The Rhetoric of Corporate Psychopathy: Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Demonization in The Corporation

ABSTRACT

In this essay I turn to the world-renowned book and film The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power and Profit by Joel Bakan in order to conceptualize and critique what I label the rhetoric of corporate psychopathy. Doing so, I advance two interrelated claims: first, that neoliberalism’s rhetorical force is derived primarily from its extension and alteration of liberal notions of possessive individualism into a dispositif of corporate personhood. Second, I claim that Bakan’s argument that corporations are psychopaths—and his larger rhetoric of corporate psychopathy—ultimately reinscribes rather than challenges the disciplinary functions of liberal discourse in interesting ways. Thus, while the rhetoric of corporate psychopathy is an easily digestible line of argument that offers a ready-made case against corporate personhood and rights it is an argument against corporate personhood that those who oppose corporate power ought to reconsider.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate psychopathy
• demonization
• neoliberalism
• personhood

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Throughout this analysis there will remain the difficult question of where to locate the “personhood” of the corporation. This is a perennial question that dates back centuries. We are left with three dominant perspectives: the associational theory (which says its personhood consists of the individuals who comprise it), the fiction theory (which states its personhood is a useful legal fiction granted by the state), and the real entity theory (which says that the corporation possesses its own personhood—beyond the state and the individuals who compose it). On various theories of corporate personhood, see Orts, Business Persons.

² Reading both the book and film together raises methodological questions. Although filmic adaptation may open new ways of reading Bakan’s book, my focus here is on the larger argumentative and narrative structure of each text. As the film was created specifically as an adaptation of Bakan’s text, these components of Bakan’s work remain largely the same. Importantly, I do not claim that my reading is authoritative in this way. The classic statement in rhetorical studies on polysemy, its difficulties, and its limits remains Condit’s 1989 essay.

³ Ernst Kantorowicz’s work has also demonstrated that corporate personhood shares in this theological genealogy.

⁴ In his discussion of the “welfare queen,” Kotsko, drawing from Silvia Federici, connects this trope to a longer legacy of colonialism, misogyny, and racial hatred in capitalism’s development. Such demonization works discursively to legitimize neoliberal capital’s supposedly naturalistic view of the world.