The commodification of resistance
Sara Ahmed's work exposes how diversity work becomes another extraction mechanism. Marginalized people perform extensive unpaid labor explaining discrimination, educating others, and trying to change institutions that remain fundamentally resistant. KaaitheaterBham They experience the "brick wall phenomenon" - exhausting themselves against institutional resistance while institutions claim credit for having diversity initiatives. feministkilljoys +4 These "non-performative commitments" substitute for actual change while protecting institutional whiteness. Amazon
The wellness industry represents sophisticated extraction, now a $4.5 trillion market that commodifies healing itself. Private wellness services replace public mental health infrastructure, individual solutions obscure structural causes, expensive ongoing treatments replace community support, and vulnerability becomes a marketing opportunity.1
Burnout has become a profit model - normalized overwork creates markets for stress-reduction products, productivity culture extracts maximum energy then sells recovery, gig platforms profit from desperation and exhaustion, wellness industries treat capitalism-induced stress as individual pathology. Even resistance becomes fuel for the system, with protest aesthetics commodified and activism branded for consumption.
This "trauma-informed capitalism" extracts profit from the very suffering capitalism creates, channeling resistance into consumption rather than collective action.
1. https://www.newsletter.samuel-warde.com/p/strategies-to-prevent-activist-burnout