In 2011, I published a theoretical model for what neoliberal selves and neoliberal relationships are as an attempt to unpack in much more detail the Foucaultian claim that the neoliberal self is an entrepreneurial self.

I wrote this without having done any fieldwork, and rectified this subsequently by studying hiring in corporate America.

“Employing the CEO of Me, Inc.” explains what happens when one tries to live as the neoliberal self I described in “Neoliberal Agency”, asking: what fissures to US neoliberal logics emerge when the model meets everyday life?

This second article is a critique of neoliberalism from the inside, so to speak, exploring what contradictions emerge through implementation in a messy social world.

Ilana Gershon is Ruth N. Halls Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington