L'immaginario della prestazione.Percorsi di ricerca sulle nuove forme di soggettività = The imagery of performance. Research paths on new forms of subjectivity

Abstract

The research path I am presenting here focuses on an analysis of the imagery of the "Performance Society". This phrase is to be meant as the overall (re)-configuration of contemporary society. A new form of reality, in which the relationship between the individual and society is (re)-thought in market terms, according to a corporate management approach. A generative form of a new anthropology and of a new idea of subjectivity, of performative type. In this essay, the performative subject is investigated resorting to a phenomenological point of view; hence highlighting as "having to be performative" is, first and foremost, a norm (and a set of typified meanings) increasingly taken for granted by millions of individuals in the world. In this study, I have analysed some of the most relevant international publications focusing on self-management, namely that set of widely spread formulae which address the need for constant improvement that social actors experience in their daily "performance". Moving from this analysis, I have tried to understand how the concept of performative subject is meant and represented, hereby contributing to produce – in the global imagery – more and more typical forms of subjectivity.