Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life
the self is no longer a subject but a project . The self is something to be optimised, to be maximised, to be made efficient, cultivated for its capacity for productive output. The worry is that all life activities become viewed as lines on a résumé. Knowingly or otherwise, we risk being constantly governed by the question How is what I’m doing rig
... See moreAlec Stubbs • The Achievement Society Is Burning Us Out, We Need More Play
Today, self-creation is no longer something some of us can do to set ourselves apart from the people we see as the masses, the crowd, or ‘la foule.’ Instead, it has become something that all of us ‘must’ do in order to maintain our financial and social position in a culture that sees reality as up for grabs, to garner the attention central to so mu
... See moreTara Isabella Burton • Self-Made
In some corners of the Internet there’s a fascination with traditionalism, and criticism of the ways the openness and optionality of modernity have left people feeling lost. I’ve always felt like, look, I could never be a traditionalist, because I don’t want to give birth to five kids without anesthesia and spend half of my day cleaning up around t... See more
As Micki McGee argues, it was a notion that “fused religious and psychological discourses.… Work on the self—the quest for a path, the invention of a life, or the search for authenticity—is offered as an antidote to the anxiety-provoking uncertainties of a new economic and social order.29 McGee calls the subject that is produced by these discourses
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