The popular success literature and “a brave new Darwinian workplace”

This article illustrates how the popular success literature operates as a colonizing force that furthers corporations’ capacity to affect the conditions for the expression of personal identity. The discourse's power stems from its intersection with the broader social codes of consumer culture and through its appropriation of “entrepreneurial” views of subjectivity. It promises individuals, who are accustomed to consuming commodity‐signs as a means of engineering their identities, success through the literature's consumption. It admonishes them to adopt an identity based in “aestheticized masculinity” and strategic subordination. Finally, it urges individuals to sublate themselves to the formal corporate sign systems used to articulate corporate identities and/or cultures.