ABSTRACT
In Western neoliberal societies and, increasingly, globally, risk management has become an imperative both at the level of institutions and policies, and at the level of individual action. Examples include risks as diverse as terrorism, the national debt, food safety and security, text messaging while driving, antibiotic resistant disease, and even the extent of government intervention itself. The assessment and management of risk affects not only policy, and political discourse and rhetoric, but also the relationship and attitudes individuals have to themselves. This chapter builds upon the account of the ideal of invulnerability developed in the previous chapter by incorporating an additional set of concepts into the analysis: ideas of risk, danger, control, and management, which enhance our picture of invulnerable subjectivity. In the previous chapter, the ideal of invulnerability was primarily discussed in terms of a kind of closure; through the pursuit of invulnerability we close ourselves off from alternative modes of experience, from the perspectives of others who are perceived as different from ourselves, and thus from challenges to the self-conceptions we have devised in order to understand our place in the social world. Here, I aim to account for the allure of the ideal of invulnerability, contending that culturally prevalent conceptions of risk and danger contribute to its appeal. I focus on how a particular sense of self and mode of subjectivity—entrepreneurial subjectivity—is forged in relation to broader social meanings and norms concerning responsibility and risk-taking. The overarching argument is that entrepreneurial subjectivity results in two ethically damaging consequences: (1) since entrepreneurial subjectivity relies on the reductively negative view of vulnerability, individuals become increasingly averse to vulnerability, regarding it not just as a condition to avoid but also as a bad character trait to possess, and (2) accordingly, responsibility for risk and for common human vulnerabilities is increasingly privatized rather than shared. Thus, entrepreneurial subjectivity contributes to our inability to recognize the full normative significance of vulnerability and respond ethically to both the vulnerabilities of others in adverse conditions and vulnerability as a common feature of life.
