Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life
So the seeker who embraces positive theology finds him- or herself in a seamless, self-enclosed world, stretching from workplace to mall to corporate-style church. Everywhere, he or she hears the same message—that you can have all that stuff in the mall, as well as the beautiful house and car, if only you believe that you can. But always, in a hiss
... See moreBarbara Ehrenreich • Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America
The end of the previous century marked the beginning of a radical new take on identity. People became responsible for perfecting themselves, for engineering their own success.
Paul Verhaeghe • What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society
The social standard this culture offers is one of controlled, placated solitude. Its narrative often insists that you’re surrounded by toxic people who are trying to hurt you, and the only way to ever become the person you’re meant to be is to cut them all off, retreat into a high-gloss cocoon of talk therapy and Notion templates, and emerge a non-... See more
rayne fisher-quann • No Good Alone
Under neoliberalism, a market ethic works to reconstitute subjectivities, calling into being subjects who are self-motivating and entrepreneurial, who will make sense of their lives through discourses of freedom, responsibility, and choice—no matter how constrained the latter may be (e.g., by poverty or racism).