“Retail Therapy in the Dragon's Den”: Neoliberalism and Affective Labour in the Popular Culture of Ireland's Financial Crisis

Abstract

A range of scholars embrace the concept of economic subjectivity in their analysis of relations of economic power and knowledge. They tend to do so, however, in a way that focuses on the inculcation of norms of individual accountability and self-empowerment. Addressing cases drawn from Irish ‘Reality TV’ programming in the context of the current financial crisis, this article seeks to expand our understanding of the stakes of economic subjectification by looking at the importance Reality TV also ascribes to capacities of affective labour. The article borrows from Foucault, as well as several autonomist Marxist sources, to make an argument that these cases indicate not only the subsumption of a wide swathe of social life into the domain of neoliberal governmentality but also the self-conscious turn towards affective labour as a way of refloating the Irish economy. Such a move is significant insofar as it suggests the reinvestment of subjects in a regime of valorisation that has proven to be emotionally and financially oppressive, not to mention unstable, all at a time when the capacity of the institutions of the Irish state to equitably distribute social wealth has been called into question.