THE ANTI-SELF-HELP PROJECT: EXISTENTIAL SUFFERING IN NEONIHILISM PATRIC PLESA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN PSYCHOLOGY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO April 2020 © Patric Plesa, 2020 ii ABSTRACT The Anti-Self-Help Project is foremost a critique of neoliberalism, but more specifically, a reassessment of the neoliberal self-help industry. Relying on a Nietzschean/Foucauldian genealogical reassessment, the focus is on the neoliberal self-help industry and its subjectifying power in shaping identity, particularly through the commodification of existential constructs such as freedom, authenticity, angst, and alienation as sites of meaning-making. These existential constructs are also reassessed with a focus on intersectionality to decolonize, reinterpret, and propose multifarious ways to create meaning, co-construct subjectivity, and consider the conditions for the possibility of liberation from oppression for systemically marginalized groups. Meaninglessness is also reconceptualized here as a coping-mechanism in response to the pressures of neoliberalism, theorized as the combination of suffering and humour (or tragicomedy) that I have called neonihilism, which I historically situate in a lineage of nihilism in Western consciousness. Solidarity and collective action are then integrated as a descriptive model for re- envisioning the possibilities for existential constructs to become intersectional sites of meaning- making and understanding subjectivity, which deliberately contests the individualized and universalizing approach of the neoliberal self-help industry and further creates the possibility for overcoming neonihilism. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank everyone involved with the History, Theory, and Critical Studies in Psychology Department, particularly the faculty, adjunct faculty, and my cohort for helping me grow intellectually and more importantly, ethically. I am especially indebted to the kindness and patience of my supervisor, Thomas Teo, and my friend and colleague, Shayna Fox Lee, not nearly as much for what I have learned from them as for what they have helped me unlearn. This project would have been impossible without their support. Thank you! iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….iii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………iv Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter Sections…………………………………………………………...............5 Contextualization…………………………...……………………………..............8 Methodology………………………………………….…………………..............11 What I mean by Self-Help………………………………………………………...11 The Self-Help Industry at the Neoliberal turn: Inscriptions on Subjectivity…...………...14 Enter Neoliberalism: Exit Liberation……………………….…………….............19 What of Subjectivity in the Post-neoliberal World?………………………………29 Neoliberalism’s Broken Promises: A Conclusion………………...………………39 v Reassessing Existential Constructs and Subjectivity: Old Views on a New World………44 Freedom, Authenticity, Angst, and Alienation: An Origin Story…………………47 Do we still have Freedom, Authenticity, Angst, and Alienation?: A Reassessment…………………………………………………………………..54 What’s left to Reassess: A Conclusion…………………………..……………….73 Neonihilism: A Neoliberal Tragicomedy…………………………….……......................78 The Tragicomedy in Neonihilism…………………………………………….......82 The Meaning of Meaninglessness……..…………………………………………90 Neonihilism………………………………………………………………………102 Post-Neonihilism?: A Conclusion……….……………………………………….117 The Anti-Self-Help Project: A Reassessment of Self, Freedom, Authenticity, Angst, and Alienation…………………………………………………….……...........................122 Identity and the Real Self: Fictions of a Prediscursive You……………...………133 Determinism and the Freedom to Construct a Self in Neoliberalism…................148 Authenticity in Intersectional Bodies…………………………………………….154 Angst and Alienation in Intersectional Bodies…………………………………...171 vi A Reminder about Undecidability: A Conclusion………………………………..179 Conclusion…………………………………………...….....…………………………..…184 References…………………………………………………………………………...……189 1 INTRODUCTION The Anti-Self-Help Project is a work of the psychological humanities that include philosophy, art, media, current affairs, autoethnography, and pop culture to understand psychological matters (see also Teo, 2017). I deliberately focus on understanding1 over knowledge production throughout this work as a Foucauldian-inspired methodology, which aims to interrogate what have historically come to be held as truths rather than an attempt to produce or vindicate truths. Foucault (1977/1980) is skeptical of Truth2 (and knowledge3) because it is created and sustained in social environments under the influence of power relations that are formed by institutions and then upheld by their authoritative power (e.g., science has long held that biological sex is dichotomous and this is now being challenged, see Montañez, 2017). This makes Truth powerful and dangerous, especially if that Truth is laden with historical errors that maintain oppressive power relations with individuals based on their “race,” class, gender, sex, or sexuality. Part of this work is then a resistance to oppression through understanding. This project comes about as an exercise in interdisciplinary understanding with the aim of exceeding the confines of a body of knowledge itself by liberating ourselves4 from the power- knowledge relation through understanding (see Foucault, 1982). I follow Foucault (1975/1995) here in conceptualizing power-knowledge relations as fields of knowledge, often institutional, that create, support, and sustain, power relations between and among individuals and groups in delimiting their possibilities through the endorsement of knowledge about identity, gender, bodies, 1 I italicize theoretical constructs throughout to disambiguate them from the general use of the terms. 2 Capital “T” Truth indicates a type of truth sustained by institutional power, which is the aim of Foucault’s (1977/1980) critique. 3 Foucault (1977/1980) treats knowledge as the institutional body of work that sustains Truth. 4 For disambiguation, throughout this project any use of plural terms like “we,” “us,” “ourselves,” “our,” or the like are meant to be taken in the generalized sense. Singular uses of “I,” “me,” “my,” or “myself” and the like refer to the author unless otherwise specified. 2 psychology, and biology, among other things that affect behaviour and subjectivity. What understanding then aims at is a genealogical interrogation of ideas that have gained the authoritative aura of Truth and inscribed themselves in our subjectivity. What genealogical refers to is a Foucauldian method developed from Nietzsche’s (1987/1969) genealogy where ideas are studied as sociocultural practices arising in context and having a historical lineage—as opposed to the assumption that ideas have universal foundations (see Foucault, 1977/1980). For Foucault (1977/1980) knowledge itself is dangerous, whereas understanding liberates us from the power- knowledge relations through an analysis of the conditions for truth and knowledge and a reassessment of those conditions that segregate, marginalize, and oppress. My aim is to reassess bodies of knowledge, ideas, politics, and sociohistorical relations as they pertain to subjectification—the process by which people become subject to available discourses or institutional powers, and how these shape their possibilities and identities (see, Foucault, 1982). Within this reassessment, I focus on neoliberalism as a primary power-knowledge relation as it gives rise to a commodified version of self-help. Neoliberalism here is treated first in its historical context as an economic policy (see Harvey, 2005); however, the focus is particularly on how the imaginary (see Sartre, 1940/2010; Taylor, 2007) of neoliberalism as an ideology becomes embedded in our ways of thinking and doing; in other words, how neoliberalism becomes a subjectifying power with institutional bodies of knowledge stemming from economic policy and branching out into institutional practices in general (see Brown, 2015). Next, I talk about neoliberal ideology as it occupies the self-help industry, by which I mean particular texts (and practices) focused on self-improvement, self-governance, resilience, self-reliance, and other technologies of the self (see McGee, 2005). 3 Many of the neoliberal technologies of the self, found in self-help literature, were influenced and sustained by a body of knowledge produced by positive psychology. Here I refer to the inception of the field of positive psychology by Martin Seligman (1942-) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934-), and their bodies of work on character strength, resilience, flow, and self-actualization, along with other techniques aimed at self-improvement (see, Seligman, 1999; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). With the support of positive psychology, self-help in neoliberalism has become exceedingly popular and influential. I want to interrogate the intersections of neoliberalism, positive psychology, and the self-help industry, as a potential genealogical framework for the subjectifying discourses available to us today. Using a Foucauldian methodology of understanding this power-knowledge relation, I hope to discuss conditions for the possibility of liberation from the constrictions placed by the self-help industry on subjectivity. Simultaneously,