In the first section of this chapter, I discuss the “self” as the main element of analysis and introspection in therapeutic cultures. The self in these cultures is a site where competing discourses, interpretations, and solutions are pronounced in psychological expertise (Rose, 1999). This preoccupation with the self in liberal modern societies has been viewed in the critical theory of the last decades via an “epistemology of suspicion” (Illouz, 2008: 4), in the sense that it manufactures governable and docile subjects in the context of capitalist governmentality (Rose, 1999). For some, it is unimaginable to even consider neoliberalism independently of the development of psy-expertise and therapeutic cultures (Foster, 2016). In the following section, I look at the micro-celebrity strategies of life coaches across their multi-platformed interactions. Micro-celebrity regards “the commitment to deploying and maintaining one’s online identity as if it were a branded good” (Senft, 2013: 346), as personal accounts, professional profiles, courses, groups, and other platform afordances can turn the coach into a micro-celebrity who gathers fans, audiences, and publicity around them. As I describe, I took courses for becoming a life coach myself in order to become familiar with the modes of self-presentation in the platform economy and with the recurring talking points in the coaching imperative. In the last two sections, I look at how these talking points construct reality by proposing ways to curate the souls of audiences and fans. In Section 6.4, I focus particularly on the idea that the self is a project revolving around signifiers of “discipline”, “mindset”, “confidence” and “resilience” and in Section 6.5, I look at curated intimacy and sexuality in men’s coaching. The rhetorical constructions of the latter suggest a form of “intimate entrepreneurship” (O Neil, 2018: 14), whereby romantic and intimate relations are subjects to be learned, managed, and conquered for upholding hegemonic masculinities. This chapter overall argues that the curatorial apparatus of life coaching not only reflects a form of neoliberal ideological indoctrination, but that this indoctrination is a material efect of platform capitalism that opens up the potential for acquiring inspirational capital and micro-celebritization to anyone.
Curating Mindsets, Micro-Celebrities, and Intimacies
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