Critique of Psychopolitical Reason. From the Self-Alienation of the Burned-Out Individual to New Lifestyles

The book by Alexey Soloviev is an exploration of the internal side of the modern neoliberal order, where power ceases to be external coercion and transforms into a form of self-management through motivation, productivity, and self-care.

The author demonstrates how the era of psychopolitics has replaced disciplinary societies, where a person becomes the "entrepreneur of themselves," and their inner world becomes an arena for management. Attention to oneself, the pursuit of self-development, the cult of creativity and flexibility turn into mechanisms of subtle control and self-alienation, producing the subjectivity of the "burned-out superhero," living by the logic of "you can do anything."

Alexey Soloviev phenomenologically reconstructs the dispositifs of fluid modernity—flexibility, creativity, positivity, performativity—showing how they shape the subject, subordinated to the ideology of achievement. However, the book is not limited to criticism: in its conclusion, it opens up possibilities for new lifestyles, in which attention, care, and the aesthetics of existence return.

Alexey Soloviev is a candidate of philosophical sciences, an independent researcher of contemporary critical theory, everyday sociology, and cultural anthropology; author of articles and a video blog.