Abstract
The present study analyzes the processes of construction of identity in consumerist societies, as exposed in David Fincher’s film Fight Club. Based on Habermas’ proposal on the individuation by means of socialization, we see how Fincher’s film explores the effects that the material culture exerts over the subjects in search of a fictitious identity, simulacra, echoing Baudrillard, based on objects, not subjects. The material culture provides objects with signification beyond their mere utility; they become symbols of status, representations of a self according to the collective expectations. Fincher presents the main character as an individual whose identity has been dismantled and substituted for material symbols, and who looks, by means of the mayhem generated by his alter-ego, to find a “real” identity outside the simulacrum of existence imposed on him.