Misundelse, skam og uskyld

Postpsykologiske tanker om subjektivering, selvledelse og nye motivationsteknologier

Abstract

This article is an edited version of my inaugural lecture, September 15, 2017 at Aarhus University, Danish Institute of Education and Education (DPU). In the article I present a kind of methodological program for post-psychological research in effects of current self-management and motivational technologies. In the article, I use envy as an example, but it is a more profound analytical ambition that drives the text. Therefore, I show how theoretical concepts of affect and diversity are two fruitful and coherent optics for post-psychological research interested in the performative subjective effects of new motivational technologies. The one downfall is about affect and affective economics and especially the “ugly” feelings (e.g. envy, vanity and shame) that motivational technologies sometimes is based on and co- produce. The second downturn is about the affective atmospheres and moods that emerge when motivational technologies operate in the intersections of gender, ethnicity and race. Post psychology does not mean that the theories do not deal with psychology; The science that is about how people experience, think, act and feel. Even though post psychology on the one hand removes a number of psychological phenomena (e.g. motivation), it shows, on the other hand, exactly how motivation occurs.

Post psychology is not a goodbye to psychology, but a reconsideration of psychology from a new context, and not least in the light of the complexity of today’s psychology, with which inputs are delivered. It also requires the development of concepts as thinking technologies rather than as representative and the possibility of more experimental research based on a rethinking of laboratory methodologies and affirmative norm critique. That is of most importance, if you’re interested in saying more than the technologies say about themselves and investigating the challenges they hold, but also if you’re interested in more than just saying no to them.