Neoliberalism deploys emotion as a productivity resource once rationality hits its limits

Evidence

Clearly, Illouz has failed to notice that the boom of emotion in our times ultimately derives from neoliberalism. The neoliberal regime deploys emotions as resources in order to bring about heightened productivity and achievement. Starting at a certain level of production, rationality – which is the medium of disciplinary society – hits a limit. Henceforth, it is experienced as a constraint, an inhibition. Suddenly, it seems rigid and inflexible. At this point, emotionality takes its place, which is attended by the feeling of liberty – the free unfolding of personality. After all, being free means giving free rein to emotions. Emotional capitalism banks on freedom. It hails emotion as the expression of unbridled subjectivity. Neoliberal technologies of power exploit this same subjectivity mercilessly. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 104

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the reader’s software on disciplinary vs achievement society and on how freedom itself is captured as a power technique. — connects to: Emotionality replaces rationality when disciplinary reason hits a productivity limit; Emotions can be deliberately engineered and late capitalist industries run a captured emotional engineering — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1990
• QUESTION: If emotion is now the exploited resource rather than rationality, does ‘authentic feeling’ become the new site of alienation — worth chasing against Han’s other texts?

Broader Connections

• Emotionality replaces rationality when disciplinary reason hits a productivity limit #corroborates (0.92)