The Corpocene inverts corporate personhood so people adopt corporate structure and function.

Evidence

Beyond usual debates about “corporate personality,” beyond the general “corporatization” of everything, this combination of person and corporation, we argue, is foundational for mitigating against the risk of life as an influencer. Conflating person and corporation is an act central for the broader context of the present—a context we’re terming the Corpocene. The Corpocene names the moment when the ideal subject—a model realized in figures like Star and Donaldson—renders equivalent corporeal body and corporate body, where the corporation becomes the model for selfhood, for social relation, for “success.” This inverts the model of corporate personhood central to countless juridical norms needed for the functioning of modern capital and social life. Not only do corporations appear as “people”—with “personhood” a legal fiction necessary for defining and parceling out the rights and responsibilities of groups and agents that cannot be reduced to single individuals—but people themselves adopt the structure and function of a corporation. In the Corpocene, the only thing that truly appears as a “person,” as worthy of rights and protections under law, is a corporation. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 343

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition of Corpocene — the reader’s central teaching concept — rendered precisely and completely.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated frame: corporate personhood gave companies people’s rights; the influencer completes the circuit giving the person the form of a company. — connects to: Corporate-controlled social knowledge reorders society in favor of corporations over citizens. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 368
• SEED: The sentence ‘the only thing that truly appears as a person is a corporation’ is itself an essay-seed claim to build a whole piece around.