ABSTRACT
The reflexive project of the ‘self’, identified by Anthony Giddens as a hallmark of modernity, has become a distinct kind of labour under postFordist capital in the form of ‘self-branding’. Self-branding involves the construction of a meta-narrative and meta-image of self through the use of cultural meanings and images drawn from the narrative and visual codes of the mainstream cultural industries. The function of the branded self is purely rhetorical; its goal is to produce profit. Different inflections of self-branding can be traced across several mediated cultural forms that directly address the constitution and celebration of the ‘self’ as such. The practice of self-branding is clearly expressed and delineated in current management literature as a necessary strategy for success in an increasingly complex corporate world. Many reality television shows invent narratives of self-branding and, simultaneously, produce branded personae. Web sites like 2night.com and universityparty.ca improvise on the theme of selfbranding by taking photographs of young people at clubs and linking them to advertisements on line, blurring the distinction between private self and instrumental associative object, while social network web sites like MySpace and Facebook offer inventories of various selves.
