The Corpocene is capital anthropomorphized into corporate persons.

Evidence

The Corpocene is a concept intended to supplement all of the other “-cenes” today by foregrounding the specific demand on subjectivity this book charts. On one hand, we see the collapse of labor power and identity, and on the other, the collapse of subjectivity and the vertically integrated conglomerate corporation. These two conflations, in which self and business are confused and intertwined, we claim, should be understood both as grounding the possibilities of class on the internet and as preventing the possibility of class struggle and organization. The Corpocene, following Jacques Camatte, describes the moment in which capital is anthropomorphized. Corporations become people, citizens worthy of rights and abilities under the rule of law. And what were formerly known as “people” and “citizens” become, instead, a mass of potential surplus population, to be used up and discarded. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 119

Categorization

• DEFINE: The book’s central definition: Corpocene as capital anthropomorphized via Camatte.
• DEEPTHINKING: The two-way conflation—people become firms while corporations become people—plus the ‘surplus population’ flip on legal personhood is dense enough to sit with.
• XREF: Core to the reader’s thesis: corporate personhood gave companies the rights of people; the influencer completes the circuit. Directly enables the real-creator case study.