ABSTRACT
Life stories are not only private stories. They circulate within the social fabric to illustrate moral lessons, visions of the world. Once concepts start circulating in the social field, they can change function, justifying hierarchies and implicit ideologies, even if this was not their original vocation. Resilience is a good example of this. Conceptualised as a psychological property of certain individuals who prove capable of confronting adversity and who adapt to tragedies, the chapter analyses how the concept of resilience prescribes certain ways of acting, behaving, and feeling that are strongly aligned with neoliberal ideology. The chapter also illustrates how resilience has been introduced in corporations and the army, and comments upon the concept’s tendency to decontextualise human character and even to banalise suffering.
