The Subject of the Discourse: Reading Online Activist Discourse for Human Capital Theory

ABSTRACT This paper contends that much of the discourse produced, received and exchanged online by ‘progressive subjects’ – activists committed to contesting oppression and examining privilege – is structured by neoliberal ideology. Human capital theory functions as the ‘interpellative arm’ of the neoliberal project, and a subject conceived as human capital is neoliberalism's discursive mark. Via the articulation and application of an innovative reading method, this paper explores some political ramifications of the neoliberal structuration of ‘progressive discourse’ in the very recent past, recognising that the relationship between subjects and discourse is complex and dialectical. This paper’s methodology is two-pronged. A method of reading for the presence of human capital theory is articulated, with six distinct markers of a subject conceived as human capital established. The reading method produces data that supports this paper’s contention: many forms of progressive discourse unwittingly reproduce neoliberal norms via the production of a subject as human capital as ‘the subject of the discourse’. Indeed, neoliberal human capital theory is a structural determinant of the progressive discourse analysed via the reading method demonstrated in this paper.