Du management de soi à l'investissement sur soi.

oleh: Luca Paltrinieri, Massimiliano Nicoli

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre 2017-09-01

Deskripsi

In this paper we take up the idea that the notion of “neoliberalism” is not only the effect of economic and labour transformations, but also the symptom of an anthropological turning point emphasizing the question of “subjectification”, i.e. the process of constituting the self as the subject of its own action. To this end, we compare liberal and neoliberal subjectification starting from their respective rationalities of government. The experience of the liberal subject is constitutively divided into market and labour, consumption and production, inside and outside the home, etc.: the liberal rationality is thus basically characterized by this kind of separation between distinct spaces. Built around the notions of human capital and human resources, the neoliberal rationality transcends this pattern of separation by prescribing an endless work and effort of self-valorization. Everything included in the perimeter of the “self” is likely to become an investment capital, the “self” itself being nothing but a skills and assets portfolio to be assessed on a market. In conclusion, we consider the transformations of this form of subjectification when the heroic imagination of start-ups and disruptive innovation penetrates into political discourse and generalizes in society: the neo-liberal “enterprise of the self” comes to be mostly characterized by the experimentation and exposure to risk, more than the management of one’s life according to a cost-benefit analysis. Beside a “vertical subjectivity” trying to reach out for its own existential truth by psychological inquiry, a sort of “horizontal subjectivity” authenticated by the unification and integration of several investment and indebtedness experiences seems to surface.