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The Burnout Society Essay

Decent Essays

There are couple of studies questioning over-deterministic perspective to look at operation of governmentality and contemplating what is followed by membership of society in its interaction with governmentality. Although, as Foucault contends, the self might be constantly placed in the ceaseless chain of self-governing as a docile body, it is impossible to argue that the very private space, such as affections, is likely to be completely controlled by governmentality during or after the self-monitoring. Given the affections are accompanied in the process where governmentality operates, however, the affections may be indicative of how the self absorbs or resists to the neoliberal doctrine. As one of the affections, a feel (or state) of burnout …show more content…

In the achievement society, as a productive subject, the self is voluntarily situated within the dominant ideology of positivity and productivity with the social pressure of achievement. The contemporary neoliberal society requires the self to be flexible enough to heighten its production by itself in the name of self-achievement. In this regard, the achievement society is “society of self-exploitation” wherein “the achievement-subject exploits itself until it burns out” (p.47). From his argument, two overarching points can be expanded in this paper: when the conduct of conduct, governmentality is conducted, it causes emotional affection to individuals, which leads people to blame themselves for the very essence of neoliberalism where a free and autonomous self-interested subjectivity, “Homoeconomicus” is discursively produced (Hamann, 2009; Lemke, 2001). As the self is called upon to participate in production voluntarily, blames are inevitably laid for the self when the self does not fulfill its duty, including meeting the suggested standards and becoming a …show more content…

320 quoted in Skeggs & Wood, 2012). In this vein, Sender and Sullivan’s study (2008) on audiences’ responses to makeover shows, The Biggest Loser and What Not to Wear finds that the interviewees criticized and evaluated the shows and even the study itself, by distancing themselves from pathetic characters in the show, instead of accepting the self-governing logics uncritically. Another audience research on reality television shows by Skeggs and Wood (2012) focuses on the viewers’ emotional affections during and after watching the shows, including Wife Swap, Faking It, What Not to Wear, in relations to gender and class. Their research suggests that whereas the respondents reject pedagogic aspects of the shows, they take pleasure in a resistance to the experts in the shows and enjoy happiness of achievements that the show participants make throughout the show. These studies pose that governmentality may not work in a certain way that Foucauldian argues, for a possibility of audiences’ resistant or negotiated reading (Hall, 2010); thus, they suggest a necessity to scrutinize how audiences react during and after they are exposed to the bodily discourses in the makeover

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