The abandoned shopping cart in Walmart
example · personal/autobiographical ·
retold in 7 talks
A friend observed newly impoverished middle-class Americans who go to Walmart as afternoon entertainment, fill carts with goods they cannot afford, then abandon them and leave. Žižek presents this as a pure case of surplus enjoyment without pleasure, enjoyment in the procedure itself.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“that's a nice example of pure surplus enjoyment without pleasure... enjoyment in procedure itself the process itself provides enjoyment”
“They get enjoyment, surplus enjoyment, but without the pleasure. The pleasure is the stupid pleasure of objects you buy, but the real pleasure is, of course, the very procedure.”
“They just go in there, throw things in, the pleasure is simply this procedure of playing the game as if you are buying things, and then they leave.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Darian Leader6Samo Tomšič2Wolfgang Streeck2Nancy Pelosi2Jackie Rose1Bruno Kreisky1Didier Eribon1Garret FitzGerald1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
A friend observed newly impoverished middle-class Americans who go to Walmart as afternoon entertainment, fill carts with goods they cannot afford, then abandon them and leave. Žižek presents this as a pure case of surplus enjoyment without pleasure, enjoyment in the procedure itself., illustrating surplus enjoyment,objet petit a,consumerism
A friend in the US reports that families who can no longer afford to shop still go to Walmart, fill carts with goods, and abandon them at closing time. They get surplus enjoyment, the ritual pleasure of shopping, without the pleasure of actually buying anything., illustrating surplus enjoyment,ritual,capitalism
During an economic crisis, people who can no longer afford to buy things still enter Walmart, fill a cart with items, and abandon it at the door, getting the pleasure of the purchasing ritual without any actual purchase. Pure surplus enjoyment extracted from the form alone., illustrating surplus enjoyment,Lustgewinn,perversion of consumerism
Impoverished middle-class Americans who can no longer afford to buy things still go to Walmart, fill carts, and leave them, performing the ritual of shopping without purchasing. Illustrates enjoyment (the form) separated from pleasure (the content)., illustrating enjoyment without pleasure,jouissance,ideology of everyday life
Impoverished middle-class Americans who can't afford to buy anything go to Walmart, fill their carts in a ritualized way, then abandon them and leave, seeking pure surplus enjoyment without the object., illustrating plus-de-jouir,surplus enjoyment
Near closing time, shopping carts full of items are found abandoned by newly impoverished middle-class families who went through the entire shopping ritual, picking items off shelves, but then left everything at the exit without buying anything, obtaining the surplus enjoyment of shopping in pure form, detached from purchasing., illustrating surplus enjoyment,Lustgewinn