Entrepreneurial Patients: Expressions of Neoliberal subjectivity in the Context of POTS
(2025) SANK03 20251Social Anthropology
- Abstract
- This thesis explores how individuals experiencing Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) constitute themselves as entrepreneurial subjects within contemporary neoliberal culture. Through 6 semi-structured interviews with Swedish women suffering from POTS, this study explores the subjectivities formed at the intersection of chronic illness and neoliberal regimes of truth. Drawing on Foucauldian theories of subjectivation, supplemented by the work of Nikolas Rose and Paul Rabinow, the analysis highlights the ethical practices and self-technologies through which informants navigate life with chronic illness. The findings suggest that POTS imposes a rupture in neoliberal self-making by limiting individuals’ capacity to engage in... (More)
- This thesis explores how individuals experiencing Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) constitute themselves as entrepreneurial subjects within contemporary neoliberal culture. Through 6 semi-structured interviews with Swedish women suffering from POTS, this study explores the subjectivities formed at the intersection of chronic illness and neoliberal regimes of truth. Drawing on Foucauldian theories of subjectivation, supplemented by the work of Nikolas Rose and Paul Rabinow, the analysis highlights the ethical practices and self-technologies through which informants navigate life with chronic illness. The findings suggest that POTS imposes a rupture in neoliberal self-making by limiting individuals’ capacity to engage in practices of entrepreneurial subjectivity, such as exercise and work. However, rather than exiting the neoliberal mode of subjectivation, this study shows how patients reconstitute themselves as entrepreneurial patients - somatic individuals who engage in self-governance through research, advocacy, and strategic interaction with medical institutions. The clinical encounter becomes a crucial site for the negotiation of legitimacy, wherein new entrepreneurial ethical practices function as the means for the creation of new modes of subjectivation. Thus, this thesis argue that POTS produces a sick subjectivity that simultaneously contests and reproduces neoliberal ideals, illustrating the inherent ambivalence of contemporary ethopolitics. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9199158
- author
- Jupiter, Sixten LU
- supervisor
-
- Sara Kauko LU
- organization
- course
- SANK03 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- POTS, Subjectivation, Neoliberalism, Ethopolitics, Social anthropology
- language
- English
- id
- 9199158
- date added to LUP
- 2025-06-15 14:07:47
- date last changed
- 2025-06-15 14:07:47
@misc{9199158, abstract = {{This thesis explores how individuals experiencing Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) constitute themselves as entrepreneurial subjects within contemporary neoliberal culture. Through 6 semi-structured interviews with Swedish women suffering from POTS, this study explores the subjectivities formed at the intersection of chronic illness and neoliberal regimes of truth. Drawing on Foucauldian theories of subjectivation, supplemented by the work of Nikolas Rose and Paul Rabinow, the analysis highlights the ethical practices and self-technologies through which informants navigate life with chronic illness. The findings suggest that POTS imposes a rupture in neoliberal self-making by limiting individuals’ capacity to engage in practices of entrepreneurial subjectivity, such as exercise and work. However, rather than exiting the neoliberal mode of subjectivation, this study shows how patients reconstitute themselves as entrepreneurial patients - somatic individuals who engage in self-governance through research, advocacy, and strategic interaction with medical institutions. The clinical encounter becomes a crucial site for the negotiation of legitimacy, wherein new entrepreneurial ethical practices function as the means for the creation of new modes of subjectivation. Thus, this thesis argue that POTS produces a sick subjectivity that simultaneously contests and reproduces neoliberal ideals, illustrating the inherent ambivalence of contemporary ethopolitics.}}, author = {{Jupiter, Sixten}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Student Paper}}, title = {{Entrepreneurial Patients: Expressions of Neoliberal subjectivity in the Context of POTS}}, year = {{2025}}, }