The C.V
The C.V for the millennial is an invisible thread that weaves our daily lives with the larger economic market. Curriculum vitae means “course of life”, a short written description of your education, qualifications, previous jobs, and sometimes also your personal interests, that you send to an employer when you are trying to get a job. Importantly — if you want to get a job there is no real alternative. But the process of achieving work transforms with the nature of work. The changing state of world affairs.
Historically, different social groups have always had different means of achieving work. A commoner’s work might have been defined entirely by family — think second names like the smiths or the tailors. Mercantile groups relied on merchants symbols or handshakes and so on. Clerical social groups may have relied largely on deiciplic succession, to be handed the role after being a disciple. The divergencies in every ideology indicate clear discrepancies in their causal understanding. The relationships between things, and notions of value. In short the means of achieving work gives us insight into different perceptions within world orders.
The C.V, like other methods of achieving work before it should be seen as a cultural framework designed by and for an ideology. It a tool unique to this particular point in global history. It puts the boundaries around our work relationships. Defining the processes around obtaining and maintaining work affecting how you enter work at first helps determine how you work. Because of this foundational process, it leads to a continuation of these relationships, determining how you continue to organise as a participant in the work force.
The C.V is undoubtedly a neoliberal object. It’s growth in popularity aligns almost exactly with the roll out of the economic agenda. For example; In 1947 we saw the establishment of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international liberal organization composed of economists, philosophers, historians, intellectuals and business leaders. whose founding members include Friedrich Hayek, Frank Knight, Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, George Stigler and Milton Friedman. Around the same time in the 1950s — CVs become formalised and start to be expected during job interviews. In the 1980’s and the Thatcher and Regan era expands the global rollout of neoliberal ideology— With it the CV explodes in popularity in 1984 the first guide to writing CVs is published.
The C.V acts as a social technology that emerged alongside a set of ideals , new ideas around social behaviour . It is an instrument. We might be quick to determine that the ideology made the instrument, but what if it was the popularisation of the instrument that helped made the ideology? As Burno Latour stresses: if we ‘change the instruments’ we also witness ‘change the entire society that goes with them’. Whichever the case, the C.V has acted as a tool to fossilise a cultural norm, hardening predictable patterns labour relations.
What cultural norms does the C.V harden into our lives? To begin with the C.V condenses the workers abstract personal history to become a commodity for market trade. Work is divided, categorised and labeled, with the goal and intent to increase the market value of personal history in relation to multiple shifting market factors. Every tiny piece of work, award or commendation is compounded together then orchestrated amongst the larger economy in a way that ultimately results in increased exchange value.
The C.V’s ultimate purpose is to densify a workers history to the point that it becomes cultural capital because the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g). Meaning the market capitalisation and the perception of work history will always be greater than the real value of work performed.
Arguably the C.V forms the basis of our elite institutions. The goal is not to educate, but to increase the initial foundation of cultural capital, a better base level to compound on top of throughout the course of life. The C.V marks an upward trajectory that often grows higher dependent on the ability to arbitrage class.
The CV enables arbitrage of work history, meaning a“trade that profits by exploiting the price differences of identical or similar instruments on different markets or in different forms.” Arbitrage exists as a result of market inefficiencies and would therefore not exist if all markets were perfectly efficient. And therefore the CV creates a gravitational lean towards globalisation. The primary economic force the worker experiences is not to work — but to seek revenue through the speculative value of their work.
The C.V influences the the collective psyche’s understanding of success. Instead of operative measurement, the favour is speculative measurement. Today the UK’s biggest export is financial services, in it’s heart this means that the highest financial reward is given to those who operate in purely speculative marketplaces. Success for the worker, like a stock market trader, is to perpetually change their organisation, meanwhile achieving higher and higher positions — leaving what seems to be an indelible string of achievements behind them. Ideally they showcase only the opportunities to the next employer that arise from the very nature of the position itself. An example is the president who says “I am president - therefore i am a success because… i am president.” A recursive argument and something difficult to argue against. They must be successful because otherwise, why would they be succesfull? Another example is the well known CEO that turns a company around. Of course it is actually the CEO’s role to direct the company, otherwise why would they be put there? In contrary to the operative worker, who has tangible output, the CEO operates in a speculative sphere. Meaning they have the power to use their image of success as an opportunity to increase salaried position through arbitrage. (As long as he didn’t mess up completely — and even then it’s totally possible) the CEO is often in a position to take advantage of arbitrage and leverage the power of the global market.( The formula: Achievement x change * market scarcity = hyperbolic growth in labour value).
The artists C.V. is where this technology most clearly outlines its own paradox.The artist C.V is an object of an endless list of commendations and exhibitions. It reflects even the slightest association with a subject.The artists C.V is pure cultural capital — or a total halo. In this way the artist C.V transcends any symbol of quality of work towards only association as a means of class. This is where the C.V inverses, with success as defeciet. The millenial artist is part of the precariat class and does endless “unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and to decent earnings”. all of which remain unpaid and the artist lives with fame alone. The C.V promotes the image of the excessive renaissance man, even if it is impossible without exploiting the surplus value of other peoples labor. Artists expose the fallacies even when they aren’t intending to.
The C.V to the company is the public tender, which exploded in popularity in alongside to the C.V., with public private partnerships . Carlion, the construction behemoth followed the same pattern an employee might follow to achieve the best wage. Carlion was notorious for achieving endless tenders and bids successfully, however, this achievement was founded only on the fact they had achieved tenders of a similar scale before. Being deemed ‘competent’ at delivery — because they could manage money. Securing a public image. However, this ended very abruptly when they lacked delivery capability. Ultimately with Calion becoming“the largest ever trading liquidation in the UK” — which began in January 2018 .
To summarise, the C.V can be thought of as the micro-economic thread of neoliberalism, reinforcing a series of abject social relations in the workplace that allign with the macro-eceonmic ideas. Although the C.V claims to function as a transparent neutral object, the processes implicit in it’s existence and format. Any questioning of the C.V results in a response that “there is no alternative” — a common statment of a dominant ideology to maintain the status quo. In reality, the C.V is relatively new in popularity rising in populatity in the 1950's. It’s structure creates a strong leaning against neutrality because ultimately the C.V creates social pressures to reward those who are operating most closely within the neoliberal market paradigm, those who use it to accelerate hyperbolic arbitrage. The C.V thus causing a lowering the average period people stay in a job for — normally 4.3 years. People in their 20–30 year olds are at the lowest ever.
If the C.V is indeed implicitly related to neoliberalism, we can safely assume that the C.V will become defunct when ideological shift happens again. But what if the C.V needs to change first? As Bruno Latour explains: ‘change the instruments’ we also witness ‘change the entire society that goes with them’. It therefore should be aa cultural endeavour to imagine something entirely new for the workforce. So that we can help instigate a more foundational structural change in the ideas of employment, systems of value recognition, notions of identity, the perception of success and ultimately the underlying notions of economic stability.
C.V you later.
