Decoding the neoliberal subjectivity in self-helping adult learners

Abstract

This article explores and explains the subjectivity of self-helping adult learners, as depicted in contemporary, best-selling self-help books. It interrogates how those self-help texts embody particular features of self-helping subjectivity by appropriating neoliberalist perspectives on self and the world. It illuminates four salient features of the neoliberal subjectivity of self-helping adult learners: (1) rational and responsible self-management, (2) excessive self-positivity, (3) voluntary self-exploitation and (4) the loosely connected selves without solidarity. These four features of neoliberal subjectivity are intrinsically entangled with one another. Implications of the assemblage of neoliberal subjectivity for research and practice in adult learning are also discussed.

Keywords:

• Self-help books
• adult learners
• neoliberal subjectivity
• critical adult learning

Notes

1. For example, Mclean and Vermeylen’s (2014) study shows that self-help reading as informal adult learning plays an important role in addressing transition issues related to relationships and careers.

2. An exceptional case is UNESCO which has pursued a social democratic course in its lifelong learning discourse (see Lee, 2007; Lee & Friedrich, 2008, 2011).

3. The books were: three books by Blanchard and colleagues (1982, 2002, 2005), Bolles’s (2014) What color is your parachute?, Byrne’s (2006) The secret, Covey’s (1989/2013) The 7 habits of highly effective people, Gladwell’s (2008) Outliers, Miller’s (2010) In QBQ!, Osteen’s (2015) The power of I am, Peters’s (1999) The Brand you 50, Robbins’s (1991/2003) Awaken the giant within, Spencer’s (1998) Who moved my cheese?

4. Unlike many other self-help experts, Blanchard has published his work in academic outlets, given his academic training (Ph.D. in educational administration and leadership at Cornell University).

5. According to the Wikipedia, this book has been sold over 26 million copies in 37 languages. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F

6. Sanneh (2010) explains Rhonda Byrne’s concept of the ‘law of attraction’: it ‘decrees that thoughts have physical power, and that thinking about something is the way to get it. If you want to stay poor, keep obsessing about your poverty; if you want to be rich, imagine yourself rich’.

7. According to Seo (2009), one of the most popular management and innovation strategies in the 1990s in South Korea was the so-called Balanced Scorecard (BSC). According to Richardson (2015) the BSC is implemented in four phases: ‘(1) translating the organisational vision into operational goals; (2) communicating the vision and linking it to individual unit performance; (3) business planning; and (4) feedback and learning, and adjusting the strategy accordingly’ (p. 468). For Seo (2009), the BSC views various activities, including social, inter-personal interactions, occurring in a workplace as learning and growth. Within this context, social, interpersonal and emotional dimensions in an individual’s work life in an organisation are subject to management and innovation processes where individuals are named as self-directed lifelong learners (p. 199). Self-directed and commodified adult learners are evaluated through quantified metrics of their performance. In this regard, the BSC and learning portfolios can be viewed as tools for formulating quantified selves in the name of rational self-management.

8. Peck’s (1978) self-help book The Road Less Travelled interprets self-discipline as self-caring.

9. At this point, I need to indicate a distinctive difference between Richard Bolles’ Parachute book series and other help-books. While a vast majority of self-help books tend to focus on the statement such as ‘I’ achieve X, Y and Z because of ‘my’ efforts and passion, Bolles clearly pinpoints that ‘We’ accomplish things because ‘God and I’ work together in the grace of God.

10. This resonates with Strong’s (1992) study, warning that self-help learning ‘can ask too much of the adult learner and give too little’ (p. 51).

11. This principle is called the Red Queen Effect or Hypothesis, proposed by Van Valen (1973).

12. This echoes Granovetter’s (1973) concept of the strength of weak ties in a job market.

13. See Illouz’s book (2007) titled Cold Intimacies for details about how therapeutic industry adopts self-realisation narratives.