Neoliberal capitalism exploits the psyche rather than the body as its central productive force

Evidence

But neoliberalism, a further development – indeed, a mutated form – of capitalism, is not primarily concerned with ‘the biological, the somatic, the corporal’. It has discovered the psyche as a productive force. This psychic turn – that is, the turn to psychopolitics – also connects with the mode of operation of contemporary capitalism. Now, immaterial and non-physical forms of production are what determine the course of capitalism. What gets produced are not material objects, but immaterial ones – for instance, information and programs. The body no longer represents a central force of production, as it formerly did in biopolitical, disciplinary society. Now, productivity is not to be enhanced by overcoming physical resistance so much as by optimizing psychic or mental processes. Physical discipline has given way to mental optimization. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 63

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines psychopolitics by contrast with biopolitics: psyche as productive force replaces body discipline.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberalism governs through guilt and debt rather than the body — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 53; Neoliberalism absorbed countercultural self-fashioning into self-optimization via the neurochemical self — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 421; Neoliberal policy privatised stress into individual mental illness — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1601 (+10 more)

Related

• Neoliberal governance rules the psyche rather than the body (similarity 0.88)
• Neoliberalism exploits the total person, not merely working time (similarity 0.86)
• Financial capitalism destroys real value and exploits the psyche (similarity 0.86)
• Neoliberalism governs through guilt and debt rather than the body (similarity 0.84)
• Neoliberal policy privatised stress into individual mental illness (similarity 0.83)
• Financial capitalism extracts value by exhausting the psyche itself (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberalism absorbed countercultural self-fashioning into self-optimization via the neurochemical self (similarity 0.81)
• Mechanization is erasing the physiological basis of Marx’s proletarian concept (similarity 0.79)
• Neoliberal power exploits the psyche, which biopolitical statistics cannot reach. (similarity 0.79)
• Neoliberalism converts political antagonisms into individualised medical conditions. (similarity 0.79)
• Capitalist societies socialize stress-producing conditions while privatizing their cost (similarity 0.79)
• Neoliberalism decomposed political collectivities through privatising the mind. (similarity 0.79)
• Neoliberalism means capital seizes biopolitical governance from the state (similarity 0.79)
• Neoliberal welfare policy has privatized stress and depoliticized depression (similarity 0.79)
• Neo-liberalism collapses labor into capital and frames the individual as an enterprise (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism absorbed countercultural self-fashioning into self-optimization via the neurochemical self #expands (0.82) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 421
• Neoliberal policy privatised stress into individual mental illness #exemplifies (0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1601
• Cognitive capitalism blurs the work-play divide by investing in minds and social relations #expands (0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 366