Terwijl we eigenlijk de guillotine uit het vet zouden moeten halen ...
Three decades of companies restructuring their operations by eliminating jobs (through attrition, technology, and outsourcing) and dismantling both organized labor and the welfare state have left workers in an extremely precarious situation.
Today, new working-class jobs are primarily low-wage service jobs, and the perks that once went along with middle-of-the-road white-collar jobs have disappeared. Flexible, project-oriented, contingent work has become the norm, enabling companies to ratchet up their requirements for all workers except those at the very top. Meanwhile, the costs of education, housing, childcare, and health care have skyrocketed, making it yet more difficult for individuals and households to get by, never mind prosper.
... vraagt Oprah Winfrey ons vooral naar onszelf te kijken.
In this climate of stress and uncertainty, Oprah tells us the stories of her life [...] Oprah recognizes the pervasiveness of anxiety and alienation in our society. But instead of examining the economic or political basis of these feelings, she advises us to turn our gaze inward and reconfigure ourselves to become more adaptable to the vagaries and stresses of the neoliberal moment.
Waarbij de leugen vooral is dat iedereen alles kan bereiken dat hij of zij wil - áls hij of zij maar wil - dat iedereen vrij en in staat is het sociale netwerk en culturele kapitaal te vergaren dat nodig is voor succes.
In their stories, and many others like them, cultural and social capital are easy to acquire. They tell us to get an education. Too poor? Take an online course. Go to Khan Academy. They tell us to meet people, build up our network. Don’t have any connected family members? Join LinkedIn.
It’s simple. Anyone can become anything. There’s no distinction between the quality and productivity of different people’s social and cultural capital. We’re all building our skills. We’re all networking.
This is a fiction.
Het resultaat is dat we geen eisen meer durven te stellen aan de wereld buiten onszelf, aan ons systeem.
We demand little or nothing from the system, from the collective apparatus of powerful people and institutions. We only make demands of ourselves.
We are the perfect, depoliticized, complacent neoliberal subjects.
Kortom, Oprah Winfrey heeft exact dezelfde boodschap als de geestelijkheid tijdens het feodalisme had: uw misère ligt niet aan uw heren, het ligt niet aan uw politieke systeem ... het ligt aan uw zonden. Wees gehoorzaam, doe wat er van u verlangd wordt, en u zal beloond worden.
* en iedereen die haar ideologische boodschap tegenwoordig op onze netvliezen en in ons bewustzijn brandt ...
