“Soft-Soaping
Empire: Imperial Racism and Commodity Advertising”
McClintock's article offers a "social history of soap" in late 19th
century Britain as it relates to commodities, capitalism, imperialism,
and advertising. She argues that "t]he soap saga captured the hidden
affinity between domesticity and empire and embodied a triangulated
crisis in value: the undervaluation of womeon's work in the domestic
sphere, the overvaluation of the commodity in the industrial market,
and the disavowal of colonized economies in the area of empire." (p.
304)
The opening of the colonial markets provided an influx of raw material
for making soap as well as an entire set of new markets to export it
to. In order to reach these new markets, as wella s the "home market"
soap manufacturers turned to advertising as a central part of their
business policies, something which had never been done before. Late
19th century soap advertising relied upon four main "fetishes": the
soap, white clothing, mirrors, and monkeys. These fetishes interact
in different ways, but most importantly they serve to exalt white bourgeois
culture, deemphasize women's unpaid labor, and exemplify the "transformation
of imperial time into comsumer space" -- a key part of commodity culture.
(p. 310)
In addition to helping to create and sustain a commodity culture, soap
advertising perpetuated various ideologies of race, class, and gender
which valued white males and devalued colonials and women.