Brand Yourself

Joseph Davis “The Commodification of Self” Hedgehog Review Summer 2003 The marketing scripts have power because they are points of personal identification. The marketers recognize that an inwardly generated self is a fiction. We are selves in dialogue, both internalized and in direct conversation, with others. People need to ‘locate themselves in a larger experience,’ and they need social recognition for their identity projects.

It is an exercise in self-commodification, because people are asked, in essence, to relate to themselves as a commodity, a product….To the degree that the yardstick of the market shapes and justifies the way we live, so our self-understandings and relationships are unavoidably altered and diminished.