Hero-worship functions as a placeholder vehicle for propagating economic ideas to mass publics

Evidence

People must have their heroes; or as Thomas Carlyle put it, “Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.” Trends in historiography have intermittently warmed and chilled to this proposition since 1840, but it should be obvious that much of the general public continue to prefer to understand their hopes, their worldviews, and their complex personal doctrinal commitments through the biographies of exemplary thinkers. The great mass of people prefer to signal their fealties by testifying their allegiance to a few heroic personages, be they a religious guru, a movie star, a politician, or, in some cases, a ‘public intellectual’. Historians who pander to the bottomless market for biographies of politicians and key intellectuals understand this implicitly. Heroes have always served as placeholders for ideas; none more so than in the case of economics. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 450

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to my library’s reading on how communication technology and culture shape public understanding of ideas (Communication as Culture). — connects to: Popular commodities function as public pedagogy for financial rationality — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 394; Online influencers become symbolic placeholders for audiences’ larger moral and political allegiances; Popular culture now heroicizes capital appreciation over developed and free citizens — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 384 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Online influencers become symbolic placeholders for audiences’ larger moral and political allegiances #exemplifies (0.82)