This week, I haven't much to say neccesarily, but I did have a brief thought to offer for discussion. As I understood "The Queer Thing about Neoliberal Pleasure: A Foucauldian Warning", Shannon Winnubst conceptualizes pleasure in as a end in neoliberalism. Declassified, pleasure is "subsequently the aspect of living that neoliberalism trumpets as its grand prize: maximizing our interests and minimizing our labor is quintessentially enjoyable". What a concept, eh? Arguably, there's a tremendous amount of appeal in broadcasting to the desires of the hard working; particularly, given the superfluous complexity of the capitalist system. Contrariwise, I implore you to consider the following: Perhaps the Foucaultian warning isn't towards the simplification of the individual/general public in their acceptance of the end goal of pleasure, but rather the real danger is the reconfiguration of one's life towards seeking pleasure. To explain further, the "reconfiguration" I am consideration is an immersion of one's life in the Neoliberal framework; consequentally this requires an embrace of Free-Trade Capitalism and all it entails in the process.
I am not convinced that pleasure is inherently bad. Pleasure is one of, if not the simplest element to being. Even complex beings strive to satisfy a need for pleasure regardless of how they broadcast their values. Relative to less complex beings, all this fannying about seems rather silly. However, I am convinced that reduction of one's life to pleasure is devastating. Pleasure-living is not authentic living, and we all want to be good little Dasein, don't we? What I see from Winnubst's use of Foucault is that we ought to address our desire for pleasure in such a way that we don't succumb to the pitfalls (inauthentic living) that await us in a capitalist system. Relating to my previous text on freedoms and maturity in freedom, Pleasure living is comprable to slave level freedom. I guess where I'm going with this is that it's ok to seek pleasure, just don't lose your autonomy in the process.
Consider who gains through your pursuit of this "Grand Prize of neoliberalism"? Immediately, the cause of neoliberalism is furthered as its existence is now as a paradigm. Next, the shareholders of the capitalist system themselves advance from your toils. As Winnubst mentions, "Pleasure is tied with desire, which was driven by a lack". This lack is the danger. Lack is easily exploited, and even more easily when the exploited party is satisfied in simplicity. Thoughts on this?
Hi Nii--Your first paragraph begs us to think about the relationship between what Foucault calls "the repressive hypothesis" and neoliberalism's centering/valorization of pleasure. In HSv1, Foucault critiques Marcuse's argument, in Eros & Civilization, that pleasure can/will liberate us from institutions that function by repressing sex/pleasure. These institutions, MF argues, don't repress pleasure but incite constant discourse about/surveillance of it. It seems like neoliberalism cuts out the middleman here, no? It just directly incites pleasure?
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