variousing

Good sources of discussion for the kind of progressive denuding of the individual to which you allude are David Harvey 'The Condition of Postmodernity' and anything by T.W. Adorno. As you say, late capitalism / consumerism represents a speeding up and a deepening of this effect. As the media gets more and more adept at control and such like, notions of individuality get eroded. Marshall McLuhan said technological societies were essentially cannibalistic, corrosive. Look at Michael Jackson - one can see a perfect demonstration of the effects of lots of money in tandem with a lack of intelligence, a lack of knowing one's self, all ratified in and expressed via a superheated ego. But then, less negatively, and more interestingly, look at the self-invention experiments of Leigh Bowry and of Gilbert and George.