Resetting minds and souls. Language, employability and the making of neoliberal subjects
Loading...
Author (Corporation)
Publication date
2020
Typ of student thesis
Course of study
Collections
Type
04A - Book part
Editor (Corporation)
Supervisor
Parent work
Language and Neoliberal Governmentality
Special issue
DOI of the original publication
Link
Series
Series number
Volume
Issue / Number
Pages / Duration
190-210
Patent number
Publisher / Publishing institution
Routledge
Place of publication / Event location
Milton
Edition
Version
Programming language
Assignee
Practice partner / Client
Abstract
In this chapter, we present an ethnographic documentation of an employment program that is provided by a charity located in East London. We generate a critical understanding of the ways these programs contribute to the governmentality of poverty and unemployed subjects in London. This paper then argues that the investigated employability program strives to disrupt poverty and unemployment through a set of disciplining techniques that target the individuals’ minds and souls. We will show that, these techniques are anchored in larger histories of knowledge about, and discipline of, “poverty” and the “poor”. In the same time, we will show that that the investigated program is emblematic for a form of neoliberal governmentality that asks the participating subjects to understand their subjectivity in terms of quality, competitiveness and freedom. We will finally argue that the complex set of ideas informing this training program do not determine the actions or thinking of the participating subjects. This neoliberal rational is rather mobilized, rationalized and dialectically engaged with on the ground by (some of) the unemployed subjects who contest this program’s ability to promote their access to jobs and socioeconomic inclusion.
Keywords
Event
Exhibition start date
Exhibition end date
Conference start date
Conference end date
Date of the last check
ISBN
978-1-138-57519-6
978-1-138-57522-6
978-0-429-28671-1
978-1-138-57522-6
978-0-429-28671-1
ISSN
Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
No
Strategic action fields FHNW
Publication status
Published
Review
Expert editing/editorial review
Open access category
Closed
License
Citation
Del Percio, A., & Wong, S. W. V. (2020). Resetting minds and souls. Language, employability and the making of neoliberal subjects. In L. Martin Rojo & A. Del Percio (Eds.), Language and Neoliberal Governmentality (pp. 190–210). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429286711