Pay and Sin: A Commodified Adultery Discourse Archeology

In recent years, extramarital dating services began to be offered on the Internet. Inserted into a set of cultural representations, adultery, taken for so long in different discourses as a point of articulation and social control, is now introduced under a logic of consumption. On this basis, this present study aims to understand how adultery commodification discourse is grounded in extramarital dating-service suppliers discursive practices. This is a qualitative documental research, conducted through Foucauldian archaeological method and interpreted in the light of his social theory, with data collected via the Internet. Our findings indicate an order of discourse that exposes a commodified adultery stylistic based on a moral aesthetic that allows its alignment with the ethics of contemporary consumption. The relevance of the study to both academia and society refers to the debate about our culture and life direction as guided by an economic structure driven by consumption.