Elizabeth Holmes: Silicon Valley, unicorns, and the limits of visibility

Abstract

ABSTRACT The media narrative around the exceptional rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes is crafted out of the ideological interplay between the logics of American neoliberal capitalism and popular feminism within the microcosm of Silicon Valley—itself machinated by venture capital, fueled by libertarian techno-determinism, and Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In appropriation of feminism. Holmes’s celebrity, coinciding with the proliferation of national discourse around the “gender problem” in STEM, placated neoliberal and popular feminism’s calls for representation in a space that, per these ongoing discourses on diversity and inclusion, needed her visibility. Holmes’s media visibility grafted over the void of women’s representation within the notorious boys’ club of Silicon Valley under the American veneer of meritocracy. Holmes’s celebrity making, subsequent unmasking, and continued retelling through various fictional portrayals point to the inherent tensions in neoliberal logics and the superficiality of visibility, furthering the erasure of structural, material, and intersectional inequalities.