Advertising and Race

The essay explores advertising as a cultural form that is intrinsically tied to capitalism in its imperialist phase. It considers the ways in which racialised regimes of representation offer a way to investigate how advertising represents the economic and political interests of companies. It traces the representation of such interests in advertisements from the 1880s onwards. The chapter explores the parasitic ability of advertising to accommodate changing political and social values, reducing them to the interests of the market place. It argues that in advertising, while the real and full meaning of production may be often hidden behind ‘the empty appearance in exchange’ (Jhally 1991:50), ideological interests including racialised labour and economic relations are not so much hidden as naturalised through racialised regimes of representation to legitimate the violence of contemporary global relations