{"id":25018,"date":"2011-08-01T03:38:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T03:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/the-neoliberal-self-as-personal-brand-first\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T22:25:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T05:25:36","slug":"the-neoliberal-self-as-personal-brand-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/the-neoliberal-self-as-personal-brand-first\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-25018 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/the-neoliberal-self-as-personal-brand-first\/attachment\/25019\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_lp8crjp5UJ1qbup7mo1_500-100x100.png\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>The neoliberal self as personal brand first appeared in business self-help literature. In 1997, management guru Tom Peters wrote the definitive treatise on it for the business magazine Fast Company, \u201cThe Brand Called You,\u201d which advises: \u201cYou\u2019re not a worker\u2026You are not defined by your job title, and you\u2019re not confined by your job description. Starting today you are a brand.\u201d This is essentially a recasting of Lazzarato\u2019s immaterial labor, work that exceeds the explicit expectations of bosses. Self-branding, Peters claims, is \u201cinescapable,\u201d so he encourages us to ask ourselves, \u201cWhat have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about?\u201d and \u201cWhat do I do that I am most proud of?\u201d and then promptly put these up for sale. He admonishes that we must be eternally vigilant about our personal-brand strategy: \u201cWhen you are promoting brand You, everything you do\u2014and everything you choose not to do\u2014communicates the value and character of the brand. Everything from the way you handle phone conversations to the email messages you send to the way you conduct business in a meeting is part of the larger message you\u2019re sending about your brand.\u201d This is more or less the assiduous performativity Virno labeled as \u201cvirtuosity,\u201d which has been generalized through social media beyond the precarious workplace to social life as a whole.<br \/>\nEven a decade ago, the bald self-promotion one typically encounters on Twitter and Facebook would have been in questionable taste, and the idea of explicitly leveraging one\u2019s network of friends in order to maximize one\u2019s notoriety would have seemed preposterously alienating. Widespread ambivalence about the effects of social media on intimacy suggests that the alienation is real, as a surfeit of weak ties suffocates stronger bonds, yet stronger bonds seem available only through the online tools that have diminished them. The receptive, supportive community that recognizes you for who you are mingles uncomfortably alongside the advertisers that hope to persuade you to be something more, that are eager to hijack the self you share and make it a partner brand to help sell product. In social media, the reciprocity of friendship becomes indistinguishable from brand synergies; building trust is just another self-aggrandizing solo project in disguise. (via <a href=\"http:\/\/thenewinquiry.com\/post\/8214529571\/social-media-social-factory\">The New Inquiry &#8211; Social Media, Social Factory<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The neoliberal self as personal brand first appeared in business self-help literature. In 1997, management guru Tom Peters wrote the definitive treatise on it for the business magazine Fast Company, \u201cThe Brand Called You,\u201d which advises: \u201cYou\u2019re not a worker\u2026You are not defined by your job title, and you\u2019re not confined by your job description. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-6vw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25020,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25018\/revisions\/25020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}