ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I explore self-managing practices as an ethico-political constituent of neoliberalism’s political rationality that has evolved over the past decades in South Korea (hereafter Korea). Self-managing is intrinsically intermingled with the management of a wide range of practices in the world, and embraces novel economic subjects (e.g. flexible, active, self-initiating, and innovative workers) and new types of governable political subjects (active and self-responsible citizens). It refers to the nascent neoliberal configuration of Korea as it has created an array of political, economic, and socio-cultural systems known as neoliberal characteristics, while at the same time endeavoring to produce the guiding norms and accompanying practices that go along with these changes. In particular, in talking about the “restructuring” of the economy that has swept over Korea since the early 1990s, one should have in view that this involved the “restructuring” of the self that operates in the Korean economic arena. By self-managing practices, I mean the mundane and humble practices of consumption by individuals of a wide range of knowledge, techniques, commodities, agents, and experts in order to manage themselves through the mobilization of their own freedom, responsibility, and autonomy. They vary from reading (e.g. manuals, guides, textbooks, reports) and writing (e.g. journals, inquiries, technical documents) to exercising (e.g. treatment, training, meditation) – all in order to improve and refashion the self in desirable and prescribed ways.
