Becoming Through Contiguity and Lines of Flight: The Four Faces of Celebrity-Proximate Assemblages

Abstract

Abstract Prior consumer studies examined consumers in extraordinary contexts role playing and transforming using magical thinking. This study investigates consumers becoming in everyday life using celebrities and explores the dynamic relations between consumers and social media. Individual and group interviews and mobile digital data were collected. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) theory of becoming, four faces of celebrity-proximate assemblages were inductively derived to explore the range of dynamic states that can emerge at any moment. The celebrity-proximate assemblage includes the body without organization that is virtual and contiguous with diverting assemblages and forms fluid lines of flight with the possibility of disruption. The developing body is both virtual and actual and is contiguous with overlapping assemblages and actualizes tentative lines of flight for capacities to experiment in the real world. The enhanced and regimented body are also both virtual and actual. The enhanced body comingles with other assemblages and actualizes fewer expansive lines that map new capacities. The regimented body, however, is captivated by other assemblages and actualizes the fewest and most restrictive lines, which are often life diminishing. Implications for consumer research are explored for this model of becoming and the use of mobile digital data collection methods.