ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how performances of “self-valorization” innervate (neo)liberal capitalism at its every register. Drawing from Marxian and liberal economist readings of capitalism, alongside feminist, psychoanalytic and black studies, the essay investigates how the onanistic spirit of capitalism calls for all players admitted, to appear (able) to self-(re)produce. These seemingly masturbatory acts of capital, “self-made man” and worker, are, in fact, dependent on the invisible and unaccounted for reproductive labor carried out by the homeworker, and on impositions placed on hyper-visible and symbolically overdetermined surplus populations, such as the black poor. The latter provides the contemptible relief against which actors in capitalist exchange—capital, capitalist and worker, alike—demonstrate their worth. The essay ends with a consideration of the contradictions held in the notion of “black excellence.”
