Aleksei Solovyov traces how today’s social reality has shifted from a “disciplinary” model to a “psychopolitical” one, where the object of governance is not so much behavior as the person’s inner world. The book examines the transition to biopolitics, modern practices of self-discipline and self-control, the phenomenon of psychopolitical reason, and several other current storylines. This research reveals the hidden internal side of the neoliberal order: power here looks less like external coercion and more like self-government through motivation, productivity, and a culture of caring for the self.
The author shows that disciplinary societies have been replaced by an era of psychopolitics, in which a person thinks of themselves as an “entrepreneur of their own self,” and their subjectivity becomes a space for administration. Self-observation, an attitude of constant development, the cult of creativity and flexibility start functioning as subtle mechanisms of control and self-alienation, producing the type of the “burned-out superhero,” living by the principle “you can do anything.”
Reconstructing the phenomenology of the dispositifs of a fluid modernity—flexibility, creativity, positivity, performativity—Solovyov shows how they assemble a subject subordinated to the ideology of achievement. At the same time, the book is not reduced to criticism: the conclusion outlines the possibility of other life styles, where attention, care, and the aesthetics of existence regain their significance.
Aleksei Solovyov is a Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, an independent researcher of contemporary critical theory, sociology of everyday life, and cultural anthropology; author of materials on Insolarance Cult and the video blog “Philosorpakovyvaet konteksy!” Copyright …, ParaType Ltd. All rights reserved. Solovyov, 2025. Design: LLC “AST Publishing House,” 2025.