IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/106701.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Vulnerable resilience: the politics of vulnerability as a self-improvement discourse

Author

Listed:
  • Ciccone, Vanessa

Abstract

Resilience has become a central aspect of self-improvement within neoliberal societies. In the present essay, I draw from recent critical scholarship on resilience to investigate vulnerability as an emergent self-improvement discourse. I analyse two popularised videos that profile Brené Brown, a figurehead of vulnerability as a means of resilience-building. I argue that these videos circulate ideas about how to enact “vulnerability,” acting as powerful pedagogical resources that instruct subjects to turn within and work on themselves. Although practicing vulnerability may lead to certain social rewards, it compels subjects to orient their psychic lives toward an individuating sense of self, bringing a myriad of consequences. Below, I assess what is at stake when vulnerability is mobilised as a relational tool located within resilience.

Suggested Citation

  • Ciccone, Vanessa, 2020. "Vulnerable resilience: the politics of vulnerability as a self-improvement discourse," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 106701, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:106701
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/106701/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rosalind Gill & Shani Orgad, 2018. "The Amazing Bounce-Backable Woman: Resilience and the Psychological Turn in Neoliberalism," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 23(2), pages 477-495, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Orgad, Shani, 2024. "Posting vulnerability on LinkedIn," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 122390, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Uma Jogulu & Esmé Franken, 2023. "The career resilience of senior women managers: A cross‐cultural perspective," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 280-300, January.
    2. Erica Burman, 2018. "(Re)sourcing the Character and Resilience Manifesto: Suppressions and Slippages of (Re)presentation and Selective Affectivities," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 23(2), pages 416-437, June.
    3. Sharon Kishik & Justine Grønbæk Pors, 2024. "“It hits me in the weirdest moments”: How future female workers experience loss in times of planetary crisis," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 1409-1424, July.
    4. Daniel Nehring & Mariano Plotkin & Piroska Csúri & Nicolás Viotti, 2024. "Re-Thinking Therapeutic Cultures: Tracing Change and Continuity in a Time of Crisis and Change," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 29(2), pages 287-298, June.
    5. Maree Martinussen, 2019. "Reason, Season, or Life? Heterorelationality and the Limits of Intimacy between Women Friends," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 24(3), pages 297-313, September.
    6. Kirsty Morrin, 2018. "Tensions in Teaching Character: How the ‘Entrepreneurial Character’ is Reproduced, ‘Refused’, and Negotiated in an English Academy School," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 23(2), pages 459-476, June.
    7. Ben Kerrane & Emma Banister & Hadi Wijaya, 2022. "Exploring the lived experiences of Singapore’s “opt‐out” mothers: Introducing “Professional Motherhood”," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 863-879, May.
    8. Holly Thorpe & Julie Brice & Anoosh Soltani & Mihi Nemani & Grace O’Leary & Nikki Barrett, 2023. "The pandemic as gender arrhythmia: Women’s bodies, counter rhythms and critique of everyday life," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(5), pages 1552-1570, September.
    9. Krystal Wilkinson & Julia Rouse, 2023. "Solo‐living and childless professional women: Navigating the ‘balanced mother ideal’ over the fertile years," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 68-85, January.
    10. Madeleine Castro, 2020. "Introducing the Red Tent: A Discursive and Critically Hopeful Exploration of Women’s Circles in a Neoliberal Postfeminist Context," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 25(3), pages 386-404, September.
    11. Helen Delaney & Katie R. Sullivan, 2021. "The political is personal: Postfeminism and the construction of the ideal working mother," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 1697-1710, July.
    12. Anna Bull & Kim Allen, 2018. "Introduction: Sociological Interrogations of the Turn to Character," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 23(2), pages 392-398, June.
    13. Kim Allen & Anna Bull, 2018. "Following Policy: A Network Ethnography of the UK Character Education Policy Community," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 23(2), pages 438-458, June.
    14. Irem Güney‐Frahm, 2020. "Neoliberal motherhood during the pandemic: Some reflections," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(5), pages 847-856, September.
    15. Jo Longman & Rebecca Patrick & Sarah Bernays & Fiona Charlson, 2023. "Three Reasons Why Expecting ‘Recovery’ in the Context of the Mental Health Impacts of Climate Change Is Problematic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(10), pages 1-5, May.
    16. Daniel Nehring, 2024. "The Self in Self-Help: A Re-Appraisal of Therapeutic Culture in a Time of Crisis," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 29(2), pages 316-333, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    vulnerability; resilience; self-improvement; new-liberalism; subjectivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:106701. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.