The Chilean oasis?: the functioning of the neoliberal discourse of happiness seen through the social explosion in Chile

Abstract

In this essay we present a reflection on the functioning of certain discourses on happiness typical of neoliberal governmentality in the light of the so-called "social outbreak" in Chile. First, we analyze the relationship of these discourses on happiness with neoliberalism as the background from which they emerge, to then examine the hypothesis that positions them as a technology of control that would operate in a Calvinist way, that is: from a logic focused on maximizing individual well-being, positivity, optimism, self-demand and personal freedom, as ways of capitalizing on social suffering. In other words, the exploitation of the subject on himself under the promise of future happiness: it will be worth the suffering if tomorrow I am happy. We argue that this logic has indeed operated in the Chilean context and, in turn, has been part of the accumulated social unrest as it is an unfulfilled promise. For the same reason, we reflect on the "social outbreak" as a particular struggle that represents a resistance to this and other technologies of neoliberal subjectivation, and we analyze it from one of the most fertile aspects of Foucauldian theory: where there is power, there is resistance.