aren't quite as academic as they once seemed. Given the industry's new requirements, the active-audience faith of the cult stud becomes less an article of radical belief and more a practical foundation for the reprioritized audience research being done by the new breed of marketing experts, who can be found commenting lucidly on the postmodern condition in highbrow business publications like the Journal of Consumer Research, laying out plans to "reenchant" the brand with a "liberatory postmodernism;' and warning advertisers to create with the active, emancipation-hungry consumer in mind.17
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INTRODUCTI ON