The indebted subject as doppelgänger of the entrepreneur of the self: subjectification by debt in the crisis of neoliberalism

Abstract

Assuming the Marxist intuition of linking subjectivity and work, we take the foucaultian path to think neoliberalism as a governmental reason that produces its own functional subjectivity, the entrepreneur of the self, who mobilizes the essence of the market through competition. Moving forward through Lazzarato's critical approach, taking into account financialization and the society of control we come across with the indebted subject as the main subjective product of neoliberalism. Then we introduce the concept of Doppelgänger to think the indebted subject as the double of the entrepreneur of the self, forming a constitutive relationship between these similar opposites. Subjectification occurs through this process that incarnates the conceptual characters of the neoliberal reason simultaneously, forming a disjunctive synthesis that shows the paradoxical nature of neoliberalism and the limit of its promises. Finally, we briefly explore Lazzarato’s hypothesis that the appearance of the indebted subject would be a replacement of the entrepreneur of the self (rather than simultaneous), which would go along with the authoritarian or fascist tendency of current capitalism; but, ultimately, we end up arguing that, with the notion of Doppelgänger and the duplicity of the characters, we are facing a neoliberal continuity, even if “authoritarian”.