Self-help entrepreneurship manuals deploy neoliberal motivational language to sell independence.

Evidence

Both Crush It! and The 4-Hour Work Week are instruction manuals for surviving without an economic safety net. Ferriss and Vaynerchuk assume that the changes that the internet has wreaked on industries like journalism and music are prescient of larger shifts in the American economy. They strongly advocate independence from corporate structures by encouraging people to start their own businesses. Both use the motivational language common to both neoliberalism and American self-help culture, extolling readers to imagine and bring about an ideal life. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 459

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s stated interest in influencer/creator culture as grounded in precarity and neoliberalism; parallels critiques of the gig economy and hustle culture. — connects to: Neoliberal entrepreneurship rhetoric masks a reality of collective corporate effort — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 306; The ideal neoliberal subject is a self-sufficient entrepreneurial risk-taker — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 36; Entrepreneurship became a generalized ideal pervading personal identity and relationships (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal entrepreneurship rhetoric masks a reality of collective corporate effort #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 306
• The ideal neoliberal subject is a self-sufficient entrepreneurial risk-taker #expands (0.82) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 36
• Neoliberalism’s ultimate ideal self is the autonomous self-made individual #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 430
• Entrepreneurship became a generalized ideal pervading personal identity and relationships #expands (0.78)