Emotional Life: Week 3

Governance, Therapy Culture and Self Love

Adam Eldridge 2023
 Recap
• Where we’ve been:
– Emotions are formed in the social world.
– In becoming social beings, we learn appropriate ways of expressing,
interpreting and doing emotions.
• i.e. emotional labour.
• We all do this, not just men.
– Because they are regulated and controlled, we know emotions are
learnt and develop in social settings.
– Our emotions are exploited for profit.
 Today:
• Governmentality
• Self-love

• In becoming social beings ‘good

citizens’ we learn appropriate
ways of expressing, interpreting
and doing emotions.
 Foucault and governmentality
• Michel Foucault: 1926-1984
• Governing: gouverner
• Modes of thought: mentalité (Lemke, 2002)
– Foucault understood ‘government’ in the traditional sense of
philosophical, religious, medical and pedagogic texts.
– Government is not just ‘administration’, but also managing the soul,
guiding the family, self-management and control.
 Where’s the power?
• Foucault is trying to figure out that link between the
dominance of the state and our own self management and
how they come together.
• Power is not only at the top, but is dispersed via discourses and
institutions: schools, prisons, psychiatric institutions, etc.,
which create norms and instruct us how to self manage.
• The state assumes you want to be an active, healthy citizen.
How does it achieve this? And what happens if you don’t?
 Foucault and governmentality
• How does the state govern self-government?
• Power is now about guidance.
• We’re not working with ‘power’ in the sense
of top down power (the police or king/ queen)
but institutions like schools, hospitals, prisons,
universities that produce knowledge.
• Guidance from books, podcasts, the news,
social media, manuals, and other forms teach
us how to manage ourselves and to be good
social citizens.
 Foucault and governmentality
• This is a VERY efficient mode of governance!
– We govern ourselves and others.
• We learn what is shameful, embarrassing,
rewarding, dirty, and healthy and manage
ourselves.
What do emotions have to do with this?
 Bad citizenship
• Not reading labels or going to the gym,
drinking too much, not watching your salt….
These all contribute to…

And how do we deal with guilt? We self-manage better!

 Good citizenship
• And we are rewarded and praised for self-governing….
In one sense it is about
managing negative
emotions.

The self-help
industry is an $11b
US industry.
 Foucault and governmentality
• Social regulation does not stand over the individual – but
creates self-reflective modes of conduct.
– Have I eaten too much salt today? Am I lazy? Am I working hard
enough? Am I a failure?
• These are highly emotional questions linked to shame, guilt,
embarrassment, fear, joy, satisfaction…
• We do it to ourselves, and each other.
 Example 1: Self-love
• Self-love and self-help fits into a
broader context of governance that
privileges individualism and
blaming the self when things don’t
go as hoped.
– No one wants to be messy!
– If you don’t have your act together –
you need to work on yourself.
 Self-Love
• Self-help and self-love becomes a
form of management – of
‘governance’. They are
‘techniques’ linked to:
– Measuring, calculating and
reviewing ourselves – constantly.
– We learn from a young age to write
CVs, plan our life, achieve our goals.
• Failure is due to a lack of
planning and self-management.
 Self-love
• In a period of social change, precarity and instability, who do
we turn to for help?
• The self becomes the key site for transformation and change.
This is governance.
• You are the cause and the solution.
• We learn a language to ‘know’ ourselves and our problems.
– Am I an addict, do I love too much, am I projecting?
– We individualise structural problems.
 Self-help Discourses
• Heightened reflexivity: from self-
monitoring hardware to self-therapy,
workbooks, therapy groups…
• You are in control – it’s up to you!

• Are we being anti-therapy?

– No, not at all.
– But your problems are embedded in the
social – not you!
 Positives
• But… self-love, especially if
you’ve been told not to, can be a
revolutionary act.
• When services like well financed
counselling services are not
available, what else do we have?
• And is it possible to do both?
– Self-love and question the
discourse of self-management?
 What is the problem?
• For Ferudi (2004), however, self-help guides de-politicise our
problems by making them seem our fault and our
responsibility to solve: you didn’t love yourself enough, you
weren’t confident enough, you didn’t look after yourself.
• Don’t be angry at the state, or misogyny or homophobia or
racism or the lack of affordable housing or your student debt…
love yourself, read a self-help manual, and you’ll be in control!
• We internalize negative feelings of not being good enough – so
buy a book!
 You are the problem.

Feeling stressed?
 Summary
• Governmentality: how we are governed and self-govern.
• Discourses of self-love and wellbeing have become extremely powerful (you
are responsible for your own life).
– There are positives and minuses here.
• Supports individualisation and neo-liberalism: emphasis upon the individual
to care for the self and not be a burden on the state. Look after yourself…
• …through self-love, which can de-politicise social problems.
• Self-love is not the problem, but that it is emphasized as the best solution to
solving structural problems, and feeding into a sense of self-blame, shame,
and guilt.
 Some references.
• Foucault M (2008) The birth of biopolitics. Lectures at the College de France, 1978‐79. Palgrave
MacMillan
• Furedi F (2004) Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in An Uncertain Age Londn:
Routledge
• Gellner E (2008) The Psychoanalytic Movement: The Cunning of Unreason Oxford: Blackwell.
• Lemke T (2001) 'The birth of bio-politics: Michael Foucault’s lectures at the College de France
on neo-liberal governmentality’ Economy and Society 30:2,190-207
• Lemke T (2002) ‘Foucault, Governmentality and Critique’ Rethinking Marxism 14:3, 49-64
• Philip B (2009) ‘Analysing the politics of self-help books on depression’ Journal of Sociology
45:2, 151-168
• Rimke H M (2000) ‘Governing Citizens Through Self-Help Literature’ Cultural Studies 14:1, 61-78
• Rose N (1996) Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press