Were we to linger over this, we could show that at several points in his writings and seminars Lacan indicated the importance of the utilitarian turn in Western history. Cf., for example, Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: Norton, 2007), 112.
For our own purposes we adopt the neologism suggested by Jean-Pierre Lebrun in La Perversion ordinaire. Vivre ensemble sans autrui (Paris: Denoël, 2007).
Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott (London and New York: Verso, 2006), 8.
Sunday Times, May 7, 1988; our emphasis.
Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, with Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance (London: John Murray, 1890). In his Introduction (p. 1) the author summarizes his intention: “[our] happiness and well-being as individuals … must necessarily depend mainly on &leftbracket;ourselves&rightbracket;—upon &leftbracket;our&rightbracket; own diligent self-culture, self-discipline, and self-control—and, above all, on that honest and upright performance of individual duty, which is the glory of man’s character.”
Ibid., 5.
Bob Aubrey, Entreprise de soi (Paris: Flammarion, 2000), 11.
Nikolas Rose, Inventing Ourselves: Psychology, Power and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 154.
Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982, ed. Frédéric Gros and trans. Graham Burchell (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 215.
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and Other Writings, eds. and trans. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells (London: Penguin, 2002), 79.
“L’entreprise de soi, un nouvel âge,” interview with Bob Aubrey, Autrement 192 (2000): 193. With Bruno Tilliette he had previously written Savoir faire savoir (Paris: Interéditions, 1990) and Le Travail après la crise (Paris: Interéditions, 1994).
Aubrey, Le Travail après la crise, 85.
Ibid., 86.
Aubrey, Le Travail après la crise, 103. We recall that epimeleia heautou is the formulation for “care of the self” or “concern for the self” in classical Greek culture. Cf. Foucault, Hermeneutics of the Subject.
Valérie Brunel, Les Managers de l’âme. Le Développement personnel en entreprise, nouvelle pratique de pouvoir? (Paris: La Découverte, 2004).
Pierre Hadot, “Réflexions sur la notion de ‘culture de soi,’” in Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris: Albin Michel, 2002), 330.
This text is an edited excerpt from The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, trans. Gregory Elliott, forthcoming from Verso in February 2014. The book was originally published in French as La nouvelle raison du monde. Essai sur la société néolibérale (Paris: La Découverte/Poche, 2010).