Neoliberal capital profits by commodifying resistance itself

Evidence

Neoliberalism, as a cultural and economic force, has created conditions that embrace and incorporate resistance as never before (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005). No longer finding a unified and singular mass culture profitable, capital today offers numerous fragmented cultural commodities that promise resistance and agency. From the hyper-masculinized bad-boy ethos of Ultimate Fighting Championship to the edgy vampiric conformity of Twilight, to the defanged rebelliousness of corporatized hip-hop, to the commodity feminism of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, today’s cultural landscape is rife with forms of commodified resistance. Every car advertisement suggests that driving a new vehicle will set you apart from the crowd and allow you to express your (presumably suppressed) individuality. Images and aesthetics of protest are now common fare. As Slavoj Žižek (2010) has illustrated, resistance is the cultural idiom of neoliberal financialization. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 531

Categorization

• XREF: Direct bridge to deWaard’s cultural argument about finance colonizing imagination — resistance as commodity is the cultural half of financialization. — connects to: Financial accumulation depends on resistance rather than pure top-down power — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 500; Financial speculation on reputational asset value generates neoliberalism’s own internal resistance. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 70; Capital precedes and shapes resistance rather than resistance driving capital — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 923 (+9 more)
• SEED: Piece on how ‘resistance’ became a commodity aesthetic — from UFC to Dove — tracking the genealogy of co-opted rebellion across consumer culture.
• QUESTION: How does the fragmented (vs. unified) mass culture of today map onto the fragmenting of finance into myriad instruments?

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal markets pre-optimize and monetize protest identities for profit #expands (0.95) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 912
• Financial speculation on reputational asset value generates neoliberalism’s own internal resistance. #expands (0.92) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 70
• Commodified resistance reinforces the individualization that finance depends on #expands (0.88) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 532
• Neoliberalism sustains itself through double-truth pretenses of spontaneous revolt masking top-down organization #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 210
• Speculative finance fragments persons into rateable dividuals, making whole-individual resistance obsolete #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 312
• Capital precedes and shapes resistance rather than resistance driving capital #qualifies (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 923
• Rights-based anti-neoliberal struggle can inadvertently entrench the market #exemplifies (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 66