Twelfth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

This paper proposes to deepen our understanding of the figure of the ‘entrepreneur of the self’ today using tools from the anthropology of ethics and from the Marxist conception of ‘alienation.’ In the neoliberal economy, there is a high degree of pressure on subjects to undertake practices of self-development and self-transcendance – whether that be fitness, meditation, or yoga – in order to maximize their human capital. In this sense, we are all entrepreneurs of the self even as we are spiritual or ascetic beings. I argue that this development is both promising and dangerous. Promising, because we are living through an ‘ascetic renaissance,’ during which a broad cultural awareness of the power of self-development has enabled the creation of new ways of being and social projects. Dangerous because, in spite of the initial promise of neoliberalism to end alienation, entrepreneurship of the self has rather alienated us in precisely that sphere which is the properer domain of liberation. I substantiate this analysis using an analytic grid that looks at self-development in its social context today and analyses it according to its teleology, deontology, ontology, and ascesis.