This project is a timely investigation of our current Western sociopolitical climate and how it shapes who we are, how we think of ourselves, and how we create meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. Relying on critical theory, this book looks at some of the social inequities produced under neoliberal capitalism and the ways these problems are internalized into subjectivity as what I am calling the neoliberal self. Neoliberal cultural values are shown to reframe social inequities as personal problems and simultaneously create a sense of personal responsibility for solving them within the self rather than addressing them externally. I also relate neoliberalism to rising problems with meaning and mental health, dubbed the meaning and mental health crises. Our hyperawareness of these problems and social inequities produce sentiments that I am attributing to a new form of nihilism, neonihilism, which may be overcome via relationality and the art of nihilating the neoliberal self, the ars nihil. The book is divided into three parts: 1. Subjectivity and Technologies of the Self; 2. Neonihilsm; 3. Relationality and the Ars Nihil.

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Introduction

  • Patric Plesa

摘要

This project is a timely investigation of our current Western sociopolitical climate and how it shapes who we are, how we think of ourselves, and how we create meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. Relying on critical theory, this book looks at some of the social inequities produced under neoliberal capitalism and the ways these problems are internalized into subjectivity as what I am calling the neoliberal self. Neoliberal cultural values are shown to reframe social inequities as personal problems and simultaneously create a sense of personal responsibility for solving them within the self rather than addressing them externally. I also relate neoliberalism to rising problems with meaning and mental health, dubbed the meaning and mental health crises. Our hyperawareness of these problems and social inequities produce sentiments that I am attributing to a new form of nihilism, neonihilism, which may be overcome via relationality and the art of nihilating the neoliberal self, the ars nihil. The book is divided into three parts: 1. Subjectivity and Technologies of the Self; 2. Neonihilsm; 3. Relationality and the Ars Nihil.