The neoliberal self-optimization ethic functions as a disguised form of self-exploitation

Evidence

In fact, the blind spot in Foucault’s analysis is the technology of power under the neoliberal regime. Foucault did not see that the neoliberal regime utterly claims the technology of the self for its own purposes: perpetual self-optimization – as the exemplary neoliberal technology of the self – represents nothing so much as a highly efficient mode of domination and exploitation. As an ‘entrepreneur of himself’, the neoliberal achievement-subject engages in auto-exploitation willingly – and even passionately. The self-as-a-work-of-art amounts to a beautiful but deceptive illusion that the neoliberal regime maintains in order to exhaust its resources entirely. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 68

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Self-optimization serves systemic market function, not personal flourishing; The neoliberal regime reappropriated Foucault’s ethics of the self into a self-exploitation device — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 68; Unlimited self-optimization becomes a new coercion producing depression and burnout (+2 more)

Related

• The neoliberal regime reappropriated Foucault’s ethics of the self into a self-exploitation device (similarity 0.92)
• Self-optimization serves system efficiency, not the good life (similarity 0.85)
• Self-optimization serves systemic market function, not personal flourishing (similarity 0.85)
• Unlimited self-optimization becomes a new coercion producing depression and burnout (similarity 0.81)
• Neoliberalism’s ultimate ideal self is the autonomous self-made individual (similarity 0.79)
• Neoliberalism governs people by getting them to self-regulate toward economic ideals. (similarity 0.79)
• Neoliberalism exploits the total person, not merely working time (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Self-optimization serves systemic market function, not personal flourishing #expands (0.85)
• The neoliberal regime reappropriated Foucault’s ethics of the self into a self-exploitation device #expands (0.85) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 68
• Unlimited self-optimization becomes a new coercion producing depression and burnout #qualifies (0.75)
• The ideal neoliberal subject is a self-sufficient entrepreneurial risk-taker #expands (0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 36