The smile of success: performances of a demanded subjectivity

MARÍA INÉS LANDA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Second INTERNATIONAL SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (ISA) Forum of Sociology; 2012

International Sociological Association

The process of accumulation and valorization of capitalism, founded on the idea of a "life put to work", is possible through the interiorization of beliefs that give symbolical priority to the specific skills of productive subjects, and that at the same time stigmatize those that result dysfunctional. Our investigation explores the relationship between body, gestures and emotions, promoted through devices that foster new ways of subjective (self)regulation in practices of work and of specific consumptions. In this communication we will focus in the modulations that operate the ideas of success and failure, redefined in the dichotomies (pro)activity/sedentarism and optimism/depression. The empirical elaboration examines the practices and textualities of Fitness and of Management, in their condition of auxiliary devices of hegemonic governmentality. The selection of the case points to deepen the analysis of those governmental strategies aimed to the corporal dimension and to the abilities of self management of emotions. Both result crucial in the inscription of the subjects in the capitalist productive assemblage. From this analysis some considerations develop over the political and social implications of this group of technologies, which put the contemporary subjects in the contradictory framework of "neo prudencialist" politics.