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Rundown
In this episode we dig into the way that capitalist society teaches us all from a very young age to prioritize the form over the substance, and what implications that has for our collective well-being as well as for collective resistance to capitalist oppression. We talk about how we are groomed in school to view many experiences as worthwhile only if they can be capitalized on or marketed to build our “personal brand”, using examples from our lives and the lives of our students. We talk about how we are often well aware that the titles or credentials we have are fairly baseless but we’re all forced to ‘play the game’ and create spectacles of our ‘success’ or risk not being desirable to employers. This creates a society where many people’s sense of self-worth is tied directly to how effective an employee they can be or how much money they can make for a company regardless of whether or not they believe whatsoever in what that company is doing or what it stands for. Prioritizing a spectacle and not the substance of what is being done translates into other realms of life as well, like romantic relationships, and keeps people defending broken systems because without them, they have no substantive sense of self. We conclude on a positive note and give some thoughts on how to build self-worth and relationships that have substance, not just form.
Sources and Links
- Octavia Butler, 2017. Emergent Strategy: https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html
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10 thoughts on “18. “Form Over Substance”: Marketing Yourself Under Capitalism”
This really resonated with me. But I guess it really resonates with everyone trying to survive the late capitalist labor market. I’m a phd student and could relate so much to this need to inflate credentials to survive in academia (Thank you for the tips on how to lie in resumes, lol). I’m struggling to make my pathetic teaching experience and my one related internship sound more marketable in my resume.
One thing I really hate as well is networking. Not only do you need the right credentials, you also need to know the right people in order to simply be informed about job openings etc. Incredibly artificial and stressful for a neurotic social hermit like myself. Ugh…
Btw, is the Rania Khalek interview still happening? I hope it is because she’s always super insightful about world politics and I wish people would give her a platform more often.
Oh boy, if you need more tips on how to inflate credentials in academia, I’m your girl. Actually there’s a whole industry popping up around that, of course! Beyond the Professoriate helps academics transition into the non-academic job market, that’s where I got a lot of the tips. It’s a great resource but also just sad how we have to do all of this to “sell ourselves”. And yes… UGH, networking!! I am also a deeply awkward and introverted social hermit who can not do small talk very well at all. But it’s all about networking….
And yes, trying to organize a time. She’s been busy and away, but hopefully we can find a time to get her on.
could you fill out your resume like you would your online dating profile. create a document that purposely/pro-actively self edits and targets relationships that you want to be in?
put. it. all. out. there. prefigurate yourself into a job?
a note about “networking”: i see it in my mind as connecting myself to people i want as in-direct mentors. that even after a formal education, i still want to learn, so i have to put myself in situations where i can learn by surrounding myself with people i can learn from aka by doing the “networking” action.
i would count this interaction of me learning from your podcast and then commenting in your forum as “networking”. and from all the things i’ve learned been intrigued about from you, i have download Springer’s “Why a radical geography must be anarchist” and queued up Harvey’s “on Marx and Capital: The Concept, The Book, The History” playlist. if you end up interviewing Simon Springer or David Harvey on your platform, would that be a version of networking for you?
thank you comrades Marine and Mexie for your labor!
Yes, sometimes networking for me is connecting with people who I want as indirect mentors. But often networking for people is just shmoozing with people who could advance their career, whether they really respect them or not. :/ Great that you’ve been turned onto Springer and Harvey!! Would be great to interview both of them on here. Thank you!
This is Marx´s classical point from where he is coming from, the labour theory of value. The idea that labour has inherent value and is not merely subjectively defined by supply and demand (prize) as neoclassical economics will have you believe but these guys are just “priests with equations” (Jannis Varoufakis) who will just try to convice that the economy is too hard to understand by showing you some made up meaningless economic model. Would be great to have some kind of online database where you just equal demand to the labour in individual proportion. No bullshit jobs and everyone gets an entry.
Priests with equations – spot on, that’s great. And that would be grand!
Great episode ! I would love an episode on anti identity politics leftists. https://www.blubrry.com/thedig/35625071/mistaking-identity-politics/
That would be a good one! Thanks 🙂
Dear MArine and Mexie, Thank you very much for this podcast and all the podcasts of yours. It is enlightening to me on several levels. I only came to know about this website and the previlaged vegan channel in youtube very recently. But it hooked me to listen more and more within few days. I read Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky etc etc. But I could never understand the bigger picture. But there are handpicked moments in your podcast where I could visualize the bigger picture by putting the bits and pieces of economics, environment, veganism etc etc that I have been reading for a decade.
That is why I would like to thank you for your podcast and a lively interaction.
I just have one question to both of you, if you are reading this comment. Is not the understanding of the bigger picture of where this world is going very depressing? For me, it certainly is. Are there very very small and simple stuffs one can do in life, to start reversing the economic and environmental hit jobs?
Thank you so much! It really energizes us to know that what we’re putting out is relevant and useful for people. Great that you’ve been able to connect a bit more to the bigger picture. Yes – it sure is depressing… lol. And we would say that trying to build community in life is important – both for a support network but also to share information and start creating a movement of likeminded people who are committed to change.