ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the semioscape of Australian women’s self-help books takes the form of an everyday philosophy for postfeminist women, a way of thinking, feeling, and acting that we term ‘calculating magic’. Our hybrid term suggests not so much a double-entanglement of feminist and anti-feminist ideas, but rather, the location of contemporary women’s self-help. It is caught between second wave feminism and neoliberal times and precepts. As such, self-help books become a prime site for the feminisation of neoliberalism. Even in this more reactionary frame in which neoliberalism is given a specifically feminine form, this chapter argues there is a borrowing from, and transforming of feminism, rather than a repudiation.
