ESG as "the new face of capitalism"

Abstract

In the face of a certain force called "the imperative of environmental issues", a directive based on the metaphor "the new face of capitalism", in circulation in market society since the beginning of the 2000s, is presented. To this metaphor is attributed the identity given by the acronym ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance). From this significant conjuncture of the dominant form of organizing production worldwide, we aim to understand, in this work, how capitalism is signified in and through the ESG discursive formation, considering the discursive articulation between capitalism and sustainability as one of its founding bases. In order to do so, we inscribe this questioning in the theoretical-methodological framework of Discourse Analysis, seeking to make legible/visible how this articulation derives in other discursive articulations and latitudes, through which it becomes possible to suspend the evidence according to which capitalism would function differently when absorbing such articulation. This questioning takes shape through the analysis of clippings produced on the special issue of MIT Technology Review and on the Nubank Blog section, both dedicated to textualizing ESG discursivity, and, as a result, (re)updating the contradiction between the foundation of capitalism (obtain the result/profit at all costs) and the sustainability of social and environmental life.