Like other projects, life, as if it were an artwork or an art exhibition, should be guided by a larger vision that inspires and permeates decisions on career, love, food, clothing, education, friendships, among other areas. This vision can of course be partially modified through time as circumstances themselves change and it thus becomes a process of constant revision and transformation. As each person has distinct experiences and situations, this vision has to be unique to each, it cannot just derive from generic advice as in the self-help industry.11 Discovering this vision involves research, that is, working with the self and searching deep inside this self. “You need to work with yourself” is a common injunction in vernacular parlance, advice columns, and other locus of psy-expertise of neoliberal governmentality, framing the self as a wild animal that should be reflected upon, controlled, disciplined, modified, advanced, pardoned, indulged, tamed, and generally trained to achieve particular results. Understanding, acting upon, and eventually mastering the impulses of this beast is a project that “we”, the rational and mindful beings inhabiting us, should curate.
In economic phraseology, the idea of the “project” refers to a timespecific work arrangement that captivates the aspirational horizon of neoliberal societies; projects are flexible, they welcome individual creativity and initiatives, they can be completed at one’s own pace, and escape the standard working routine (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2018). As a common laboring practice of both artists and entrepreneurs, projects are unstable and precarious, but they are also a means of socialization in the marketplace allowing the imagining of a better future and upward mobility. Projects can never be completed as one should move from one project to the next or do more than one at the same time. Through them one may meet new people, present their work to new audiences, or develop collaborations that could lead to other projects and professional development. Following the idea that life is a project, with an undiscovered “self” lying at the core, turns life (including the past, the present, and the future; memories, emotions, and desires) into a sort of construction site, on which productive and value creating processes unfold. Similar to a construction site where workers unearth minerals, the unearthing of the true self involves diferent forms of labor aiming to discover the spiritual gems buried inside of us leading our souls to the path of self-fulfillment and happiness. This work with the self can “never be understood as assured or complete” but is always “a work in progress, requiring continual introspection and labor” (Organ; Gill, 2022: 10)—constant revision and the mobilization of novel resources as circumstances themselves change. Self-labor is here a central unit of exploitation; this is the “work you have to do with yourself”, demanding research, coordination and often the recruitment of psy-experts, mindfulness specialists, trainers, yoga teachers, care workers, and counselors as well as input from technology, including from medical equipment, self-tracking devices, personality tests, exercises, and so on. This construction site is a work in progress where capital gets accumulated and valorized by activating forms of labor, infrastructure, and technical equipment around it.
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Cultures of Platform Capitalism