Of the psychic developments of neoliberalism

an analysis of the neoliberal device for the production of subjectivities

Abstract

This article aims to show the psychic consequences of neoliberalism in the contemporary subject from the analysis of the strategies undertaken by some of the disparate elements that act as its ideological pillars, such as political-governmental decisions, discursive practices, new work organizations and the sciences "psi” and its diagnostic categories. It starts from the understanding that neoliberalism is a governmentality, in the Foucauldian sense of the term, in order to argue that it operates processes of production of subjectivities from the elevation of competition and inequality to regulating principles of social interaction. Thus, making use of bibliographical research that articulates both authors from critical social theories and psychoanalysis, the weaving and management of the neoliberal subject is discussed, which, markedly different from that of the industrial-disciplinary societies of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and deeply alienated from the coercive power that operates over him, he imposes on himself a regime of self-exploitation, capable of confining him to the limit of exhaustion.