There is a weird phenomenon that occurs in late-twentieth-century conceptions of the individual. On the one hand, we are concerned with our self-worth and individuality to a degree unequaled in history. The American suburbanite lays claim to his land, his home, his family, his income, etc., so definitively. And commodity culture plays to this, in advertising and representation, so that our consumption can act to reaffirm the validity of our nature as a unified individual. On the other hand, our drive toward consolidation of the individual tends to turn us into cogs, to feed us back into the networks of power and thus dissolve the very individuality that we strive so hard to establish.