Abstract
Presentation of an argument on the relationship between consumer society, as it developed during the eighteenth century, and Enlightenment writing. I suggest that the self-culture associated with consumer practices inspired new writing strategies in the authors of the period, illustrated by Voltaire's words: "The most useful books are those of which the reader makes half himself". These strategies can be characterized as strategies of ambiguity. Readers have to decipher puzzles, unravel paradoxes, find a logic to support a chain of discontinuous texts. They are thus encouraged to create their own meanings and enter into imaginary (or sometimes real) dialogues with authors, inviting them to recreate themselves and make choices perceived as free. I discuss the parallels between this exercise in choice and that made in consumer society, not to insist that the Enlightenment is the simple product of economic change, but to explore the complex and sometimes quasi-symbiotic relationship between the two.
