ABSTRACT

This article investigates how popular self-help books on work and career construct problems and solutions related to the subject and its working life. The investigation draws on Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘problematization’ along with concepts of governmentality and ethical self-government. The first part of the analysis shows how problems in self-help are generally articulated as different types of inadequacies, which must accordingly be amended through constant development towards a goal of self-realization, which can never be fully achieved. Accordingly, the subject is offered a subjectivation as an incomplete project, which is never quite good enough and always in need of improvement. The second part of the analysis shows how this general form of problematization plays out in relation to the paradoxical cultivation of autonomy in self-help books, in which the subject must follow instructions of an external authority, in the form of a self-help book, in order to achieve independence.

摘要

本文研究有关工作和职业的热门自助书籍如何构造与该主题及其工作生活相关的问题和解决方案。该调查借鉴了米歇尔·福柯的“问题化”概念以及政府性和道德自治的概念。分析的第一部分显示了自助问题通常是如何表达为不同类型的不足之处的，因此必须通过不断发展朝着实现自我实现的目标进行修正，而这是不可能完全实现的。因此，该主题被认为是一个不完整的项目，它永远不够好，总是需要改进。