Neoliberalism replaces exchange-based self-interest with self-entrepreneurship

Evidence

The classical liberal model of subjecthood might be thought of through the term homo economicus, economic man, who imagines himself and his relations through the supposedly innate capacity to barter, truck, and trade, to rationally evaluate his self-interest and make decisions and investments accordingly. This, however, is not the subject who we find in a garage. Instead, we find something closer to what Michel Foucault describes in his lectures collected in The Birth of Biopolitics, his description and discussion of the emergence of neoliberalism. “In neo-liberalism,” Foucault says in a lecture from March 14, 1979, “there is also a theory of homo oeconomicus, but he is not at all a partner of exchange.” Exchange, the capacity to barter, truck, and trade, has been replaced with the ability to craft oneself as capital. In neoliberalism, “homo oeconomicus is an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur of himself.” — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 199

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definitional material for the reader’s Corpocene framework: homo economicus under classical liberalism (exchange partner) vs. under neoliberalism (self-entrepreneur who crafts himself as capital).
• XREF: connects to: Entrepreneurship became a generalized ideal of selfhood, not just a career path — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 17; Control society replaces discipline with entrepreneurial self-direction — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 51